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

In 1980, conservative evangelical leaders like Jerry Falwell, the LaHayes, and Phyllis Schlafly publicly supported Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign. Even though “Reagan’s religious credentials left something to be desired” (103) and he supported liberal causes like the ERA in the past, as a presidential candidate Reagan supported the Religious Right’s agenda. A former Hollywood actor, Reagan explicitly invoked the image of John Wayne during his campaign and played “the role of the stern, authoritarian father” (105), in contrast to Jimmy Carter, who had become perceived as weak despite the fact that, unlike Reagan, he was an evangelical Christian.

Carter lost the 1980 presidential election due to being blamed for myriad economic and foreign policy problems, while Reagan benefited from the white evangelical vote. A majority of evangelical Christians and more evangelicals than nonevangelical Christians voted for Reagan. Also, after the 1980 election, “no Democrat would again win the majority of white evangelical support, or threaten the same” (106). Reagan’s campaign drew heavily on the “Southern Strategy” wherein Republicans signaled their opposition to Black civil rights via “racially coded rhetoric” like “states’ rights” and “‘law and order’” (106-07).

White conservative evangelicals helped “instigate” the Southern Strategy, through which the Republican Party become the dominant party in the South. The Southern Baptist Convention previously allowed for a range of theological and political views, but it became more conservative under pressure from white conservative evangelicals who “set out to take over the denomination” (108). Conservatives claimed to be fighting for biblical inerrancy, the idea that the Bible is never incorrect regardless of historical contexts. These claims of inerrancy were used to oppose liberal and moderate Christian challenges to the idea that women must be subordinate and other culture war stances.

Despite his evangelical support, Reagan failed to fulfill hopes to outlaw abortion, end the ban on prayer in public schools, and place evangelicals in key positions in the federal government. However, Reagan won more approval from evangelicals for the “image of toughness” (111) he showed in the Cold War. Conservative white evangelicals also supported ending a freeze on nuclear armament.

During Reagan’s presidency, the Central American country of Nicaragua collapsed into a civil war between the left-wing Sandinistas and the US-supported Contras. Many conservative evangelicals supported the Contras because of their opposition to communism, while Catholics and left-wing evangelicals backed the Sandinistas, who were seen as combatting corruption and poverty. When Congress refused to allow the Reagan administration to give direct aid to the Contras, Reagan courted evangelical support to pressure Congress. A member of the Reagan administration, Colonel Oliver North, was accused of involvement in an arms sale to Iran by the Reagan administration to illegally provide the Contras with funds. Even though North was found guilty of several charges, including lying to Congress, he “became a hero of the Christian Right,” which saw North as breaking the law “in order to pursue a greater good” (117).

Even when Oliver North’s mainstream fame faded, he remained a hero among conservative evangelicals, and Jerry Falwell even compared him to Jesus. A Vietnam veteran, North accused the media of exaggerating reports of atrocities. After the war, he converted from Catholicism to evangelical Protestantism, possibly because the priest at the Catholic Church he attended supported nuclear disarmament. North drew in millions of dollars for evangelicals as a speaker. He “tapped a populist vein in American politics,” even though his critics “warned of his authoritarian tendencies, and of his disrespect for the truth” (124).

Du Mez argues that North’s appeal to conservative evangelicals can be explained by reference to pastor Edwin Louis Cole, who is considered the “‘father of the Christian men’s movement’” (124). Drawing on “prosperity gospel” (125), Cole asserted that following a tough, ruthless model of manhood would bring Christian men financial and professional success. In addition, he denounced what he saw as effeminate presentations of Jesus, arguing instead that Jesus was an ideal masculine figure.

In the 1980s, prominent evangelical preachers became wealthy as “televangelists.” However, sex scandals led to the downfall of several famous televangelists, including Marvin Gorman, Jim Bakker, and Jimmy Swaggart. These scandals undermined their conservative evangelical claims of superior morality and damaged their ability to raise funds. North’s popularity “helped evangelicals change the narrative and refill their coffers” (128). North represented how, since the Vietnam War, conservative evangelicals viewed the “military as a bulwark against the erosion of authority and as a holdout for traditional values amid a hostile, secularizing, and emasculating culture” (129). For this reason, General John A. Wickham, Jr., enlisted James Dobson to promote conservative evangelical morals to the military. In turn, conservative evangelicals further embraced militarism, reasoning that “Jesus might have instructed his followers to love their enemies, but not His enemies” (132). Even when the Cold War ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union, conservative evangelicals retained the idea of warfare as a “crusade.”

Donations to conservative evangelical leaders declined because of televangelist scandals and the security evangelicals felt with Ronald Reagan’s reelection in 1984. Tim LaHaye’s organization, American Coalition for Traditional Values, disbanded in 1986, and Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority ended in 1989. After Reagan’s second term ended in 1989, televangelist Pat Robertson tried to run for president. However, most leading conservative evangelists instead endorsed “establishment candidate” George H. W. Bush, even though, unlike Reagan, he did not meet the evangelical masculine ideal. Even so, Republicans attacked Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis by questioning his “patriotism and sabotaging his masculinity—and in their view the two were closely connected” (137). Bush defeated Dukakis in an electoral landslide.

In his reelection campaign in 1992, Bush was challenged in the Republican primary by Religious Right candidate Pat Buchanan, so Bush began to more openly appeal to conservative evangelicals. Although Bush won the primary, Buchanan’s challenge to Bush “did shift the Republican Party farther to the Right” (139). Despite Bush’s attempt to win evangelical support, Democratic candidate Bill Clinton won the 1992 presidential election.

Bill Clinton’s wife, Hillary Clinton, quickly became a controversial figure because of her outspoken feminism. She “triggered fear, resentment, and disdain among many conservative women, some of whom felt devalued by her very existence” (140). At the same time, donations to evangelicals increased since “the Religious Right had always thrived on a sense of embattlement” (140). Conservative evangelicals viewed attempts to again secure government funding for day care and efforts by the United Nations to promote children’s rights as attacks on the authority of parents. They also criticized Bill Clinton for allowing gay men in the military (even under the restriction that they could not be openly gay), letting women serve in the military on ships and planes, and sending US soldiers on United Nations peacekeeping missions, all of which conservative evangelicals saw as contributing to “‘feminization’” of the military.

In addition, conservative evangelicals attacked Bill Clinton over various sex scandals, especially the scandal surrounding his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. However, they were dismayed when the scandals “seemed to enhance his standing in the eyes of many Americans” (144). Nevertheless, evangelicals continued to criticize Bill Clinton for his sexual behavior, despite similar scandals on their own side. Dobson argued that women’s claims of domestic abuse should be viewed skeptically. Conservative evangelicals also defended right-wing Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas against allegations that he sexually harassed a woman named Anita Hill in a shared workplace. Similarly, conservative evangelicals saw the 1994 Violence Against Women Act and the 1995 World Conference on Women as attacks on patriarchal authority in the family and the nation.

Additionally, political talk radio in the 1990s benefited from the 1987 repeal of the Fairness Doctrine, which required radio broadcasters to give time to both sides of any controversial issue. Right-wing and bombastically masculine radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly attracted audiences of millions. During this time, Fox News was established as a right-wing television news network. Although these media outlets were not explicitly religious, they drew large conservative evangelical audiences.