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

Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation PDF Author: Kristin Kobes Du Mez
Publisher: Liveright Publishing
ISBN: 1631495747
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The “paradigm-influencing” book (Christianity Today) that is fundamentally transforming our understanding of white evangelicalism in America. Jesus and John Wayne is a sweeping, revisionist history of the last seventy-five 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 the Duck Dynasty clan, who assert white masculine power in defense of “Christian America.” Chief among these evangelical legends is John Wayne, an icon of a lost time when men were uncowed by political correctness, unafraid to tell it like it was, and did what needed to be done. Challenging the commonly held assumption that the “moral majority” backed Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020 for purely pragmatic reasons, Du Mez reveals that Trump in fact represented the fulfillment, rather than the betrayal, of white evangelicals’ most deeply held values: patriarchy, authoritarian rule, aggressive foreign policy, fear of Islam, ambivalence toward #MeToo, and opposition to Black Lives Matter and the LGBTQ community. A much-needed reexamination of perhaps the most influential subculture in this country, Jesus and John Wayne shows that, far from adhering to biblical principles, modern white evangelicals have remade their faith, with enduring consequences for all Americans.

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

Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation PDF Author: Kristin Kobes Du Mez
Publisher: Liveright Publishing
ISBN: 1631495747
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 384

Get Book Here

Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The “paradigm-influencing” book (Christianity Today) that is fundamentally transforming our understanding of white evangelicalism in America. Jesus and John Wayne is a sweeping, revisionist history of the last seventy-five 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 the Duck Dynasty clan, who assert white masculine power in defense of “Christian America.” Chief among these evangelical legends is John Wayne, an icon of a lost time when men were uncowed by political correctness, unafraid to tell it like it was, and did what needed to be done. Challenging the commonly held assumption that the “moral majority” backed Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020 for purely pragmatic reasons, Du Mez reveals that Trump in fact represented the fulfillment, rather than the betrayal, of white evangelicals’ most deeply held values: patriarchy, authoritarian rule, aggressive foreign policy, fear of Islam, ambivalence toward #MeToo, and opposition to Black Lives Matter and the LGBTQ community. A much-needed reexamination of perhaps the most influential subculture in this country, Jesus and John Wayne shows that, far from adhering to biblical principles, modern white evangelicals have remade their faith, with enduring consequences for all Americans.

A New Gospel for Women

A New Gospel for Women PDF Author: Kristin Kobes Du Mez
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0190205644
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
A work of history, biography, and historical theology, A New Gospel for Women tells the remarkable story of Katharine Bushnell (1855-1946), an internationally-known social reformer and author of God's Word to Women, a startling reinterpretation of the Christian Scriptures that even today stands as one of the most innovative and comprehensive feminist theologies ever written.

He Saw That It Was Good

He Saw That It Was Good PDF Author: Sho Baraka
Publisher: WaterBrook
ISBN: 0593193040
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
A deep exploration of the intersection of faith, creativity, and justice from acclaimed hip-hop artist and creative polymath Sho Baraka “Sho has the courage to say what many are thinking and the candor to say what many are not. His words have positively influenced me for years—now this book gives the world that influence.”—Lecrae You were created to help bring truth and beauty into this broken world. God made you with an imagination and a yearning for justice. No matter your calling or vocation, you can help shape a better world around you through your creativity. But that doesn’t mean it will be easy. We are surrounded by toxic stories and bad cultural thinking. We’re held back by incomplete theology. But does it have to be like that? Is frustration the end of the story? In the face of confusion and injustice, we can lose sight of our true narrative—the one that started in a garden and wants to make our real lives better today. In He Saw That It Was Good, activist and recording artist Sho Baraka wrestles deeply and honestly with these questions, gives you permission to do the same, and shows a hard-earned path to creative change. With Sho, you’ll engage with art, justice, and history. Learn from the powerful principles of historic movements, explore why it’s important to cultivate your creative calling (no matter what you do!), and discover a fresh look at how the gospel can transform how you see God, your neighbor, your work, and your world. You’ll return to your biggest and truest story. Your life (and your world) need never be the same.

