![jesus and john wayne discussion questions jesus and john wayne discussion questions](https://www.christianresearcher.com/uploads/1/6/2/9/16298120/s702601590478870340_p390_i2_w640.png)
Did you anticipate this range of responses? That seems fairly remarkable for an academic work of this depth. There’s this burgeoning community around the book, especially on your Twitter feed, where people share personal anecdotes and meaningful passages or report new offenses and offenders. It’s interesting that a three-hundred-fifty-page historical work is evoking not just scholarly praise but deeply personal responses on social media. TOJ: Perhaps that sense of catharsis or testimony is why the book seems to have attracted such a wide range of readers. It felt empowering to put this story into words. Even so, the writing experience itself often felt cathartic. I ended up writing the book, from start to finish, in eighteen months, which required putting in many grueling days. I think that we were a source of encouragement to each other, and we could provide each other with a moral and even spiritual grounding.Īpart from the nature of the subject matter, the writing schedule presented its own challenges. They were not only amazing researchers, but they were also amazing people.
![jesus and john wayne discussion questions jesus and john wayne discussion questions](http://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1432073951i/25566711._SS500_.jpg)
I had three incredible student research assistants who worked with me for nearly three years. I hated researching and writing it, and each time I edited the chapter I needed to first brace myself before starting in on it. The last chapter, “Evangelical Mulligans: A History,” was especially brutal. There were certainly some difficult moments in researching and writing the book. What I was reading was still disturbing, but I no longer doubted its relevance. When I decided to take up the research again in the fall of 2016, I did so with a renewed urgency. Through my research, I’ve come to see how, over and over again, so-called respectable Christians turned a blind eye to abuses that were right in front of them, often in order to protect the witness of the church. At the time, this seemed like a noble consideration, but it troubles me now. The popularity of people like Mark Driscoll or the ideas espoused in John Eldredge’s Wild at Heart, which has sold more than 4 million copies, suggested that this movement wasn’t all that marginal, but as a Christian myself, I questioned whether it was a good idea to be shining a bright light on the darkest underbelly of American Christianity. And because what I was encountering seemed really extreme, I wasn’t sure if what I was looking at was just a fringe movement.
![jesus and john wayne discussion questions jesus and john wayne discussion questions](https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/marvel_dc/images/d/d4/Omac_Project_4.jpg)
To be honest, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to spend years of my life immersed in that world. I was finishing up my first book at the time, and I ended up having three kids in rather quick succession, but I also found the crass, misogynistic, and militaristic teachings of respectable Christian leaders disturbing. Kristin Kobes Du Mez (KDM): I first began exploring the topic of white evangelical masculinity and militarism more than fifteen years ago, but after a year or so I set the project aside. Could you tell us a little about your personal experience finishing Jesus and John Wayne? But you’ve also noted that your early findings were “disturbing” and “depressing.” 2 Those are highly personal terms. The Other Journal ( TOJ): You have said in past interviews that you were hesitant to work on this book because you believed it might be a fringe project. 1 In this interview with The Other Journal, Du Mez reflects on the role of pop culture and political strife in evangelicalism, the reactions she has received to her book since its publication, and her future projects. Du Mez shows how men of Trump’s ilk have enraptured evangelicals through promises of political influence since the mid-twentieth century. And in Donald Trump, she says they found one who fulfills those values. Kristin Kobes Du Mez, a professor of history at Calvin University, argues in in her latest book, Jesus and John Wayne,that white evangelicals have replaced Jesus with rugged individualists and nationalist icons of politics and popular culture.