A Book Analysis of “Jesus and John Wayne” (Part 2)–Chapters 1-2: Fundies, Billy Graham, Communism, and the Southern Strategy

Beginning here in Part 2 of my analysis of Kristin Kobes Du Mez’s book, Jesus and John Wayne, I want to do two things in every succeeding post of this series. First, I will give a very brief summary of each chapter in question in that particular post (I will try to cover 3-4 chapters per post). Second, I will then share my thoughts on each of those chapters.

Now, in her book, Kobes Du Mez (KDM) argues that white Evangelical Christians have corrupted the Christian faith by promoting patriarchal authority, sexism, racism, xenophobia, violence, and Christian nationalism. Therefore, white Evangelicals’ support for Donald Trump doesn’t show their hypocrisy, but rather what their true colors have been all along. In order to make this argument, KDM highlights a number of big-name Evangelical leaders who have either gotten too involved in American politics and have pushed for a conservative agenda or have been exposed for a number of bad things, from sexual immorality a wide range of other abusive behaviors.

Having said that, I want to be clear on just what my criticism of the book is. I am not going to defend some of the truly corrupt Evangelical leaders KDM has highlighted in her book. Some of them are truly deplorable people. I’m also not going to defend how various Evangelical leaders have become overt political partisans. One of my major criticisms of modern American Evangelicalism is that it has often mistaken the Kingdom of God for the GOP party platform. Having said that, I’m not one of those who thinks the GOP is all evil and the Democrats are all good. For that matter, I think there are plenty of liberal Christians who have mistaken the Kingdom of God for the Democrat party platform as well. The deeper problem is the politicization of the Christian faith, whether one is on the political right or political left.

That, though, is what I feel KDM does in her book. More specifically, she does two things in her book that bother me: (1) She points to the bad behavior of certain Evangelical leaders and extrapolates that bad behavior on all Evangelicals. The book doesn’t argue that there are bad actors within Evangelicalism who threaten the faith and bring Christianity to ridicule. Instead, it argues that white Evangelicals, en masse, by virtue of them being white and conservative, have corrupted the Christian faith. (2) She politicizes Christianity and gives the clear impression throughout the book that real Christianity consists of liberal Democrat values and political stances. By doing these two things, she engages in the exact kind of thing that ultra-Fundamentalists like Ken Ham engage in, just from the opposite side of the political spectrum. Having said all that, let’s jump in.

Chapter 1: Saddling Up–Summary
In the early 20^th Century, American Christians felt they had a masculinity problem. That’s why Teddy Roosevelt was so appealing to them. Furthermore, “Evangelical innovators” also took issue with the historical criticism of the Bible coming out of Germany and how “liberal Protestants” were diminishing the truthfulness of the Bible. This is what led to Fundamentalism, which KDM characterizes as wanting a masculine Jesus, promoting militancy, and having a proclivity toward End Times speculation.

In 1942, Fundamentalist leaders tried to “rebrand” their movement by forming the National Association of Evangelicals because they realized their Fundamentalism was out of the mainstream. They found Billy Graham, an “All-American Male” with “Scottish genes and Nordic looks” who used a lot of masculine athletic and military metaphors in his sermons to be the face of their rebranded movement. Evangelicals also started a number of organizations to reach out to the military. They viewed Communism as Satan’s effort to destroy America and the American home, and they emphasized patriarchy and the submission of women. They started a media empire and developed an Evangelical infrastructure throughout the country.

And they loved John Wayne. Even though he wasn’t a born-again Evangelical, they loved him because he was masculine, patriotic, rugged, and resorted to violence to save the day. As KDM says, “Wayne’s embodiment of heroic masculinity would come to serve as the touchstone for authentic Christian manhood” (32).

My Reaction to Chapter 1
As you will see throughout her book, KDM does a very Ken Ham-like thing in that she is constantly throwing out certain words that serve as catnip to political ideologues. If you are a young earth creationist Fundamentalist, all Ham has to do is throw out “liberal,” “atheism,” “abortion,” or “public schools are indoctrination centers,” you’ll be frothing at the mouth and buy in to virtually anything he says. In the same vein, KDM gives you a constant barrage of “masculinity,” “patriarchy,” “racism,” and “Christian nationalism.” She never really takes the time to fully tease out what she means, and she never tries to unpack the details of the certain events in question—she just throws out those labels and moves on.

Take for instance the origins of Fundamentalism. Yes, it was a reaction to the liberal theology of the 19^th century, but KDM doesn’t explain exactly what that 19^th liberal theology was claiming, and she doesn’t outline the main arguments and tenets of what the original Fundamentalists (many of whom were academics at Ivy League schools) were saying. Instead, she just throws out “masculine Jesus,” “militancy,” and “end times speculation.” Needless to say, the actual original Fundamentalists who published “The Fundamentals” in the first couple decades of the 20th century were considerably different from the later Fundamentalists. That’s a really important thing to know if you want to understand the evolution of Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism throughout the 20th century. KDM, though, doesn’t cover that really at all.

