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

by Kristin Kobes Du Mez

“I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters,” he claimed.

But evangelical support for Trump was no aberration, nor was it merely a pragmatic choice. It was, rather, 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.

In reality, evangelicals did not cast their vote despite their beliefs, but because of them.

More than any other religious demographic in America, white evangelical Protestants support preemptive war, condone the use of torture, and favor the death penalty.

Christian nationalism—the belief that America is God’s chosen nation and must be defended as such—serves as a powerful predictor of intolerance toward immigrants, racial minorities, and non-Christians.

FOR THEIR PART, evangelicals prefer to define themselves not by their political beliefs but according to their theological convictions or, more precisely, according to four “evangelical distinctives.”

To be an evangelical, according to the National Association of Evangelicals, is to uphold the Bible as one’s ultimate authority, to confess the centrality of Christ’s atonement, to believe in a born-again conversion experience, and to actively work to spread this good news and reform society accordingly.

Among evangelicals, high levels of theological illiteracy mean that many “evangelicals” hold views traditionally defined as heresy, calling into question the centrality of theology to evangelicalism generally.

For conservative white evangelicals, the “good news” of the Christian gospel has become inextricably linked to a staunch commitment to patriarchal authority, gender difference, and Christian nationalism, and all of these are intertwined with white racial identity.

The products Christians consume shape the faith they inhabit. Today, what it means to be a “conservative evangelical” is as much about culture as it is about theology.

The reassertion of white patriarchy was central to the new “family values” politics, and by the end of the 1970s, the defense of patriarchal power had emerged as an evangelical distinctive.

Evangelical militancy cannot be seen simply as a response to fearful times; for conservative white evangelicals, a militant faith required an ever-present sense of threat.

Contemporary white evangelicalism in America, then, is not the inevitable outworking of “biblical literalism,” nor is it the only possible interpretation of the historic Christian faith; the history of American Christianity itself is filled with voices of resistance and signs of paths not taken. It is, rather, a historical and a cultural movement, forged over time by individuals and organizations with varied motivations—the desire to discern God’s will, to bring order to uncertain times, and, for many, to extend their own power.

(In Christ there was neither slave nor free, male nor female, according to the apostle Paul.)

A Christian nation, according to editors at The King’s Business, a monthly publication of the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, would be one that “has accepted Christ as its Saviour and as its Lord” in all aspects of governance—in politics, commerce, and international relations. But “such a nation does not exist on earth, and never has existed, and never will exist until our Lord comes again.” For this reason, patriotism was no virtue; a Christian’s loyalty belonged to God’s kingdom, not to the nation.

BILLY GRAHAM WAS A LIFELONG REGISTERED Democrat.

quizzed the president on his “religious background and leanings,” and then told Truman that his Golden Rule Christianity wasn’t sufficient—what he needed was a personal faith in Christ and his death on the cross.

(The nuclear family structured around a male breadwinner was in fact of recent invention, arising in the 1920s and peaking in the 1950s and 1960s; before then, multigenerational families relying on multiple contributors to the family economy had been the norm.)

It is easily forgotten, but some evangelicals—especially those who would come to constitute the “evangelical Left”—were vocal supporters of civil rights. Others, primarily fundamentalists and southerners, were staunch opponents.

Graham began to integrate his crusades, going so far as to personally remove ropes separating the seating between whites and blacks. In 1954, he praised the Brown v. Board of Education ruling to desegregate schools. In 1957, he invited King to pray at his New York City crusade.

moderate proponents of civil rights began to cool in their support for further action. Graham, for example, withdrew his backing as activists began to engage in civil disobedience and to demand further government intervention. Many evangelicals followed his lead, concluding that it was not the role of government to interfere in issues of racial justice; only Jesus could change human hearts. Many evangelicals, too, found it hard to accept that the sin of racism ran deep through the nation’s history.

