I do wonder, though, if you could tell this same history through the lens of racial resentment (rather than militant masculinity) and still end up at the same place? I suspect you could, and wonder what to make of that. You don’t get very far in any chapter without the role of race in the particular story she’s telling being at least mentioned.
Du Mez by no means glosses over race, highlighting evangelical response to segregation, civil rights, and many racially charged moments in history. Du Mez is interested in tracing a John Wayne-influenced “militant masculinity” throughout the history of White Evangelicalism to explain the evolution of Christian Trump-support. This thoughtful but secondary attention to race is the only thing that I bumped on in the work. Du Mez helpfully categorizes the group as White Evangelicals, which is a crucial moniker to distinguish from the active but largely ignored non-white Christian voices in American Christianity who represent the full spectrum of beliefs and political affiliations. It aims to answer the question, how did the religion of Jesus become one whose most influential sect would throw nearly unanimous support behind a candidate like Donald Trump? Like Du Mez does in the book, I tried carefully in that description sentence to not paint with two broad a brush and say “Christians” or “American Christians” as if they are a monolith. “Jesus and John Wayne” by Kristin Kobes Du Mez chronicles the history of White Evangelicalism, a 20th century phenomenon that has dominated the religious-political landscape of the 21st century and largely festered into the cultural crisis that American Christianity faces today. This topic was a wound that I had allowed to close without fully healing. Without being too cliche, I knew I had to read it because I knew that it was book that needed to read me. That very well may be the case here too, but I just had to talk about this book. It usually takes me a while to get to reading a book, and then longer to actually read it, so by the time I have thoughts about it, there’s little left to be said. I’m not usually one to write book reviews.
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