Taking America Back for God

Taking America Back for God PDF Author: Andrew L. Whitehead
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190057882
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
Why do white Protestants in America embrace a president who seems to violate their basic standards of morality? The answer, Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry argue, is "Christian nationalism," the belief that the United States is -- and should be -- a Christian nation. Knowing someone's stance on Christian nationalism, this book shows, tells us more about his or her political beliefs than race, religion, or political party. Drawing on national survey data and interviews with Americans across the political spectrum, Taking America Back for God illustrates the tremendous influence of Christian nationalism on debates about the most contentious issues dominating American public life.

White Evangelical Racism, Second Edition

White Evangelical Racism, Second Edition PDF Author: Anthea Butler
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469681536
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 182

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Book Description
The American political scene today is poisonously divided, and the vast majority of white evangelicals play a strikingly unified, powerful role in the disunion. In this clear-eyed, hard-hitting chronicle of American religion and politics, Anthea Butler argues that racism is at the core of conservative evangelical activism and power. Propelled by the benefits of whiteness, white evangelicals used scripture to defend slavery and nurture the Confederacy during the Civil War era. During Reconstruction, they used it to deny the vote to newly emancipated blacks. In the twentieth century, they sided with segregationists in avidly opposing movements for racial equality and civil rights. White evangelicals today, cloaked in a vision of Christian patriarchy and nationhood, form a staunch voting bloc in support of white leadership. Evangelicalism's racial history festers, splits America, and needs a reckoning now. In a new preface to the second edition, Butler takes stock of how the trends she identified have expanded as Donald Trump mounts a third campaign for the presidency, evangelicals celebrate and respond to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and ferocious backlash against racial equity has injected new venom into evangelicalism's role in American politics.

The Myth of Colorblind Christians

The Myth of Colorblind Christians PDF Author: Jesse Curtis
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479809381
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
Reveals how Christian colorblindness expanded white evangelicalism and excluded Black evangelicals In the decades after the civil rights movement, white Americans turned to an ideology of colorblindness. Personal kindness, not systemic reform, seemed to be the way to solve racial problems. In those same decades, a religious movement known as evangelicalism captured the nation’s attention and became a powerful political force. In The Myth of Colorblind Christians, Jesse Curtis shows how white evangelicals’ efforts to grow their own institutions created an evangelical form of whiteness, infusing the politics of colorblindness with sacred fervor. Curtis argues that white evangelicals deployed a Christian brand of colorblindness to protect new investments in whiteness. While black evangelicals used the rhetoric of Christian unity to challenge racism, white evangelicals repurposed this language to silence their black counterparts and retain power, arguing that all were equal in Christ and that Christians should not talk about race. As white evangelicals portrayed movements for racial justice as threats to Christian unity and presented their own racial commitments as fidelity to the gospel, they made Christian colorblindness into a key pillar of America’s religio-racial hierarchy. In the process, they anchored their own identities and shaped the very meaning of whiteness in American society. At once compelling and timely, The Myth of Colorblind Christians exposes how white evangelical communities avoided antiracist action and continue to thrive today.

Jesus and John Wayne

Jesus and John Wayne PDF Author: Kristin Kobes Du Mez
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 163149905X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The “paradigm-influencing” book (Christianity Today) that is fundamentally transforming our understanding of white evangelicalism in America. Jesus and John Wayne is a sweeping, revisionist history of the last seventy-five 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 the Duck Dynasty clan, who assert white masculine power in defense of “Christian America.” Chief among these evangelical legends is John Wayne, an icon of a lost time when men were uncowed by political correctness, unafraid to tell it like it was, and did what needed to be done. Challenging the commonly held assumption that the “moral majority” backed Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020 for purely pragmatic reasons, Du Mez reveals that Trump in fact represented the fulfillment, rather than the betrayal, of white evangelicals’ most deeply held values: patriarchy, authoritarian rule, aggressive foreign policy, fear of Islam, ambivalence toward #MeToo, and opposition to Black Lives Matter and the LGBTQ community. A much-needed reexamination of perhaps the most influential subculture in this country, Jesus and John Wayne shows that, far from adhering to biblical principles, modern white evangelicals have remade their faith, with enduring consequences for all Americans.

