The author of Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation, Kristin Kobes Du Mez is a historian. She is a native of the town of Sioux Center in northwest Iowa, where she also attended Dordt College (now Dordt University), an evangelical Christian university, as an undergraduate. She received a BA in history and Germany and then earned a MA and a PhD in history from the University of Notre Dame. Currently, she is a professor of History at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and a Research Fellow at the University of Notre Dame’s Center for Philosophy of Religion. She specializes in the recent history of women, religion, and political movements in the US. Her other publication is A Gospel for Women: Katharine Bushnell and the Challenge of Christian Feminism, a biography of female doctor, Christian theologian, and social activist Katharine Bushnell published in 2015. Also, she has written articles on religion and politics for the BBC, Religion News Service, and the New York Times, among other outfits.

Du Mez has been outspoken about the influence that conservative evangelical culture has had over US politics, arguing that this influence has been detrimental to American democracy in general. In fact, Du Mez views sexual abuse scandals in right-wing evangelical spaces, threats to democracy, patriarchy, and Christian nationalism as interconnected developments. In an interview published in Sojourners, Du Mez stated:

It is […] a profound problem inside evangelical spaces and linked to this Christian nationalist vision, which ups the stakes for everything [in their minds]. If Christianity is “under attack,” if Christians are “under siege,” if the ends will always justify the means, then you have to [protect] that bond aggressively. You have to defeat them before they defeat you” (Atencio, Mitchell. “Kristin Kobes Du Mez: Christian Patriarchy and Christian Nationalism Are Intertwined.” Sojourners, 29 Oct. 2024).

As Du Mez suggests throughout Jesus and John Wayne, if a group is motivated by a need to protect the nation and the proper roles of the family from outside threats, then any criticism or attempt to reform the group will be perceived as an existential threat, no matter how valid or grounded the critique is.