This attempted fusion of the peasant-philosopher Jesus of Nazareth with a popular cowboy icon both names and characterizes what Du Mez describes as “the evangelical cult of masculinity” and its accompanying patterns of misogyny and abuse. The title Jesus and John Wayne comes from a song of the same name from the Gaither Vocal Band. Du Mez offers a granular take on her subject by isolating and analyzing an observable phenomenon in American life which, upon processing her study, readers are likely to see everywhere: “militantly patriarchal expressions” of a toxic faith which is, in turn, toxically political. Kristin Kobes Du Mez tells in Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation.ĭu Mez, a professor of history at Calvin University, casts a critical eye upon a culture she knows well - the demographic group labeled “evangelicals” in polls and election cycles and its strange but alarmingly decisive bearing within local, state, and federal governments in the United States. “Crushing truths perish by being acknowledged.” This hopeful aphorism from Albert Camus is one avenue for approaching the breathtakingly thorough and eye-rubbingly sad story Dr.
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