Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation

“By the time Trump arrived proclaiming himself their savior, conservative white evangelicals had already traded a faith that privileges humility and elevates ‘the least of these’ for one that derides gentleness as the province of wusses. Rather than turning the other cheek, they’d resolved to defend their faith and their nation, secure in the knowledge that the ends justify the means. Having replaced the Jesus of the Gospels with a vengeful warrior Christ, it’s no wonder many came to think of Trump in the same way.”

One of the major examples throughout Jesus and John Wayne of The Emergence of Militant Masculinity and The Intersection of Faith, Politics, and National Identity is how Jesus became represented in conservative, evangelical media and sermons. It indicates wider beliefs inherent to conservative evangelical culture that helped bring Donald Trump to political prominence.

“Like [John] Wayne, the heroes who best embodied militant Christian masculinity were those unencumbered by traditional Christian virtues. In this way, militant masculinity linked religious and secular conservatism, helping to secure an alliance with profound political ramifications. For many evangelicals, these militant heroes would come to define not only Christian manhood but Christianity itself.”

Critics of conservative evangelical culture often see such attitudes as just the “hypocrisy of conservative Christians” (128). For Du Mez, they signify the emergence of militant masculinity within conservative evangelicalism.

“Through religious merchandising and with the help of celebrity pitchmen like [Billy] Sunday himself, they effectively replaced traditional denominational authorities with the authority of the market and the power of consumer choice.”

From the beginning of the history of conservative evangelicals in Jesus and John Wayne, modern marketing has been intertwined with conservative evangelicalism. The Development of an Evangelical Consumerist Culture later played a major role in developing evangelical support for Donald Trump.