Jesus and John Wayne: Kristin Kobes Du Mez

Our guest, Calvin University professor of history Kristin Kobes Du Mez, discusses her timely and polarizing book, Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation. This heavily-researched historical account of American Evangelicalism has ignited conversations within denominations and across political divides.

Du Mez offers a sweeping, revisionist history of the last seventy-five years of white evangelicalism, revealing how evangelicals have worked to replace the Jesus of the Gospels with an idol of rugged masculinity and Christian nationalism―or in the words of one modern chaplain, with “a spiritual badass.”

A much-needed reexamination of perhaps the most influential subculture in this country, Jesus and John Wayne shows that, far from adhering to biblical principles, modern white evangelicals have remade their faith, with enduring consequences for all Americans.

Kristin Kobes Du Mez is a professor of history at Calvin University and the author of A New Gospel for Women. She has written for the Washington Post, Christianity Today, Christian Century, and Religion & Politics, among other publications. She lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan.