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

by Kristin Kobes Du Mez

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.”