Reviews of jesus and john wayne
The popularity of people like Mark Driscoll or the ideas espoused in John Eldredge’s Wild at Heart, which has sold more than 4 million copies, suggested that this movement wasn’t all that marginal, but as a Christian myself, I questioned whether it was a good idea to be shining a bright light on the darkest underbelly of American Christianity. And because what I was encountering seemed really extreme, I wasn’t sure if what I was looking at was just a fringe movement. To be honest, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to spend years of my life immersed in that world.
I was finishing up my first book at the time, and I ended up having three kids in rather quick succession, but I also found the crass, misogynistic, and militaristic teachings of respectable Christian leaders disturbing. Kristin Kobes Du Mez (KDM): I first began exploring the topic of white evangelical masculinity and militarism more than fifteen years ago, but after a year or so I set the project aside. Could you tell us a little about your personal experience finishing Jesus and John Wayne? But you’ve also noted that your early findings were “disturbing” and “depressing.” 2 Those are highly personal terms. The Other Journal ( TOJ): You have said in past interviews that you were hesitant to work on this book because you believed it might be a fringe project. 1 In this interview with The Other Journal, Du Mez reflects on the role of pop culture and political strife in evangelicalism, the reactions she has received to her book since its publication, and her future projects. Du Mez shows how men of Trump’s ilk have enraptured evangelicals through promises of political influence since the mid-twentieth century. And in Donald Trump, she says they found one who fulfills those values. Kristin Kobes Du Mez, a professor of history at Calvin University, argues in in her latest book, Jesus and John Wayne,that white evangelicals have replaced Jesus with rugged individualists and nationalist icons of politics and popular culture.