Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation

The Republican candidate in the 2008 presidential election, John McCain, “never embraced culture-wars evangelicalism” (233). As a result, McCain was not embraced by conservative evangelicals. They did not like McCain’s Democratic opponent, Barack Obama, either. Du Mez argues that their uneasiness with Obama was based on race. Even evangelicals who were not racist were influenced by how “the black Protestant tradition was suffused with a prophetic theology that clashed with white evangelicals’ Christian nationalism” (234). As a result, conservative evangelicals attacked Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, for negative critiques of the US, most notably the fact Obama’s pastor Jeremiah Wright once gave a sermon listing acts of violence and oppression in the history of the US. McCain chose a vice presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, who appealed to conservative evangelicals. Although they had qualms about any woman in a position of leadership, conservative evangelicals saw Palin as “the ultimate culture warrior” even though others criticized her “unpredictability and general ignorance of world affairs” (237). Nonetheless, the 2008 election, which ended in Obama’s victory, resulted in “young evangelicals’ apparent defection from the politics of the Religious Right, and from the Republican Party” (236). Obama consciously and successfully appealed to “moderate white evangelicals […] who wanted to expand the list of ‘moral values’ to include things like poverty, climate change, human rights, and the environment” (237).

After Obama’s election, conservative evangelicals rallied, promoting the conspiracy theory that Obama was not an actual US citizen because he was not really born in the US (a belief that the media termed “birtherism”) or suggested that he was a “Muslim sympathizer.” After Obama’s reelection in 2012, conservative evangelicals found a new issue, “religious freedom,” which in practice meant issues like transgender people being allowed to use the bathrooms designated for their personally preferred gender as well as business owners and civil servants having to acknowledge same-sex marriages.

A leading voice that appeared during Obama’s presidency was that of author Eric Metaxas, who wrote biographies of evangelical figures like William Wilberforce and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Although his writing was heavily criticized by historians, his books were popular among conservative evangelicals. He depicted figures like Bonhoeffer as having “an uncanny resemblance to conservative American evangelicals” (243). Furthermore, Metaxas argued that since the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal, Americans were too cynical toward the traditional heroes of their history, men like George Washington and Christopher Columbus. This “decline of heroic masculinity” (244) triggered a decline in confidence in the US as a Christian nation and in the father’s authority over the family.

At the same time, a popular reality TV show, Duck Dynasty, started, starring the Robertson family. It depicted “big, burly, bearded men” and women who “welcomed their husbands home after a long day’s work with a home-cooked meal” (245). The Robertsons were outspoken in their opposition to abortion and the gay community. Meanwhile, literature written for conservative evangelical Christians continued to present the “warrior as a model of Christian manhood” and a “militaristic view of Christian masculinity” (246-47).

In the 2016 election, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton was a “devout Christian,” but in the eyes of conservative evangelicals she was “the wrong kind” (250). In addition, the fact she was a woman “disqualified” her among many conservative evangelicals. They supported various potential Republican candidates, like Ben Carson, Mike Huckabee, and Ted Cruz, who all played on evangelicals’ militant rhetoric and expressed strong views against conservative evangelical enemies like gay people and Muslims.

However, conservative evangelicals eventually rallied behind Donald Trump. Even though he was the most “unconventional” candidate, he won their support with his “aggressive, militant masculinity” (253). Trump openly “ridiculed his opponents,” complained that the US did not have “victories anymore,” engaged in explicit anti-immigrant rhetoric, and popularized the slogan “Make America Great Again” (254).

The media and even some conservative evangelical leaders were baffled at why conservative evangelicals were backing a candidate “who seemed to stand for everything they despised” (254). However, Trump’s popularity among the rank and file forced evangelical leaders to recognize “the limits of their own power even within their own congregations” (255). Despite his gaffes and his problematic record with traditional Christian values, Trump’s support among evangelicals continued to grow, and he gained an endorsement from the late Jerry Falwell’s son, Jerry Falwell, Jr. However, some suspected that this endorsement involved coercion.

For conservative evangelicals who supported Trump, like pastor Robert Jeffress, Trump was like Reagan in that his Christian bona fides were questionable, but he was still a “leader” and a “‘strongman’” in the John Wayne mold. Evangelical writers like Wayne Grudem sold Trump’s “egotistical, vindictive, and bombastic” persona as simply “‘flaws.’” Trump’s choice of Mike Pence, a more conventional conservative evangelical politician, as his vice presidential candidate, helped him garner support. At the Republican convention, Trump had 78% of the evangelical vote.

