A Book Analysis of “Jesus and John Wayne” (Part 6)–Chapters 9-10: Promise Keepers, Purity Culture, and that Nasty Masculinity

Here in Part 6 of my detailed book analysis of Kristin Kobes Du Mez’s book, Jesus and John Wayne, I will look at chapters 9-10. In this post, my response will be alongside my summary of each chapter.

Chapter 9: Tender Warriors—Summary and Response

Promise-Keepers: Soft Patriarchy
In chapter 9, KDM focuses on the Promise Keepers movement in the 1990s that was started by Bill McCartney. Promise Keepers was a call to a renewed Christian manhood and encouraged men to tend more to their families and be good fathers and husbands. KDM, though, says that many were “alarmed” by the movement saw it as an even bigger threat to women’s rights than the Moral Majority. And even though Promise Keepers was intentionally apolitical, KDM says that it was guilty of promoting a “soft patriarchy” because it encouraged men to be “servant leaders” in their households by accepting their responsibilities, working hard, serving their wives, helping around the house, being present in their children’s lives, and avoiding alcohol, gambling, and pornography. According to KDM, by encouraging that kind of behavior, Promise Keepers simply was marketing “male supremacy with a beatific smile” and was providing a way for men to salvage “a patriarchal order” (154). It was “more insidious than a straightforward power grab” (155).

I really have no words for that conclusion. In KDM’s world, men who serve their wives and try to be good fathers are insidiously trying to salvage male supremacy and patriarchy. Sorry, that’s insane.

Promise Keepers: Racial Reconciliation
KDM also notes that Promise Keepers pushed for racial reconciliation. While most would consider that a good thing, though, KDM sees something insidious about that too. She criticizes Promise Keepers for presenting racism as a personal failing and not addressing structural inequalities, and then concludes that the kind of racial reconciliation Promise Keepers was pursuing simply served “as a ritual of self-redemption, absolving white men of complicity and justifying the continuation of white patriarchy in the home and the nation” (157). In the end, she calls Promise Keepers’ pursuit of racial reconciliation nothing more than “mere posturing.”

Again, I have no words. To be clear, I never got into the whole Promise Keepers thing, or any of those “Christian manhood” movements. Still, I knew a few guys who were really helped by them, and I think overall Promise Keepers was probably a pretty positive thing. Therefore, to see the way KDM paints the movement in the way I just noted is just shocking. Seriously, what can you say to someone who sees men trying to be good husbands and fathers as “insidious” power-hungry, male supremacists? What can you say to someone who sees a group in the 1990s pushing for racial reconciliation as guilty of “justifying white patriarchy,” simply because they weren’t on board with the current critical race theory of 2021?

Complementarianism vs. Egalitarianism
KDM also notes in the chapter that it was in the 1990s that Wayne Grudem and John Piper helped develop the concept of complementarianism (as opposed to egalitarianism) which states that men and women were equal before God, but that God had established male headship as part of the created order. Now, I have never let myself get wrapped up in that controversy and I am not a fan of Grudem or Piper. As far as I am concerned, in the Church, you should do what you have been gifted to do and it doesn’t matter if you are a man or a woman. So, in that sense, I suppose I am more egalitarian.

That being said, the thing that has always bothered me about how this controversy always seems to play out is that it always seems to come down to the question of whether or not women should be pastors and placed in positions of authority in the Church. That very mindset of “Who gets to be in charge?” seems to be antithetical to virtually everything I read in the New Testament.

Purity Culture
KDM ends the chapter by touching upon the “purity culture” with Evangelicalism in the 1990s that emphasized female modesty, so as not to be sources of temptation for boys and men. KDM notes that Evangelicals didn’t really say a whole lot about “male modesty.” It taught that if you wait for marriage, that you’ll have “mind-blowing sex” with your spouse. It pushed for things like purity rings and purity balls (father-daughter events) where fathers would model the kind of proper behavior their daughters should expect from men and where daughters would pledge their sexual purity before they got married. By the end of the 90s, came 21-year-old Josh Harris’ book, I Kissed Dating Goodbye that encouraged Christian youth to forgo “dating” and instead practice “biblical courtship.”

When it comes to “purity culture,” I feel a bit out of the loop. Granted, when I was growing up in the 70s-80s, my parents, my church, and my Christian high school all emphasized that it was best to wait until marriage to have sex, and that engaging in sexually promiscuous behavior and things like pornography were harmful and dangerous. And let’s be clear, all that is true. But the whole thing about “purity culture” seems to be more extreme than that.

“Purity culture,” the way it is being criticized, seems to have really been born in the late 90s with Josh Harris’ book, I Kissed Dating Goodbye. I first came across the book during my first-year teaching at a small Christian high school in California. A student showed it to me and told me it was really good. He wanted me to look at it and tell him what I thought. I flipped through it over a few days and, quite honestly, I thought it was pretty stupid. Who in their right mind would take dating and marriage advice from a 21-year-old homeschooler? I didn’t exactly say that to the student, of course. I basically said that, although it was best to wait until marriage, there really was nothing wrong with just dating.

