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

by Kristin Kobes Du Mez

In 1954, Congress added the words “one nation under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance,

Did not know this

“In God We

Trust” to the nation’s...

Added in 1955 in God we Trust only 70ish yrs

Wayne modeled masculine strength, aggression, and redemptive violence.51

Such a contrast to what Jesus models.

To be a man was to have a fragile ego and a vigorous libido.

As seen by the many religious leaders indiscretions

Morgan’s message appealed to women invested in defending “traditional womanhood” against the feminist challenge.

To those who had few employable skills and no means or desire to escape the confines of their homes, feminism seemed to denigrate their very identity and threaten their already precarious existence. It was better to play the cards they were dealt.

Perhaps because they could not find employment it was fear that led to no desire and a construct of blinders that kept them seeing feminism without fear. After all these women were in some ways brainwashed and incapable of seeing or desiring to escape the confines of their homes.

For Rushdoony and his devotees, freedom was found not in individual autonomy, but in proper submission to authority,

At its most basic level, family values politics was about sex and power.

Allowing for so much incest to occur

the power of the patriarch ensured the security of the nation. In the aftermath of Vietnam, this required a renewed commitment to militarism.

Reminds me of the movie Platoon. When the men grabbed their crotches and shouted "This is my gun!" Then grabbed their armaments and said " This is my rifle!"

if a man didn’t enjoy his wife’s lovemaking, he would find ways to make his disapproval known. This was simply the way things worked.6

Therefore allowing for incest pedophilia adultery and other sexual forays outside of marraige. Its the wifes fault

ones “keeping America great by keeping her good.” But it was Reagan’s discussion of foreign policy that made this speech memorable. He spoke of the Soviet Union as “an evil empire,”

When it came to risks of nuclear annihilation, evangelical theology’s emphasis on eternal life for the faithful helped mitigate such earthly terrors. In end-times scenarios they believed God would protect them; a nuclear holocaust might even be part of God’s plan. But a strong military and an aggressive foreign policy also aligned with evangelicals’ view of masculine power.

In Love Must Be Tough (1983), he warned of women who “deliberately ‘baited’” their husbands into hitting them, “verbally antagoniz[ing]” them until they got “the prize” they sought: a bruise they could parade before “neighbors, friends, and the law” to gain a “moral advantage,” and perhaps also justify an otherwise unbiblical escape from marriage through divorce. This argument remained unchanged in his 1996 edition of the book.21

This just sucks

Among white evangelicals there was little dissent; they saw Hill as representative of the corrupt and conniving influence of modern feminism, and they stood behind Thomas.22

Again WTF

servant leadership framed male authority as obligation, sacrifice, and service. Men were urged to accept their responsibilities, to work hard, to serve their wives and families, to eschew alcohol, gambling, and pornography, to step up around the home, and to be present in their children’s lives. The notion of “servant leadership” had originated in the business world.

If men were created with nearly irrepressible, God-given sex drives, it was up to women to rein in men’s libidos.

Predators remained in positions of power, even after their actions had been exposed. Churches failed to notify law enforcement, or to warn other churches of allegations. Since 1998, around 380 perpetrators within the SBC had left a trail of more than 700 victims. In the wake of these revelations, a number of SBC leaders denied collective culpability,

was precisely this pattern that led Rachael Denhollander to label the church “one of the worst places to go for help” for victims of abuse.

Denhollander had rebuked Nassar for asking for forgiveness without repentance. She said the same was true of churches. God was a God of forgiveness, but also a God of justice, and churches’ tendency to cover up abuse and quickly “forgive” perpetrators, often for the sake of the church’s witness, was misguided. “The gospel of Jesus Christ does not need your protection,” she insisted. Jesus only requires obedience—obedience manifested in the pursuit of justice, in standing up for the victimized and the oppressed, in telling “the truth about the evil of sexual assault and the evil of covering it up.”36

And yet....the church continues to refuse to even set up guidelines to prevent pastoral incest, adultery, rape or a place of safety for victims to come forward.

With few exceptions, black men, Middle Eastern men, and Hispanic men are not called to a wild, militant masculinity. Their aggression, by contrast, is seen as dangerous, a threat to the stability of home and nation.

White supremacy