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

Abstract

Four weeks before the 2016 election, I was watching television with my daughter when Donald J. Trump's notorious Access Hollywood tape surfaced. His remarks were repulsive, I told her, but they would also assure his defeat: evangelical Christians, a critical part of his base, would never vote for a man who bragged about sexually assaulting women. I was wrong, of course. But so were the postelection analyses, which derided Trump's loyal evangelical supporters for placing power above principle. As Kristin Kobes Du Mez demonstrates, Trump's aggressive brand of masculinity has been central to evangelical culture since the 1950s. Lionizing film heroes such as the thrice-married John Wayne and the twice-wed Ronald Reagan, white evangelicals reinterpreted Christianity as a “warrior” faith that embodied physical strength more than moral rectitude. Indeed, pastors such as Mark Driscoll routinely mocked mainstream forms of Christian worship as “pussified” and unmanly. From that perspective, Trump's boasts...