And one question that seems to constantly recur is: why have so many white evangelicals continued to support Donald Trump, who, despite his promises to defend them, seems to share so few stated evangelical values and beliefs? In her book, Du Mez begins by proposing her own answer to this question which first arose following the 2016 election. Through both news analysis and casual conversations, many of us are still trying to make sense of it all. Afterward many evangelical leaders stood by Trump as he contested the election results and protests broke out across the country and at the capitol in response. As the calendar turned over from 2020 to 2021, evangelicals continued to overwhelmingly support Donald Trump with exit polls from the November 2020 election showing 75% of white evangelical votes cast in his favor even as he lost to Joe Biden. The USA’s divisions were on clear display in our debates over mask-mandates, racial justice, and the integrity of our election process. (Jun.The year that has passed since Kristin Kobes Du Mez published her New York Times best seller, Jesus and John Wayne, has been a politically rocky one, to say the least. This lucid, potent history adds a much needed religious dimension to understanding the current American right and the rise of Trump. Persuasively arguing that the evangelical dismissal of Trump’s flaws is the culmination of believing that “God-given testosterone came with certain side effects,” Du Mez closes with a bruising chapter on recent evangelical leaders’ abuses and sex scandals, such as those involving Mark Driscoll, Ted Haggard, and C.J.
The recent growth of homeschooling and Quiverfull (child-centric evangelical theology) and evangelicals’ suspicion of Obama are also explored.
9/11, she argues, revitalized the extreme warrior ideal for evangelical men and curtailed the softer patriarchy fostered by the Promise Keeper rallies of the 1990s. For Du Mez, the growth of Christian publishing and popular culture in the mid-century reinforced the sense that evangelicals were at war with liberal social movements like feminism and civil rights.
Starting in the early 20th century, white Christian men followed charismatic preachers in striving for a muscular, militant masculinity. Historian Du Mez ( A New Gospel for Women) explains white evangelical support for Trump in this engaging history of the shifting ideal of Christian masculinity.
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