When it comes to the National Association of Evangelicals (NEA), KDM claims it was just a bunch of Fundamentalists looking to rebrand themselves. She doesn’t give any historical context regarding how the Fundamentalists of the 20-30s were a far cry from the original Fundamentalists in academia at the turn of the century and how they had retreated to their own subculture after the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925. In fact, KDM rejects that narrative altogether. Right from the beginning of the book, she basically says that Fundamentalism has always been bad, and always has been about hyper-masculinity, racism, militancy, etc. Therefore, with Billy Graham and the founding of the NEA, KDM doesn’t see it as Christians rejecting that isolationist Fundamentalism of the 20-30s and trying to re-engage with the larger culture again. She just sees is a little more than a clever ad campaign and rebranding of Fundamentalism. Not surprisingly, she fails to mention that a lot of the hard-core Fundamentalists of the 20-30s hated Billy Graham. No, instead she chooses to emphasis that Graham was a good-looking, athletic white dude! And, spoiler alert, the reason why she emphasizes his Scottish and Nordic look is because later on in the book she emphasizes Donald Trump’s Scottish background as well.

Finally, she points out that a big thing in the NEA was their opposition to Communism. In fact, throughout the book, KDM brings this up time and time again. I’ll touch upon this in the later chapters.

Chapter 2: John Wayne Will Save Your Ass–Summary
Billy Graham soon came to be very political. He supported Dwight D. Eisenhower for president and was very influential during Eisenhower’s presidency. That’s when “In God We Trust” got put on the money and “under God” was put in the pledge of allegiance. With the rise of the Civil Rights movement, Graham did support it by calling for desegregation, but he “withdrew his backing as activists began to engage in civil disobedience” (38). Many Evangelicals followed his lead and withdrew their support because (according to Kobes Du Mez) “family values politics were deeply intertwined with racial politics” (39).

This led to the rise of the conservative movement under Barry Goldwater in the 1960s, which was fervently anti-Communist, pro-masculine cowboy, and rather racist. Although Goldwater lost to LBJ in 1964, by 1968, conservatives and Evangelicals rallied around Richard Nixon, described as a “lapsed Quaker” by Kobes Du Mez. Billy Graham liked Nixon, and thanks to Nixon’s racist “Southern strategy,” Evangelicals and segregationists helped get him elected. In 1972, Evangelicals backed Nixon again, despite the fact that the Democrat candidate was George McGovern, “a former ministry student, son of an evangelical minister, and a deeply religious candidate” (46). He was against Vietnam, after all. Even though there were some Evangelicals on the political Left, most Evangelicals rejected their critique of “patriarchy and American power.” By and large, Evangelicals liked war, wanted patriarchy and manly men, hated Communism, and loved John Wayne.

My Reaction to Chapter 2
Once again, without really teasing out some of the larger historical events and contexts, KDM gives the same litany that is found in every chapter: Evangelical-Cowboy-Masculine-Patriarchy-Racist-Anti-Communist-Christian Nationalism-John Wayne!

But let’s look at a few things she mentions. First, yes it was under Eisenhower that “in God we trust” was put on our money and “under God” was put in the pledge. Why do you think that happened at that time? Consider the time. We had just fought the Nazis in WWII and were now faced with the very dangerous and ominous Soviet threat. Stalin, under the banner of Communism, which was ideologically atheistic, had committed genocide to the tune of over 20 MILLION people and had aggressively stormed into and taken over Eastern Europe. Maoist China had gone Communist, and Mao was in the process of murdering 2-3 times more people than Stalin. 20^th century Communism was the greatest, most murderous evil in human history. That is why Evangelicals like Billy Graham were so against Communism and that is why they were 100% absolutely right to be against Communism.

And that is why Americans in the 50s were open to including “in God we trust” and “under God” on their money and in their pledge. It was a way of seeing the evil of Communism and saying, “We’re not like that.” In addition, the aftermath of WWII, many American servicemen like Louis Zamperini (of the book and movie Unbroken) came back deeply scarred and broken from the horror of war and found peace and healing when they came to Christ. Yes, on one hand, those symbolic gestures on the money and in the pledge had the effect of producing more of a shallow faith where the lines between Christianity and patriotism were blurred, but for a lot of people, seeing the genocidal effects of literally godless Communism, it was a way of saying, “We’re not like that.”

Second, KDM’s depiction of Graham in terms of the Civil Rights movement is troubling. As a political reality, it started under Eisenhower and it was the Democrats who opposed it. In fact, Eisenhower and the GOP tried to get a Civil Rights bill passed in the 50s and it was killed in the Senate by none other than Lyndon Baines Johnson! In any case, Graham’s endorsement of civil rights and desegregation is one of the main reasons why the really racist southern Fundamentalists didn’t like him. And right there shows a problem with KDM’s book on this point. Because she refuses to see any difference between actual racist southern Fundamentalists and the Evangelicalism that Graham helped establish, she looks at Graham’s support of civil rights with suspicion. He didn’t “back off” from his support for civil rights because he was a white Evangelical and white Evangelicals (hey, let’s stereotype and entire group of people based on their skin color!) are really racist after all. He didn’t object to protests or even civil disobedience. He objected to when things turned violent.

