You Tube Theology

Kristin Kobes Du Mez's “Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation” is a sweeping account of the last seventy-five years of white evangelicalism, showing how American evangelicals have worked for decades to replace the Jesus of the Gospels with an idol of rugged masculinity and Christian nationalism, or in the words of one modern chaplain, with a “spiritual badass.” As Du Mez, Professor of History at Calvin University, explains, understanding this transformation requires us to examine the role of culture and commerce in modern American evangelicalism. The forty-fifth president is hardly the first flashy celebrity to capture evangelicals’ hearts and minds, nor is he the first strongman to promise evangelicals protection and power.