Still, there remained within evangelicalism a small contingent of outspoken critics, including national figures like Senator Mark Hatfield, who, together with McGovern, had called for a complete withdrawal of US troops in Vietnam. In 1973, progressive evangelical leaders issued the Chicago Declaration of Evangelical Social Concern. Like members of the emerging Religious Right, they saw politics as an expression of their faith, but on nearly every issue they parted ways with their conservative brethren. They denounced racism and called for Christians to defend the rights of the poor and oppressed. Confessing that Christians had “encouraged men to prideful domination and women to irresponsible passivity,” they called instead for “mutual submission and active discipleship.” And they challenged “the misplaced trust of the nation in economic and military might—a proud trust that promotes a national pathology of war and violence which victimizes our neighbors at home and abroad.”

In the words of Baptist scholar Alan Bean, “The unspoken mantra of post-war evangelicalism was simple: Jesus can save your soul; but John Wayne will save your ass.”52

Grinalds openly shared his faith, inviting marines to attend worship services on Sunday and encouraging the Navigators—an evangelical Christian ministry—to witness to marines in his command. He kept New Testaments in his desk drawer for distribution and regularly sought to turn one-on-one conversations to “a discussion about Christ.” The results of his evangelistic efforts could be quantified; during his twelve-month command he “saw the S-3, S-4, Communications Officer, Motor Transport Officer, two Company Commanders and the Assault Amphibian Platoon Commander commit their lives to Christ,” in addition to many others who recommitted and were baptized.

Its 1996 book Go the Distance: The Making of a Promise Keeper (published by Focus on the Family) included chapters by Charles Colson, Bill McCartney, Stu Weber, and other white evangelicals, but it also included an unsparing critique of white Christianity penned by African American pastor and civil rights activist John Perkins. How much this commitment to racial reconciliation trickled down to the rank and file is difficult to gauge.

Inconsistencies within the evangelical men’s movement reflected those within evangelicalism as a whole in the post–Cold War years. Earlier in the decade, it might have appeared that the more egalitarian and emotive impulses had the upper hand. It was a new era for America, and for American evangelicals. Rhetoric of culture wars persisted, but evangelicals’ interests had expanded to include a broader array of issues, including racial reconciliation, antitrafficking activism, and addressing the persecution of the global church.

In the 1990s, Wilson had coauthored Southern Slavery: As It Was, which questioned the supposed “brutalities, immoralities, and cruelties” of slavery. The slave trade might have been unbiblical, he allowed, but slavery most certainly was not. To the contrary, the radical abolitionists were the ones “driven by a zealous hatred of the Word of God.” Horrific descriptions of slavery were nothing more than abolitionist propaganda. The life of a slave had been a life of plenty, of ample food, good medical care, and simple pleasures, marked by “a degree of mutual affection between the races” that could never be achieved through coercive federal legislation. In 2005 he published Black and Tan, a sequel that presented Robert E. Lee as “a gracious Christian gentleman, a brother in Christ,” and claimed that Christian slave owners were “on firm scriptural ground.”

“Jesus Christ is the only real hope for the world.”

A 2009 survey also revealed that evangelicals were significantly more likely than other religious groups to approve of the use of torture against suspected terrorists. Sixty-two percent agreed that torture could be justified “often” or “sometimes,” compared to 46 percent of mainline Protestants and 40 percent of unaffiliated respondents. The widespread embrace of a militant Christian nationalism would have far-reaching consequences in the age of terror.

A 2003 sermon also came to light in which Wright uttered the memorable phrase “God damn America”—a phrase he qualified by adding, “as long as she keeps trying to act like she is God and she is supreme!” That sermon was a tirade against militarization, against those “blinded by a culture of war.” War, the military, colonization, occupation, regime change—none of these things would bring peace, Wright insisted. They would only bring more violence. Wright critiqued the “few Muslims” who called for jihad, but he also criticized Christians calling for “crusade,” Christians who condoned the killing of civilians, collateral damage, “shock and awe” tactics, preemptive strikes, and the unilateral takeover of another nation while secure in the notion that the ends justified the means, that God would bless their efforts. Wright, too, condemned the nation’s legacy of racism, the lie that all men were created equal when it only really applied to white men. And he called out more recent lies, like those orchestrated by Oliver North, and the false pretenses used to justify the Iraq War: “This government lied in its founding documents and the government is still lying today.”