Over the course of the next couple decades, I really had no idea just how influential that book was. Purity rings? Purity balls? Good lord. So, yes, I think KDM is right to criticize that whole movement. By and large, I agree that Evangelicalism has failed in how it addresses issues regarding sex and sexuality, and that failure really has had a corrupting effect on the faith. To be clear, given the volatile nature of the sexual impulse, it is extremely easy to let it spiral out of control and destroy one’s life. That is why there is so much in the New Testament about dying to one’s passions. That being said, the approach to sex and sexuality that the “purity culture” promoted clearly wasn’t good.

Chapter 10: No More Christian Nice Guy—Summary and Response

Eldredge, Dobson, and Doug Wilson–and Nasty Masculinity
Chapter 10 focuses on the writings of John Eldredge, James Dobson (again), Doug Wilson, among others. Eldredge is famous for his book, Wild at Heart, in which he emphasized the inherent “maleness” and masculinity within men and how there had been a “crisis in masculinity” in both the church and society. Men naturally are attracted to figures like William Wallace, Teddy Roosevelt, Indiana Jones, etc. –and that’s okay. James Dobson’s Bringing Up Boys also emphasized that the key to understanding boys is acknowledging that testosterone naturally makes boys more aggressive and assertive—they want to play with cars, trucks, and guns, and want to be superheroes and engage is rough and tumble sports, etc.—and that was okay.

Now, I’ll be honest, I am rather dumbfounded at KDM’s opposition to the notion that there is a fundamental difference between men and women, boys and girls. Generally speaking, boys are more aggressive, they do like to play with guns and trucks, they are drawn to more “rough and tumble sports,” they do prefer more action/action hero stories and movies. Given the title of KDM’s book, I have to assume that by pointing out the works by Eldredge, for example, she is saying that teaching there is a certain “maleness” in boys that needs to be nurtured and valued is somehow wrong and a “corruption” of the Christian faith. I couldn’t disagree more. Of course, there are always going to be exceptions, but generally speaking, what Eldredge and Dobson say about the natural tendencies of boys/men, as opposed to the natural tendencies of girls/women is true.

KDM, though, apparently disagrees. In fact, she seems to think “maleness” and “masculinity” itself is the problem. In fact, it was around this point in the book that I started to see that she really does routinely make this point. She will bring up examples of various “Christian men’s movements” or books, where the speaker or author emphasizes that Christian men should embrace their masculinity but also not be afraid to be tender, loving fathers and husbands—that is what being a Christian man is about. In fact, the speaker or author will stress that being a “real man” is not about being “macho,” insensitive, or sexually promiscuous or abusive. And yet, for some reason, KDM interprets all that as “white Evangelical men” just trying to hang on to their “male supremacy and patriarchy.” She sees that as somehow “insidious.” As I read her book, I found myself more than once thinking, “She’s not against toxic masculinity; she’s against masculinity.” I’m sorry, but that is not healthy.

Now, if you want to talk about toxic masculinity and abusive and domineering behavior within Evangelicalism, there are certainly plenty examples of that. KDM focuses on a few, one being the Christian Reconstructionalist Doug Wilson. He took things to a whole new level and, among other things, taught that masculine men should dominate in the home and in society. (And just wait until we get into the likes of Mark Driscoll). To be clear, men Wilson and Driscoll are horrible. KDM is absolutely right to call them out as corrupters of the faith. The problem, though, is that she basically lumps movements like Promise Keepers and authors like Eldredge in with the likes of Wilson and Driscoll. No matter what you may personally think about Promise Keepers and Eldredge, you are absolutely out of your mind if you think they are just like Wilson and Driscoll.

George W. Bush, Evangelicals, and the 2000 Election
When it comes to the 2000 election, KDM notes that Evangelicals threw their support behind George W. Bush, who really was an authentic Evangelical who talked about “compassionate conservatism.” Still, though, KDM claims that Bush bought his Crawford Ranch just before announcing his candidacy for president because it was a good photo op (you know, those patriarchal Evangelicals love that cowboy image!). I do not know how KDM was able to discern Bush’s inner rationale for buying the ranch, but I’m sure it is just a happy coincidence that she was able to use her clairvoyance to ascertain that Bush’s reason for buying the ranch fit perfectly with the narrative she was pushing in her book, namely that Evangelicals love them some cowboys.

In any case, the events of 9/11 drastically changed things in America. According to KDM, ever since the fall of the Soviet Union, Evangelicals had been looking for a new battle to challenge their militaristic, patriarchal version of Christian nationalism. With the attack on 9/11, they had found it—the war on terror. Just like that patriarchal model of a masculine man defending his wife and family, Evangelicals wanted to see a masculine military defend Lady Liberty. As KDM mentions, this mentality could be seen during the 2004 GOP convention, where Evangelical singer-songwriter Michael W. Smith sang “There She Stands,” a song about the American flag standing among the rubble of the Twin Towers: “It was a small rhetorical step to change the feminine ‘beauty’ all men were created to fight for into the nation herself” (186).

Again, I am quite dumbfounded. This is what interpreting history through a rigid, ideological lens looks like. When someone routinely reduces everything in society, culture, or history to one or two ambiguous causes, like “patriarchy,” or “Christian nationalism,” that person is no longer a historian. That person is an idealogue. That person forgoes even acknowledging the complexity of history and the multi-faceted dynamics that affect every historical trend and event, and instead provides an over-simplistic reason that explains everything with a word or two you can fit on a bumper-sticker.