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

In April 2016 at Dordt College, a small Christian college in Iowa, then-presidential candidate Donald Trump gave a speech. He was informally endorsed by a Baptist minister, Rev. Robert Jeffress, since church leaders in the US are not allowed to explicitly endorse political candidates. Du Mez reflects on her own experience of Dordt College and the local community: On seeing people she grew up with among Trump’s evangelical Christian supporters, she remarks that she “didn’t recognize them” (2).

Trump’s record of divorce and sexual assault allegations seems to contrast the family values focus of Christian evangelicals. Du Mez explains this as the “culmination of evangelicals’ embrace of militant masculinity, an ideology that enshrines patriarchal authority and condones the callous display of power, at home and abroad” (3). She describes the politics of conservative evangelical Christians as being defined by authoritarianism, pro-aggressive foreign policy, pro-torture, pro-death penalty, pro-gun ownership, and nationalist opinions; an opposition to immigration and gay rights; support for traditional gender and family roles; and an animosity toward Muslims. Also, a divide exists between white evangelical Christians and Black Christians in the US, with white evangelicals being skeptical of Black Americans’ claims of police abuse and Black Christians criticizing evangelical culture in the US of having a “problem of whiteness” (6).

Originally, evangelical Christianity did not have a fixed political element. A traditional definition of evangelism is that it holds the Bible and Jesus Christ’s crucifixion as central to its religious belief and the idea of a “born-again conversion experience” (5). Although the theology of evangelical Christianity can accommodate people of diverse political views, in the modern US it has become dominated by specific political beliefs and pop culture consumerism. This domination exists to such an extent, Du Mez writes, that “one can participate in this religious culture without attending church at all” (8). Although churches, pastors, theologians, and religious colleges remain prevalent forces in evangelical Christianity, an “evangelical popular culture” (8) with political, social, and cultural beliefs exists that even religious leaders cannot truly defy. This culture is deeply shaped by models of American masculinity, such as President Teddy Roosevelt and actor John Wayne. Even though John Wayne was not an evangelical Christian in life, he came to symbolize traditional gender roles and a “nostalgic yearning” (20) for an imagined past of white patriarchy and the US as a Christian nation.

Du Mez argues that conservative Christian evangelical culture has roots in the evangelical Christianity of the southern US and the “masculine Christianity” trend of the early 20th century. The civil rights, feminist, gay rights, and Vietnam War protest movements of the 1960s inspired a political backlash that valorized traditional values and sought a “reassertion of white patriarchy” (12). White evangelicals were initially motivated by an opposition to communism. After the end of the Cold War and the September 11 attacks, evangelism was “fueled by fraudulent tales of the Islamic threat” (23).

The election of Barack Obama as president in 2008 reawakened evangelical anxieties that they were losing a “culture war” against numerous enemies, including feminists, Muslims, liberals, and the gay community. To combat these enemies, evangelicals wanted a “strong man […] who embodied a God-given, testosterone-driven masculinity” (13). Evangelicals believed they found such a figure in Donald Trump and his presidential candidacy. Nonetheless, Christianity also had a tradition that “disrupted the status quo and challenged systems of authority” (14). For Du Mez, this means that the militantly masculine view of evangelical Christianity was not “inevitable.”