When reading Jesus and John Wayne by Kristin Kobes Du Mez, it was a little uncomfortable, it hit close to home. After listening to a podcast and reading an Axios data article, it is clear that this is not going to disappear on its own.
Notes from the book:
- Pastors can't endorse politicians while keeping tax exemptions
- From the Introduction: During the Trump campaign, many pastors were surprised to find that they wielded little influence over people in the pews. What they didn't realize was they were up against a more powerful system of authority - an evengelical popular culture
- Chapter 1 starts with the masculinity of Teddy Roosevelt, continuing with Billy Sunday, then Billy Graham
- Nixon vs McGovern in '72 - McGovern booed at Wheaton college
- Evangelicals took a hard turn towards supporting violence with the Vietnam war
- Chapter 2 - Marabel Morgan's Total Woman => Anita Bryant (Bless this House) => anti-gay activism, this also explains Christian book distribution
- Another author and politician mentioned is Phyllis Schlafly, as a Catholic she was against abortion, even when evangelicals were not (to quote: as late as 1971, the Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution urging states to expand access to abortion)
- Chapter 4 introduces Bill Gothard and Rousas John Rushdoony, who pushed the theory that the US was a Christian nation. Describing Rushdoony: In his view, slavery had been voluntary, and beneficial to slaves. Interesting that this book was published in 2020, before the Florida slavery reeducation issue
- Going on a theme of discipline, Dr James Dobson is introduced. He dropped out of the American Psychological Association in 1973 after they removed homosexuality from the mental disorder list.
- Chapter 5
- Tim LaHaye wrote Left Behind, his wife was connected to the DeVos/Amway family
- LaHaye's next book The Act of Marriage focused on individual actions, and was quite patriarchal (wives are responsible for satisfying their husbands' libido)
- LaHaye worked to split Christian's from rest, promoting distrust in secular media. Pushed ideas of Rushdoony
- Jerry Falwell is introduced as the Baptist torch bearer of Schafly, Dobson, and LaHaye. He started as apolitical in the late 60s to leading the moral majority a decade later. There is a podcast about Falwell and Liberty University that is related to modern times
- Chapter 6 digs into Reagan
- Evangelicals (particularly Baptist) claimed credit as "The people who put Jimmy in, put Jimmy out" (referencing Jimmy Carter), overall they didn't impact the vote as much as inflation and the Iran hostage crisis
- While Reagan gave very few domestic victories, he was popular for his foreign policies
- The chapter ends with details of how the evangelical network was supporting Reagan push military intervention in Nicaragua, and the crimes Oliver North was found guilty of (lying to Congress, destroying federal documents)
- Oliver North may have been a hero on the right due is cavalier attitude, but he had excellent timing (multiple sex scandles such as the Baker and Swaggart)
- James Dobson also had a lucrative deal selling a Where's Dad video to the US Army
- At the half-way point in this book, Fox News has its first mention, focusing on how Evangelicals were attacking the Clintons, as was the conservative network. Neither Limbaugh nor O'Reilly made their name as Christian broadcasters, but many conservative evangelicals were attracted to their masculine brand ... Within two decades, the influence of Fox News on conservative evangelicalism would be so profound that journalists and scholars alike would find it difficult to separate the two.
- Homeschooling is largely driven by evangelicals, it wasn't legal in the US 40 years ago - Laura Meckler's Homeschool Nation
- Mixed-Martial Arts and evangelicals - GodMen, Xtreme Ministries
- The author mentions her experience with "ex-Muslim terrorists", Caner example - Liberty University continues to support these narratives long after they are debunked
- Trump gave a commencement speech at Liberty University in 2012, and another speech before the 2016 election
One topic that is interwoven through the book is evangelical failures/losses - many of these could be missed by secular culture:
- Women allowed to serve in combat roles in the military in 1996
- Loss of sexual purity culture - as early as 1981, President Reagan began directing government funding to abstinence-only sex education, in this funding continue through the 1990s
- Many sexual scandals in the church, including Ted Haggard while he was head of the National Association of Evangelicals
- While many people are perplexed by Trump's support for autocrats, in 2014, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association's Decision magazine featured Putin on its cover