Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation
Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation by Kristin Kobes du Mez was initially read and reviewed on November 7, 2012 on YouTube, but is now available on Rumble and PodBean.
This is not the sort of book I usually pick for myself. The reason I read it is that a good friend was having heart surgery and she said something like “I feel like if I read it, my heart aneurism will burst.” And so I volunteered to read it so as not to have her die on us all. We love Chris. Would not want a book to kill her. Especially not this one.
The accompanying cocktail is called The Purple Jesus and is
The book was confusing. It purports to be about White Evangelicals. Like, right there, you know there’s an agenda. White people are the problem. Of course they are. It’s always all whitey’s fault. I get it. Except I definitely get the feeling the real problem the author has is anyone who doesn’t vote blue no matter who.
Now, according to Dictionary.com, evangelical is of, relating to, or being in agreement with the Christian Gospel, especially as it is presented in the four gospels. Now, that’s a pretty succinct definition. But the author basically uses it to bludgeon anyone who is Christian but is not voting democrat. She ropes in Baptists, Methodists, Catholics…everyone is Evangelical. If you are right of Mao Zedong, you are the problem. You are a right wing evangelical and responsible for all the evils of the world.
Specifically:
Free Market Capitalism
Homeschooling
States Rights
Second Amendment
The thought that there are fundamental differences between men and women
The thought that men and women are equal but not the same… oh wait. That’s actually not anywhere in there. She’s pretty sure that evangelicals class all women as second class citizens. I don’t know, maybe they do, I’m not evangelical, I’ve never been part of that particular movement…but I doubt it.
I’m sure some of them do, don’t get me wrong, there are still plenty of shitty people in the world. If there weren’t I wouldn’t have anything to read. But, saying that EVERYONE who disagrees with me is wrong is just not a very convincing argument.
Now, there is some really interesting history in here. So what’s reported is that about 100 years ago, American men got tired of the Jesus as a loving god trope and remolded Jesus as a warrior. And that’s the entire premise of the book. And how that image of Jesus as a warrior is completely flawed.
But as the saying goes, when God hands you lemons, FIND A NEW GOD! So the Victorians did, and now we have this book. So the men who were not inspired with Jesus as a pacifist DID find a new god, using old testament wrath stories as fuel for their Jesus. This is, of course, Problematic, in du Mez’s world view. Here are some of the things she points to as BEING Problematic:
The belief that communism is evil. As someone who has, at this point, read more books on the evils of communism than your average college professor, of which de Mez is one, I feel like she should maybe make a trip to my library. I can point her to a few reference materials. It’s kind of hard to argue with a kill count of 100 million and counting. But apparently, the evangelicals just don’t get it.
Homeschooling. The thought that you might know how to teach your kids better than the government is apparently just dead wrong. Except it’s not just Evangelicals who believe this. The absolute cluster fuck of the last few years has driven home how vile public schooling is resulting in a massive rise of homeschooling.
Men and Women are just not the same. I get that the idea that men and women are not the same is absolute blasphemy if you stand anywhere outside of reality. And it’s interesting that on this ONE point, the creationists get it right. We are a sexually reproducing species. Which means Yes: Men and Women ARE different. That’s the most anti-science position the left has ever taken.
She tries to make the argument that all white evangelicals are racist….BECAUSE they are white. This was such a screaming false equivalency I saw my brain while rolling my eyes.
I mean, are SOME evangelicals racist? Sure they are. Just like SOME democrats are racist. Does that mean they ALL are? What’s especially biased is when she points out evangelicals who are most definitely not racist, she tries to pass them off as the exception that proves the rule, rather than as the norm, with the rest of them being the exception. It just doesn’t fly. You don’t condemn an entire group of people because you disagree with a point they’re making.
And of course, a book blaming white people would not be complete if it didn’t mention The Patriarchy.
Du Mez tries to walk us through the effect evangelicalism has had on politics. But what makes the argument so ineffective with anyone who….breathes….is that ALL lobbyists do this. Not just evangelicals. They all have an effect on politics. Every single American to some degree has an effect on politics, whether they vote or not. Abstaining is having an effect as much as voting does.
She walks through various things that presidents have done, sort of glossing over Johnson’s presidency…which I can’t wait to read about him and his flashing pervy tendencies. That’s FAR in the future at this point though. After glossing over Johnson, she skims right into the Carter Administration. I found several anecdotes that were cringe inducing for three very different reasons.
One, She talks about a federal childcare act that was bipartisan that was set to pass in the 1970’s, hinting that the sole reason it didn’t pass was because of the evangelicals. I think she specifically blamed Pat Buchanan, but I might be incorrect in that. I might be mixing up the preachers she talks about. But this story triggered a memory from another book I read for this channel: Up From the Projects by Walter E Williams, The economist. Who reported in that book being part of a think tank set to evaluate the fiscal effects of a child care act in the mid-1970s. Williams, being actually good at his job, asked the rather urbane question “what did people do for child care from 1787 to 1972 WITHOUT government run childcare or daycare programs?” And then because he was a particularly witty man, he attached to the proposal his response: a copy of Jonathan Swifts “A Modest Proposal.” So I’m not sure we can lay the failure of the bill entirely at the feet of the evangelicals in this case. However much she would like to.
