Kristin Kobes Du Mez

Summary: A historical study of how the ideal of rugged masculinity typified by John Wayne influenced the evangelical embrace of authority, gender roles, and conservative, nationalist politics.

This is one of the most intensely discussed books in religious publishing over the past year. Kristen Kobes Du Mez, a Calvin University historian, offers a carefully documented account of the development of authoritarian, patriarchal and “muscular” models of masculinity have invaded evangelical show more religious subculture and played a vital role in evangelical political engagement.

Her title is drawn from “Jesus and John Wayne,” a 1980’s Christian hit of the Gaither Vocal Band. She traces how Wayne’s muscular and sometimes violent form of masculinity supplanted a the Jesus of the gospels as the evangelical model of masculinity. She traces the fascination with the square-jawed, passionate Billy Graham and the youth leader become family guru Bill Gothard as early figures in this trend, teachers like James Dobson and Tim LaHaye, media figures as diverse as Mel Gibson and Duck Dynasty, and military figures like Oliver North.

This is a movement not only about masculinity but patriarchal gender roles, supported oddly enough by women like Elizabeth Eliot, Phyllis Schlafly, and Marabel Morgan (remember The Total Woman?). Kobes Du Mez traces the influence of the Promise Keepers movement, John Eldredge’s books, Pastor Douglas Wilson, Mark Driscoll, and John Piper in upholding militant masculinity and male control of families. More troubling yet are the connections between this culture, purity teaching, and sexual abuse.

The book also traces the exploitation of this vision of masculinity by the conservative movement from the presidencies of Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump. The author challenges the argument advanced by some that only “unchurched” embrace these values. She shows studies that demonstrate high numbers of the most faithful have been equally supportive. She argues that Trump’s rough masculinity appealed to a culture schooled for seventy years on “John Wayne” models of masculinity and helped explain their willingness to overlook his moral flaws and failings.

This is a deeply troubling account, especially since I’ve witnessed the damage of women abused and not protected by the church, and the thwarting of the gifts of women eager to use them to follow Christ. This is an important but uncomfortable book for men in church leadership to read and wrestle with. Many of us have been troubled by the political allegiance of large swaths of evangelicalism with one political party. What this book connected for me is the connection between these allegiances and flawed masculine and gender role ideals. I also found troubling the complicity of much of the Christian bookselling industry in promoting these views.

If I would have any objection, it is that the narrative does not offer counter-examples, including the Christian institution at which the author holds tenure. We hear of the Council of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood but there is no mention of the Council of Biblical Equality. We hear of scholars like Wayne Grudem and John Piper but not of Craig Keener and Aida Besancon Spencer and many others supportive of equal partnership between men and women in marriage and ministry. Nor do we hear of egalitarian churches and ministries, except a passing reference to Beth Moore. Although these movements have not achieved the political influence nor the rank and file embrace of many evangelicals, they offer a counter-narrative that may point the way forward. Many of these operate in what Ross Douthat calls “the evangelical penumbra” and may be increasingly uncomfortable with the identifier “evangelical” for reasons this book makes abundantly clear.

The challenge these groups face, underscored by this book, is to articulate a compelling vision for men and women following Christ, of Christian character and the fruit of the Spirit, lived out in both marriage and ministry partnerships, committed to pursuing the missio dei rather than political influence. Neither the culture of the 1950’s or the 2020’s can help us. Only the real Jesus of the Gospels. show less

I didn’t read this book expecting revelation. By 2020, most of us watching American evangelicalism closely had already seen what Kristin Kobes Du Mez documented so thoroughly: a movement that traded spiritual substance for cultural dominance. Her core thesis—that white evangelicalism reshaped Jesus into a warrior figure and sanctified power as virtue—wasn’t shocking.

What was shocking was how little resistance that thesis met.

Five years later, the reason is obvious. She wasn’t show more issuing a warning—she was transcribing what had already become doctrine.

The Myth Becomes the Message

The transformation she charts—of Christ into conqueror, and faith into grievance—didn’t just shape sermons. It shaped institutions, elections, and foreign policy. Today, that same ideology underwrites Christian nationalism: a civil religion in which masculinity, militarism, and moral panic stand in for theology. What was once fringe rhetoric is now Republican campaign language.

Her central claim is clear: evangelicalism didn’t lose its way. It followed its incentives. Churches, publishers, and men’s ministries didn’t simply believe in the warrior Christ—they marketed him. Outrage became the fuel. Identity, the product.

And institutions that depend on grievance don’t reform. They replicate.

Key Points

• Obedience is not strength. Real strength requires independent judgment, not submission to doctrine or authority.


• Grievance is scalable. Cultural outrage is easy to market and hard to reform—it corrodes integrity as it builds identity.


• Power without principle corrupts. When domination becomes virtue, institutions become instruments of fear, not guardians of purpose.


• Moral reform begins with agency. Systems don’t regain integrity until individuals reclaim the responsibility to think and choose.


• Faith demands integrity. Without the courage to confront contradiction, belief becomes spectacle—ritual without substance.

The Ethical Vacuum

Du Mez maps the evangelical cultural machine with precision—but stops short of offering a path forward. That’s not a flaw. It’s simply the limit of the work she set out to do.

But for anyone serious about reform, the implications are unavoidable: if you teach people that obedience is strength and certainty is virtue, don’t be surprised when they abandon reflection for force.

What this moment demands is not a better narrative, but a better ethic. One that grounds moral strength in disciplined judgment. One that sees integrity not as loyalty to tribe, but as fidelity to truth.

Lessons for Today

• Don’t confuse branding with belief. Du Mez shows how evangelicalism often chose optics over orthodoxy. Today’s ideological movements—religious or secular—must be judged by the ideas they live, not the symbols they wear.


• Examine the incentives. Institutions don’t drift into dysfunction. They are built around what they reward. Reform requires more than values—it requires structural realignment.


• Guard against the decentralization of dogma. When ideology spreads through networks of influencers, accountability disappears. Platforms are not a substitute for principles.


• Challenge emotional certainty. Movements that prioritize identity over inquiry make reflection dangerous. The antidote is reason, not reaction.


• Strengthen by confronting fear. Leadership built on fear breeds fragility. Whether in pulpits, politics, or platforms, resilience begins with the courage to say: we were wrong.

Final Assessment

Jesus and John Wayne is not just a cultural history—it’s a moral autopsy. Du Mez reveals how a movement obsessed with control lost command of its own character. The book is persuasive, unflinching, and urgently relevant.

But the work it begins isn’t enough. What’s needed now is not a gentler faith or a better myth—but a stronger ethic. One rooted in autonomy, rational judgment, and the courage to live without illusion.

If Christianity wants to remain credible in public life, it has to get its house in order. The loudest voices—evangelical or otherwise—are giving the faith a reputation it may not recover from. It’s not persecution that threatens the Church’s future. It’s the conduct of those claiming to defend it.

This book tells us how we got here. The next step is choosing who we intend to become. show less

Ouch. I got sucked into some of this type of Christianity myself in the 1990s/early 2000s, even working for a book wholesaler that sold some of the books that Kristin Kobes du Mez mentions. There was a lot of very familiar stuff here. I am very angry and ashamed that we Christians have done so much harm in Jesus’ name. Definitely a book worth reading for anyone involved in (or interested in) white, English-speaking Christianity over the last thirty years or so.

An excellent history of American fundamentalist Christianity. It explains how the toxic masculinity of the political right is not an aberration, but a feature of modern evangelical Christianity. To paraphrase James Carville "It's the patriarchy, stupid!"