The “Duke” worked primarily in a period when the media did not report negative aspects of Hollywood stars’ lives.
The idea that evangelicals nurtured hypocritical affection for Wayne is also hard to maintain given the cultural context of the time. John Wayne fandom was not a uniquely evangelical phenomenon. Having been a child in a non-evangelical setting during the period of Wayne’s greatest fame, I can report that basically everyone who was not a political progressive in the United States loved and lionized John Wayne. “White Christian patriarchy” never is.ĭu Mez places considerable stock in the fact that evangelicals apparently loved John Wayne despite the fact that his lifestyle (divorces, affairs) didn’t fit their ideals. “Religious liberty” is presented in scare quotes.
She writes in a highly progressive patois that never leaves any doubt about her sympathies. It seems her goal is to engage in straight polemic.
This class of books, therefore, can provide some needed insight into Christianity’s character in the twentieth century.īut, in Du Mez’s book, the overt political agenda overwhelms its scholarly agenda. Though he basically argued that corporate America promoted evangelicals in part to strengthen the hand of the American model over against more collectivist approaches, he gave credit to the people he discussed when due throughout the book, and acknowledged the strength of Christianity’s appeal to average Americans. Despite the subtitle (which I assume was the publisher’s attempt to stir the pot), I found Kruse’s book quite judicious. Kevin Kruse’s One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America falls within this genre. This genre attempts to unmask the twentieth century evangelical Christian experience as more pernicious than it might appear to ordinary eyes. Du Mez is (sometimes rightly) concerned about the about the ways masculine militancy has pervaded evangelicalism’s moral and theological principles at the expense of Biblical integrity.ĭu Mez’s book belongs to a relatively new and evolving genre. By tracing the past seven or so decades of evangelicalism’s cultural imagination, she takes aim at what she regards as evangelicalism’s cult of male authority, which has toxic consequences. And depending on who’s paying attention, they will probably be either worried or thrilled to see it.įor Christians concerned about the threat of fundamentalism, Du Mez’s book will receive warm welcome. Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation by Kristin Kobes Du Mez is one of those books people will notice if you carry it around the campus of your Christian college.
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