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

by Kristin Kobes Du Mez Description Jesus and John Wayne is a sweeping history of the last 75 years of white evangelicalism, revealing how evangelicals have worked 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 acclaimed scholar Kristin Du Mez explains, the key to understanding this transformation is to recognize the centrality of popular culture in contemporary American evangelicalism. Many of today's evangelicals might not be theologically astute, but they know their VeggieTales, they've read John Eldredge's Wild at Heart, and they learned about purity before they learned about sex--and they have a silver ring to prove it. Evangelical books, films, music, clothing, and merchandise shape the beliefs of millions. And evangelical culture is teeming with muscular heroes--mythical warriors and rugged soldiers, men like Oliver North, Ronald Reagan, Mel Gibson, and