Trump’s support among evangelicals was somewhat shaken when his “admission of sexual assault” (264), filmed in 2005, became public through the Access Hollywood tape. After the news broke, some evangelical leaders and writers denounced Trump, but others downplayed the significance of the footage. Even so, Trump won the presidency, receiving 85% of the evangelical vote. In the aftermath of the election, some evangelical leaders claimed that the evangelicals who voted for Trump were “‘culture Christians’ masquerading as real evangelicals” (266). However, critics argued that evangelicals’ support of Trump’s revealed problems within the evangelical community. In addition, analysis suggested that evangelical voters were not motivated by economic concerns. Instead, Trump’s strongest backing came from voters who strongly felt their “status” as male, white, and/or Christian was “imperiled.” Even after the election, such people mostly remained Trump supporters.

Critics attacked evangelicals for their hypocrisy in supporting Trump. However, Du Mez argues that evangelicals supported Trump because of his “militant masculinity,” excusing flaws like allegations of sexual assault as “boys will be boys” (268). A book written during Trump’s presidency, The Faith of Donald J. Trump: A Spiritual Biography, “went to creative lengths to craft a portrait of the president that would appeal to evangelicals and assuage any misgivings some might still harbor” (269). The book praised Trump for apparently having a “‘black-and-white’” (271) worldview. Du Mez concludes that, for conservative evangelicals, Trump was “the culmination […] of a militant Christian masculinity” (271) in the tradition of figures like John Wayne, Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, and Oliver North.

Trump embodied the masculine ideals that conservative evangelicals had held since the 1960s. Trump’s approval rating among evangelicals was “nearly twice as high” (272) than it was among the general public. Several leading evangelicals, including Mark Driscoll and Darrin Patrick, lost their positions after scandals involving abuses of power.

Conservative evangelicals continued to support “morally challenged men” (275), like candidates accused of sexual crimes, for political office, including Senate candidate Roy Moore and Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. Critics of the conservative evangelical movement sought to “bring to light” (279) scandals involving famous evangelicals. The “details” of such scandals “threw into stark relief the dynamics of abuse within authoritarian, patriarchal communities” (279-80). Even so, such leading evangelicals often found support from other evangelicals who downplayed or dismissed accusations.

Evangelicals tended to believe sexual abuse scandals were largely a problem for the Catholic Church. However, in 2018, the #MeToo movement brought out an “increasing frequency and scale of revelations of abuse within their own circles” (288). Recognizing the tide of scandals and criticism, evangelicals like John Piper and Al Mohler defended patriarchal views and complementarianism from criticisms that they indicated a theology that fostered abuse. Some leaders tried to present a “more moderate ‘biblical complementarianism,’” but the “escalation of the culture wars in the 2000s” (293) and the ready availability of radical evangelical views through the Internet and television made such distinctions difficult to maintain. Furthermore, Du Mez argues that “the ideological extreme bore a remarkable resemblance to the mainstream” because of “messages that blended together to become the dominant chord in the cacophony of evangelical popular culture” (294).

In 2008, a group of Southern gospel singers released a song titled “Jesus and John Wayne” that celebrated the distinct gender roles of the singer’s mother and father. It represented how “militant masculinity came to reside at the heart of a larger evangelical identity” (295). This masculinity was both “personal and political” (296), involving values and traits meant to guide personal behavior and identity as well as national domestic, immigration, and foreign policies. Like how evangelical men were expected to defend their wives and daughters, they also sought to defend the nation of the US, which was seen as “vulnerable.”

Conservative evangelical Christianity has reflected these trends. Du Mez cites Bruce Ware and Wayne Grudem, who posited a theological argument that made Jesus subordinate to God the Father. Themes of militarism and women’s “sexual and spiritual subordination” (298) have long been a part of religious instruction and preaching. Even in Christian evangelical retail, not only products but even different types of Bibles are marketed specifically to men and women.

Beyond gender, this culture defines itself by race and is “largely the creation of white evangelicals” (301). As Du Mez notes, Black, Hispanic, and Middle Eastern men are often portrayed as threats and are not invited to share in a “wild, militant masculinity” (301). Nevertheless, masculine evangelical culture has not remained solely in the US but has been exported to other countries such as Brazil, Belize, India, and Russia.

Some who were part of this culture have rebelled against it. Among them are men who failed to live up to the masculine ideal, men who met other Christians in egalitarian rather than complimentarian marriages, women frustrated by “purity culture” and expectations around evangelical marriage, those who had experienced or witnessed sexual abuse, those who rejected Christian nationalism and the whitewashing of American history, and those disgusted by evangelical support for Donald Trump. Du Mez remarks that the rise of evangelical masculine culture was “not inevitable” and that “alternative models” emphasizing “peace,” “self-control,” and “a divestment of power” (304) have become popular.