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

by Kristin Kobes Du Mez

During Obama’s first term, conservative evangelicals worked to woo back wayward members of the younger generation. Two years after Obama was elected, Wayne Grudem, cofounder of the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, former president of the Evangelical Theological Society, and one of the leading proponents of gender complementarianism, decided to weigh in on politics directly. Until then, Grudem had focused primarily on theology and gender, writing several books promoting “biblical manhood and womanhood,” serving as general editor for the ESV Study Bible, and penning an evangelical approach to systematic theology. In 2010, he published what amounted to a systematic guide to politics; weighing in at over six hundred pages, the book offered an exhaustive guide to the “biblical” view on all things political. Grudem denounced abortion and LGBT rights and defended religious freedom and national sovereignty. Illegal immigration was a problem, but so were the “too many” legal immigrants who didn’t seem to be assimilating. He recommended immediately and effectively closing the borders, especially the border with Mexico. For Grudem, loving one’s neighbors meant going to war to protect them from “evil aggressors.” Military strength was a blessing, and it was wrong not to use it, especially in the case of the nation’s greatest threat, Islamic terrorism. Treating terrorism as a “law-enforcement problem” wouldn’t work; preemptive war was required.