Popular books (like Doug Wilson’s novel “ Evangellyfish”) and movements (like Promise Keepers) emphasized the importance of husbands taking charge of the family, thereby relegating wives and mothers to submissive roles. This dichotomy was idealized and promoted both by influential men (like Bill Gothard and Mark Driscoll) and women (like Marabel Morgan and Phyllis Schlafly), whose writings were widely disseminated throughout evangelical circles.Ī significant dimension of evangelical culture is its embrace of militant masculinity, which links patriarchy to patriotism and celebrates men as warriors in the army of God.
The ideal of evangelical masculinity also figures prominently in the movement’s appeal to those longing for a simpler time when men were men (dominant) and women were women (submissive). She argues that evangelical family values are intertwined with racial politics by presenting evidence that race and patriarchy have been at the heart of its dogma from the beginning. Although she sometimes paints with too broad a brush, her exploration of evangelical evolution from the fundamentalist-modernist schism of the 1920s to the present delivers a strong justification for her thesis that Trump represented the fulfillment – not a betrayal – of white evangelical beliefs. By carefully connecting the dots across a century of shifting evangelical values, Kristin Kobes Du Mez provides a measured rationale for the subtitle: “How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation.” She further makes a compelling case that white Christian evangelicals fell into lockstep behind former president Donald Trump because he embodies “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.”ĭu Mez’ familiarity with evangelical faith and practice affords an insider’s perspective on the rise of the Christian right. “Jesus and John Wayne” presents a serious critique of white American evangelical culture.
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