Christians Against Christianity

Christians Against Christianity PDF Author: Obery M. Hendricks, Jr.
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 0807057401
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
A timely and galvanizing work that examines how right-wing evangelical Christians have veered from an admirable faith to a pernicious, destructive ideology. Today’s right-wing Evangelical Christianity stands as the very antithesis of the message of Jesus Christ. In his new book, Christians Against Christianity, best-selling author and religious scholar Obery M. Hendricks Jr. challenges right-wing evangelicals on the terrain of their own religious claims, exposing the falsehoods, contradictions, and misuses of the Bible that are embedded in their rabid homophobia, their poorly veiled racism and demonizing of immigrants and Muslims, and their ungodly alliance with big business against the interests of American workers. He scathingly indicts the religious leaders who helped facilitate the rise of the notoriously unchristian Donald Trump, likening them to the “court jesters” and hypocritical priestly sycophants of bygone eras who unquestioningly supported their sovereigns’ every act, no matter how hateful or destructive to those they were supposed to serve. In the wake of the deadly insurrectionist attack on the US Capitol, Christians Against Christianity is a clarion call to stand up to the hypocrisy of the evangelical Right, as well as a guide for Christians to return their faith to the life-affirming message that Jesus brought and died for. What Hendricks offers is a provocative diagnosis, an urgent warning that right-wing evangelicals’ aspirations for Christian nationalist supremacy are a looming threat, not only to Christian decency but to democracy itself. What they offer to America is anything but good news.

Mother of Modern Evangelicalism

Mother of Modern Evangelicalism PDF Author: Arlin C. Migliazzo
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN: 1467459941
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 465

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Book Description
Although she was never as prominent as Billy Graham or many of the other iconic male evangelists of the twentieth century, Henrietta Mears was arguably the single most influential woman in the shaping of modern evangelicalism. Her seminal work What the Bible Is All About sold millions of copies, and key figures in the early modern evangelical movement like Bill Bright, Harold John Ockenga, and Jim Rayburn frequently cited her teachings as a formative part of their ministry. Graham himself stated that Mears was the most important female influence in his life other than his mother or wife. Mother of Modern Evangelicalism is the first comprehensive biography of Henrietta Mears. Arlin Migliazzo uses previously overlooked archival sources and dozens of interviews with Mears associates to assemble a detailed portrait of her life and legacy, including the way she helped steer conservative theology between fundamentalism and liberal modernism with her relentless focus on the Christian life as an act of consecrated service. Readers will find here a religious leader worthy of emulation in today’s world—one who sought an alternative to the divisive polemics of her own day, staying fiercely committed to the faith while fighting against the anti-intellectualism and cultural parochialism that had characterized the fundamentalist movement of the early twentieth century. While she never technically delivered a Sunday morning message from the pulpit and refused to be called a preacher, Henrietta Mears’s life stands here as a sermon about graceful leadership and faithful engagement with the world.

Recovering from Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: How the Church Needs to Rediscover Her Purpose

Recovering from Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: How the Church Needs to Rediscover Her Purpose PDF Author: Aimee Byrd
Publisher: Zondervan
ISBN: 0310108721
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
This book dismantles every mistruth that you've heard about the role of women in the Bible, her place in the church, and the patriarchal lie of so-called “biblical manhood and womanhood.” In its place, Aimee Byrd details a truly biblical vision of women as equal partners in Christ's church and kingdom. The church is the school of Christ, commissioned to discipleship. The responsibility of every believer—men and women together—is being active and equal participants in and witnesses to the faith. And yet many women are trying to figure out what their place is in the church, fighting to have their voices heard and filled with questions: Do men and women benefit equally from God's word? Are we equally responsible in sharpening one another in the faith and passing it down to the next generation? Do we really need men's Bibles and women's Bibles, or can the one Holy Bible guide us all? The answers lie neither with radical feminists, who claim that the Bible is hopelessly patriarchal, nor with the defenders of “biblical manhood,” whose understanding of Scripture is captive to the culture they claim to distance themselves from. Recovering from Biblical Manhood and Womanhood presents a more biblical account of gender, marriage, and ministry. It explores the feminine voice in Scripture as synergistic with the dominant male voice. It fortifies churches in a biblical understanding of brotherhood and sisterhood in God's household and the necessity of learning from one another in studying God's word. Until both men and women grow in their understanding of their relationship to Scripture, there will continue to be tension between the sexes in the church. Church leaders can be engaged in thoughtful critique of the biblical manhood and womanhood movement, the effects it has on their congregation, and the homage it ironically pays to the culture of individualism that works against church, family, and a Christ-like vision of community.