Permanent link for Jesus and John Wayne: A Book Review and Look Into a Larger Dialogue, by Cecelia Olson, Kaufman Campus Intern on November 10, 2023

As part of my education here at Grand Valley students are required to take courses related to global issues and conversations. This led me, fittingly, to a classroom full of students dedicated to learning about the history of religion within the United States. Supporting our efforts of further research on religion that pertained to our personal interests our professor assigned a book review and research proposal. This is how Jesus and John Wayne by Kristin Kobes Du Mez entered my life.

For some background information, Kristin Kobes Du Mez is an American Historian having been published on multiple occasions and earning a place on New York Times BestSellers list. She is currently also a professor at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan teaching courses surrounding History and Gender Studies. Du Mez earned her PhD from the University of Notre Dame and her studies surround the intersection of gender, politics, and religion. While she has written numerous articles for various media companies like NPR and the New York Times, she has two book publications of her own authorship: A New Gospel for Women and Jesus and John Wayne.

The full title of this Evangelical American history book is: Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation. While I am personally a Christian, I find myself a minority in America as a traditional Orthodox Christian, therefore not falling under the umbrella of Evangelicalism like most Protestant traditions here in the nation. I say this to highlight how little I know about this version of Christianity that has dominated much of American history and identity, and as Du Mez showed me, has influenced American culture in deeper ways than I had ever thought.

There is not a particular progressive agenda with Jesus and John Wayne. Written around the time of the 2016 presidential election many people in the nation were puzzled and asking, “Where did all of these Trump Voters come from?” and Du Mez offers an answer. It is no surprise these voters were largely made up of politically
conservative Evangelical Christians, but how did this strong and unique identity even develop in the first place? Jesus and John Wayne works retrospectively to untangle the history of social and political movements of the past century that have created the present day “evangelical cult of masculinity” (301). Very broadly summarized, Du Mez unpacks how white Evangelicals in present American society are not only a distinct group, but a group not totally submitted to the theology and scripture of Christianity. She suggests they are rather people of a culture that promotes rugged individualism, patriarchal authority, militancy, as well as American nationalism and superiority, but didn’t want to give up the label of Christians.

Du Mez does not focus on anything specifically Interfaith within her work but she does thoroughly demonstrate the depth of relationship between religion and culture.
This is obviously not a new concept, the intertwinedness of religion and culture, but the general belief is that religion dictates culture. Jesus and John Wayne brings to our attention a group of people who have lived in the inverse, where a culture dominated and “corrupted” a religion.

Du Mez writes, “By the early twentieth century, Christians recognized that they had a masculinity problem. Unable to shake the sense that Christianity had a less than masculine feel, many blamed the faith itself, or at least the “feminization” of Victorian Christianity, which privileged gentility, restraint, and an emotive response to the gospel message”(15). The virtues that are the pillar of Chrsitan life, patience, love, peace, gentleness and so on, are not conducive to the American man or the image of American masculinity.

Jesus didn’t look, talk, or act like John Wyane. This rugged and militant American culture clashed with Christianity and the image of Christ was corrupted.

This reality Du Mez untangles, opens a dialogue to a much larger conversation of Christ in America. As an Eastern Orthodox Christian, the image of Jesus and Christianity I witness in Evangelicalism and Protestantism in general, is very different from the Christ I know. But oftentimes these are still images of Christ I can recognize because it is still the God of genuine love for thy neighbor and thy enemy.

Other times I see a weaponized version of “Christ”. Just the other day, on Grand Valley’s campus there was a group of preachers who called themselves Chrsitans but
shouted nothing but superiority, contention, exclusivity, condemnation, and hate towards others.

They didn’t look, talk, or act like the Jesus I know.

A friend of mine, who is one of the most devout Christians I have ever met and identifies under the non-denominational branch, came to me crying for the same
reason. This corruption of a faith, as Du Mez would say, did not simply corrupt evangelicalism but spread and weaponized the image of a much larger faith that is
Christianity.

It is worth noting that not all evangelicals or protestant Christians belong, subscribe, or agree with the Christianity De Mez highlights, but I am not alone in being
aware that the image of the true Christian God and the Jesus’ teachings, has been horribly distorted and made harmful to countless people. So we are left with a question that has no real answer: what do we do? How do Christians, interfaith leaders, Americans even go about trying to heal something that has been so fractured and corrupted?

I certainly don’t have an answer of how to heal this reality of a weaponized Jesus that dominates American culture. But the first step towards healing is to identify and accept that something is broken, distorted, or corrupted. Du Mez and her work Jesus and John Wayne analyzes and identifies this wound that is openly bleeding in the
American spiritual scene. The last line of Jesus and John Wayne reads, “What was once done might also be undone” (304).

With an informed and hopeful voice, Du Mez decided to speak up and open a very relevant and crucial dialogue about Christianity and its relationship with American culture. Perhaps this is the first step to the undoing.

Cecelia Olson

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