To quell the controversy, Obama gave one of the most powerful speeches of his political career. He professed his “unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people” even as he acknowledged the Constitution’s unfinished work, the need to extend liberty and justice to all people. He criticized his pastor’s “incendiary language” that denigrated “both the greatness and the goodness of our nation,” and he denounced “the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.”

Trump might not be the best Christian, but as a Christian nationalist he could more than hold his own.

For some, the question of evangelical support for Trump had a simpler explanation: rank hypocrisy. Indeed, in the weeks between the release of the Access Hollywood tape and the election, PRRI (Public Religion Research Institute) social scientists identified a curious “Trump effect.” Five years earlier, only 30 percent of white evangelicals believed that “a person who commits an ‘immoral’ act could behave ethically in a public role.” The month before the election, 72 percent believed this was possible. According to the PRRI’s Robert P. Jones, “This dramatic abandonment of the whole idea of ‘value voters’ is one of the most stunning reversals in recent American political history.”

It was Dobson, according to Hybels, who convinced him of the need to view pornographic videos, which he then required his female assistant to watch with him.

In her powerful victim statement at the Nassar trial, 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

Two years into Trump’s presidency, more than two-thirds of white evangelicals did not think the United States had a responsibility to accept refugees. In 2019, nearly the same percentage supported Trump’s border wall. Given that the Bible is filled with commands to welcome the stranger and care for the foreigner, these attitudes might seem puzzling. Yet evangelicals who claim to uphold the authority of the Scriptures are quite clear that they do not necessarily look to the Bible to inform their views on immigration; a 2015 poll revealed that only 12 percent of evangelicals cited the Bible as their primary influence when it came to thinking about immigration.

Rather than seeing culture as pitted against theology, however, we should treat the interplay between the two as what ultimately defines evangelicalism. Here, recent debates over the nature of the Triune God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—are illuminating. Having pronounced patriarchal authority and female submission nonnegotiable “gospel truths,” some complementarian theologians went a step further. In 2016, CBMW’s Wayne Grudem and Bruce Ware advanced a theology of the Trinity that made Jesus “eternally subordinate” to God the Father, in order—according to critics—to justify the eternal, God-ordained subordination of women to men. Grudem and Ware might have been following in the footsteps of Elisabeth Elliot, who had written about this notion in the 1970s, but in doing so they were parting ways with roughly two millennia of Christian orthodoxy. Even some fellow complementarians labeled this innovation “heresy,” or “idolatry.” Many of those affiliated with CBMW, however, sided with Grudem and Ware. For critics, this raised an important question: were men defending patriarchy because they believed it to be biblical, or were they twisting the Scriptures in order to defend patriarchy?6

American evangelicals have also forged ties with Vladimir Putin, who is known for flaunting his bare-chested masculinity, and with conservative elements in the Russian Orthodox Church; in 2014, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association’s Decision magazine featured Putin on its cover, and Franklin Graham praised the Russian president for standing up to the “gay and lesbian agenda.” The next year, Graham met with Putin in Moscow, an occasion that prompted him to praise Putin as a defender of “traditional Christianity” while accusing President Obama of promoting atheism. In foreign policy as in domestic politics, the cult of masculinity can transform loyalties and reshape alliances.

After studying more closely the history of Native Americans and accounts of imperial conquest, he could no longer sustain the idea of America as an anointed nation. If you believe that America is God’s chosen nation, you need to fight for it and against others, he realized.

“Jesus makes it really clear in John 13,” Jacobson reflected. “People will know you’re my disciples if you love me”—but too many evangelicals have forgotten “where our true citizenship is.”

Evangelical men themselves have promoted alternative models, elevating gentleness and self-control, a commitment to peace, and a divestment of power as expressions of authentic Christian manhood. Yet, understanding the catalyzing role militant Christian masculinity has played over the past half century is critical to understanding American evangelicalism today, and the nation’s fractured political landscape. Appreciating how this ideology developed over time is also essential for those who wish to dismantle it. What was once done might also be undone.