Third, notice how KDM depicts certain political figures. She will do this throughout the book. Richard Nixon is a “lapsed Quaker,” while George McGovern is “a former ministry student, son of an evangelical minister, and a deeply religious candidate.” Now, it is true that Nixon was not really religious, and it is true that he pretty much used Billy Graham to serve his own political goals. Graham later realized this, and after Nixon’s presidency, Graham made it a point to stick to being an Evangelist and to thus back away from political involvement. As for McGovern, maybe he was “deeply religious,” but I am always suspicious when authors make these sorts of claims in books that are clearly politically partisan. In fact, in the course of the book, KDM lavishes religious accolades on virtually every Democrat political candidate (including Bill Clinton) while throwing shade and suspicion of every GOP political candidate.

In any case, the effect here with McGovern is to give the impression that the reason why Evangelicals didn’t vote for this “deeply religious” man was because he was Christ-like and didn’t want war…and Evangelicals want war! Again, that is wholly oversimplistic. KDM fails to mention that it was the Democrats and LBJ who got America into the Vietnam War and escalated it. She also fails to mention that Nixon inherited that mess and was the one who eventually got the United States out of Vietnam. She also fails to mention how the war was, after all, was a war to stem the tide of Communism. Not only was the USSR still trying to expand its reach, but Communist China was as well–and both of those regimes proved to be the most genocidal and murderous regimes in history.

Now, I do not want to make it seem I’m saying, “Democrats bad! GOP good!” I’m saying that KDM is wrongly saying, “GOP (and Evangelicals) bad! Democrats good!” She is presenting what was a very horrible, messy, and complex moment in our history as something that was simple and black and white. In the real world, there are complex realities nations have to deal with. Appeasing Hitler proved to be disastrous. Allying with Stalin in order to defeat Hitler was, in the short term, a good thing, but in the long term opened up to the Cold War, where we had to deal with a regime that was even worse than Nazi Germany. But KDM’s simplistic arm-chair quarterbacking of history doesn’t even acknowledge that. Instead, what we get is, “Oh, Evangelicals didn’t vote for McGovern because he was deeply religious and opposed war!” Sorry, that is a wee bit too simplistic (never mind the fact that NOBODY voted for McGovern).

Finally, let me say a few things about the “Southern strategy,” the narrative that says that after LBJ and the Democrats passed the Civil Rights Act in 1964, racist Democrats switched parties and Republicans realized that the only way they could ever win national elections anymore was to appeal to racist, white southerners. That is why southern states are now predominately Republican—they had been Democrat up to 1964, but then they switched because the South (and Republicans) really is just filled with racists, because race is the only issue that mattered.

When you look at the facts, here is what you find. Eisenhower won the southern states of Tennessee, Florida, Virginia in 1952, and further picked up Louisiana, Kentucky, West Virginia in 1956, after Brown vs Board of Education. Then, in 1960, two years after Eisenhower and the GOP sent in the national guard to desegregate the high school in Little Rock, they lost votes in the South, with Louisiana and West Virginia switching Democrat and voting for Kennedy.

Then there came the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The reason it passed wasn’t because there were enough Democrats to override Republican opposition. In the Senate, 21 Democrat senators voted against it, meaning only 69% of Democrats (46 senators) voted for it, while 82% of Republicans (27 senators) voted for it. In the House, the Democrats passed it by a 153-91 margin (63%), while the Republicans passed it by a 136-35 margin (80%). After its passage, do you want to know now many Democrat senators switched parties? One. And of those other 20 Senate seats that opposed the Civil Rights bill, they didn’t switch over to the Republican for another 25 years.

In 1968, Nixon’s so-called “Southern strategy” was so successful that he entirely lost the deep South: Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia all went for George Wallace, a racist former Democrat. In 1976, Jimmy Carter nearly swept the South, taking every state but Virginia. In 1992, Bill Clinton took Georgia, Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, and West Virginia. In fact, the GOP didn’t hold a majority of southern congressional seats until 1994.

All this is to say is that the “Southern strategy” narrative that KDM (and many others) puts forth simply does not hold up in light of historical realities. This is not to say that there aren’t racist Republicans. This is not to say one cannot argue that some Republican policies disproportionately affect black people. (Of course, I think if one was honest, one would say that there have been policies coming from both parties that have disproportionately affected black people). What I am saying is that it is a false and misleading narrative that is much more propaganda than it is reality. It’s a smear job, not much different as when ultra-Fundamentalists like Ken Ham try to depict all Democrats as baby-killers because the Democratic party, by and large, is pro-choice on the issue of abortion. To broadbrush an entire party, or voting-block, or religious group as being racist, or being “baby-killers,” or whatever, without even acknowledging the complexities of certain issues or considering historical facts is not a good thing to do. It isn’t trying to get at the truth. Rather, it amounts to nothing more than a politically partisan hit job. It doesn’t matter if an ultra-Fundamentalist like Ken Ham or a Christian-progressive like KDM does it—it is dishonest.