In order to build out her thesis, Professor Du Mez walks her readers through a series of developments within the evangelical sub-culture which she believes pointed directly towards its uncritical embrace of Trump. Starting with the admiration of such masculine luminaries as Teddy Roosevelt, Douglas MacArthur and especially John Wayne, the evangelical sub-culture created an ethos which over time made it not only susceptible to the sexist and vicious ramblings of someone like Trump but all too eager to embrace him as ‘one of their own’. For Du Mez, Trump wasn’t an outlier or ‘one-off’ for evangelicalism he was, instead, an unsurprising manifestation of all that has been wrong with the movement since the early twentieth century. For Du Mez, Trump was simply the culmination of a decades long evangelical emphasis on hyped up masculinity rooted in patriarchal views of marriage, family and society combined with a militant mindset. In her engaging and provocative new book, Jesus and John Wayne, Kristin Kobes Du Mez provides what she believes is the answer to that question. Given that Trump was the opposite of Carter in personal morality, biblical knowledge, and public demeanor, it begged the question of how those who said they worshipped Jesus of Nazareth could not only vote for such an individual but also lend him their verbal, financial and political backing.
Forty years hence evangelicals became front page news and dominated interactions on social media for their support of Donald Trump as the Republican Party’s candidate for the presidency. But Carter’s Christian commitment, defined as ‘evangelical’, aroused curiosity and brought the movement to the attention of America’s cultural gatekeepers.
Prior to this, few people in the upper echelons of government, education or media knew what an evangelical was, let alone what they believed or stood for. The impetus behind this media splash was the nomination of Jimmy Carter – a Southern Baptist Sunday School teacher, peanut farmer, and governor of Georgia – as the Democratic Party’s candidate for President. In the fall of 1976 Newsweek magazine ran a cover story titled ‘The Year of the Evangelical’. New York, NY: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2020. Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation.
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