Two, she mentions a White House Conference on families where factions from all across the land were invited to discuss family planning. They had feminists, single parents, gay men, gay women, and of course, a Christian coalition. All to come to the White House and discuss Families. Well, the matters that are near and dear to the hearts of the Christians: banning abortion, school prayer, opposing gay rights, were unilaterally removed from consideration. Now, I have no opinion on abortion. I’ve never had to make that choice myself, so I don’t feel I’m qualified to judge other people, I’ve never walked in those shoes. And I don’t judge people for decisions I’ve never had to make myself. School prayer I am ok with. As long as EVERYONE gets to pray in school. And I support gay rights. Like…love is love man. You can’t help who you love. Are you a good person. That’s what I want to know. If you’re a good person, I’m good with you. But to say NO, we’re not talking about ANY of this at what is supposed to be an open conference and then be surprised when the other party walks out is disingenuous. Of course they left! There wasn’t even an attempt to bring them to the table to see if a gentle conversation could change hearts and minds. And du Mez acts like this is totally unreasonable. You don’t get compromise by bulldozing your way and just insisting everyone must agree with you. Which is something a lot of people on both sides of the spectrum have yet to learn.
Three, she tries to make the point that because evangelicals did not universally support government mandated integration they were automatically all racist. Even though in an ironic twist, one of the democrats most disliked was George McGovern. Because he was anti-war. No mention of his own racist past. He was disliked because he was anti-war. But the thing is: The evangelicals were right. Not about racism. Dislike someone for something they can change…like their personality. Disliking someone for the color of their skin is stupid. But you can’t change minds through legislation. That’s what they were right about. You can’t legislate a change in thought. You change minds by talking to them. By bringing people to the table, finding common ground, and engaging in conversation. Like, for example, Daryl Davis. A jazz musician who has converted hundreds of former Klansmen into friends…by simply talking to them.
Besides The Patriarchy, the other topic she harps on….endlessly…is “sense of embattlement” that evangelicals get off on. Ok. But guess what? So does everybody. Everyone on the planet gets off on this sense of embattlement. Everyone needs dragons to slay. How else do you explain this ridiculous sense of persistent outrage that the extreme left gets off on? And the need to find offense at Every Single Thing. The need to find and call out “microaggressions.” Which are not a thing. The need to “check someone’s privilege.” That too is a sense of embattlement. Which keeps someone engaged, no matter how ridiculous the argument may be. Not just evangelicals, you flaming hypocrite.
The final, incredibly frustrating thing with this book was the fun with numbers. She’ll say something like 81% of evangelicals voted for Trump and put him into office. Well that depends on a couple of things. Now, I kind of have to use broader numbers here, Trump was voted into office in 2016, I’m going to use the 2020 census numbers cause that’s the most readily available. It’s between 2010 and 2020, we’ll go with that. As of 2020, the US Census has the US population at 331 million of which only 14% identify as evangelical. That’s about 46 million. 81% of which is about 37 million. And that’s a pretty big number. So ok, that’s huge. Especially when you consider something like 67 million voted for Trump. So to make the assumption that THAT is what put Trump into power assumes three very big things.
1. Every single one of those 37million were over the age of 18. Which I doubt.
2. Every single one of those were registered to vote. Also doubt.
3. They all actually voted.
It’s really easy to point the finger of blame at the far right, rather than where it actually belongs: Hillary was a shit candidate. It’s not JUST the evangelicals who didn’t want that woman in office. And as I told one of my former friends, “You guys want my vote? PICK A BETTER CANDIDATE!” That’s how you get my vote. You don’t just say oh well the other guys worse, you find somebody who’s GOOD. Somebody who will actually get me to go out and vote for them. Hillary wasn’t it.
I did find myself agreeing with parts of it. Probably not the parts the author intended me to. For example, when she quotes an evangelical belief that “leading a family through the chaos of American culture is like leading a small patrol through enemy occupied territory.” Yes. Yes it is. They’re not wrong…the evangelicals I mean. But I don’t think she meant for me to agree with them. I think she was trying to point out they were ridiculous for this belief. They’re not. The country is in absolute chaos right now.
Ultimately, I think the author’s main gripe is that evangelicals used free market capitalism to sell their ideas to a willing market. And what’s dump about that gripe, is that quite a few of the ideas that she highlights as being ridiculous coming from the evangelicals, are things that I’ve seen touted in like women’s magazines. Cosmopolitan has made the exact same point about the chaos of the landscape. But I’m sure it’s cool when they do it. Her problem isn’t so much the message as the messenger.
And that’s what makes this book so hard to understand. It was actually a pretty masterful bit of writing. Because the author almost never actually inserts her own opinion into the topic. And that is pretty impressive. I can infer her opinion because she is a Gender Studies Professor at University of Notre Dame, so it’s pretty easy to infer her position, but she never actually states it explicitly.
She writes it as fact so that you can make your own opinion. If you are part of that 20% who Votes Blue No Matter Who, this book is chock full of the confirmation bias of the evils of the right. If you are part of the 14% of America that actually identifies as evangelical, it’ll probably piss you off as a gross misstatement of your beliefs. If you are part of the remaining 66% of America, this book lacks cohesion. And it’s gonna leave you wondering why you wasted your money and then wasted your time reading it.
