Did Jesus Wear Spurs On His Cowboy Boots?

Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation

Maybe you’ve noticed a certain kind of man—mostly White, definitely American, and outspokenly Christian—has become widespread and visible. This man feels compelled to demonstrate masculine credentials, through displays of guns, worship of military and police, and showing dominion over women. This man proclaims Christian faith constantly, but demonstrates few of Paul’s “fruits of the spirit.” Maybe you noticed one such man got elected the 45th President of the United States.

Calvin University historian Kristen Kobes Du Mez begins her investigation of Christian masculinity at Dordt College, her undergraduate alma mater, where Donald Trump famously delivered his speech claiming he could shoot somebody on camera and not lose votes. A devoted Christian herself, she wondered at the appeal of somebody who claimed Christianity while showing so little familiarity with Christian virtues. So, like a serious scholar, Du Mez began investigating the question further.

Her discoveries begin in the late Victorian era, when establishment White Christianity prized decorum, and the industrial economy rendered many traditionally male skills obsolete. Feeling abandoned by church and economy, blue-collar men sought masculine identity through the most commonly available avenues: soldiering and sports. Evangelist (and former outfielder) Reverend Billy Sunday seized upon this unfilled want in American manhood, promising an athletic, muscular role for Christian men.

This masculine identity took root most, however, under Sunday’s indirect heir, Billy Graham. Graham’s tent revivals didn’t just offer Americans salvation; they offered armaments to fight a pervasive, global enemy. As prior scholars have noted, Graham’s movement coincided with the Cold War, and he demonized global Communism as surely as Christ demonized Satan. Graham was arguably progressive on racial issues, but his mission explicitly baptized America to save humanity.

With Graham, the fundamentals were established; but Du Mez follows Graham’s successors through seventy years of cultural trends. The specific expressions of male Christian militancy change, certainly. As global Communism wanes, for instance, hypermasculine Christians muster a chain of enemies: feminists, Muslims, homosexuals, the Democratic Party. Unsurprisingly, though Christian masculinity constantly protests its spiritual credentials, its manifestation is explicitly secular and partisan.

Kristin Kobes Du Mez

Du Mez follows not only the leaders and their ministries (or, in some cases, “ministries”), but also their symbols. These authoritarian male leaders manage to uncover a succession of metaphors for men to admire, especially cowboys, police, and soldiers. They also make emblems of actors who play these rugged, macho roles, particularly John Wayne, Ronald Reagan, and Mel Gibson, though none of them actually roped cattle or served in combat.

Over the generations, this subset of Christainity becomes ingrown and extreme, as movements often do. As explicitly male, the movement’s figureheads become terrified of being mistaken, even momentarily, for women; therefore anything that could be perceived as even tangentially feminine gets dropped. Paradoxically, the more assertively male this movement becomes, the smaller the masculine domain its followers are allowed to occupy. The trend is familiar, but no less noteworthy.

Similarly, as the movement becomes more authoritarian, more unwilling to brook challenges to the (male, White) figurehead, the more vulnerable the movement becomes to top-level abuse. The two most aggressively masculine Presidencies of my lifetime have corresponded with massive shake-ups in hypermasculine Christian ministry: the televangelist die-off during the Reagan years, and widespread revelations of ministerial abuse and cover-ups during the Trump administration.

Despite her emphasis on conservative, White, male Christian ministries, Du Mez does dedicate space to the more progressive Christian counterforce. Reverend Jim Wallis, for instance, gets some mention. The BIPOC Christian opposition also gets some space too. But Du Mez isn’t really interested in the byplay of Left and Right, White and non-White; she really only discusses these counterforces when they push hypermasculine Christians into giving some kind of response.

Unfortunately, Du Mez doesn’t accomplish all her title implies. Her secondary title pledges “How White Evangelicals Corrupted Etc.,” but the “how” doesn’t come up much. A scholarly historian, Du Mez appears reluctant to indulge in speculation or interpretation, mostly limiting herself to textual evidence. She pledges to explain how White Evangelical Christians drifted so far from their Biblical origins, but ultimately, she doesn’t much explain, primarily just describes.

Nevertheless, she provides attentive readers with the tools and information necessary to formulate our own explanations. Her work overlaps with recent religious historians, like Kevin M. Kruse or Obery Hendricks, but provides a specifically gendered interpretation of recent Christian history. The narrative duMex describes is nuanced, and often dark. But by putting the message in its historical context, she offers hope that engaged Christians can challenge the trend and present a coordinated counternarrative to the world.