At the very least, evangelicals should recognize that putting immense unchecked power (or power that is checked only by a hand-picked group of yes-men) into the hands of any one pastor is exceptionally dangerous. 275) were entangled in various scandals and were ousted from their positions.

In Chapter 16, Du Mez documents scandal after scandal among conservative evangelical leaders, especially those who were at the time vocally fighting the “culture war.” Rape, adultery, pedophilia and, perhaps even more troubling, consistent denials or cover-ups are horrific in any institution, but how much more among people who claim to be serving God? Other rockstar pastors of the evangelical world like Mark Driscoll, Darrin Patrick, and James McDonald who had “all risen to prominence through their aggressive promotion of patriarchal power” (p. The rise of the #MeToo and #ChurchToo movements also caused Christians to ask hard questions about sexual abuse within the church. 3).īut Trump’s election alone doesn’t explain the book’s popularity.

Many evangelicals were asking exactly the same question: “How could evangelicals who’d turned ‘WWJD’ (‘What Would Jesus Do?’) into a national phenomenon justify their support for a man who seemed the very antithesis of the savior they claimed to emulate” (p. In the aftermath of the 2016 election, sociologists and political scientists tried to understand how Trump became president with overwhelming evangelical support. The relevance of the book is perhaps best understood by working backwards chronologically.

Because this review will be net negative, I’d like to begin with the positive aspects of the book, those which make it so compelling to so many people, including a large swath of conservative evangelicals. Her conclusion is that “evangelical support for Trump the culmination of evangelicals’ embrace of militant masculinity, an ideology that enshrines patriarchal authority and condones the callous display of power, at home and abroad” (p. 4) among evangelicals in the 20th and early 21st centuries. As a historian, Du Mez charts the rise of “militant white masculinity” (p. It was featured on NPR’s Morning Edition and received social media recommendations from Beth Moore, Jemar Tisby, Karen Swallow Prior, and Duke Kwon. Kristin Du Mez’s Jesus and John Waynehas struck a chord with both Christians and non-Christians.

Jesus and john wayne criticism