John Wayne Evangelicals: Wrong by a Mile
Notice how the views of contemporary scholarship mirror the values of woke culture, so much so that if both were speaking and you happened to close your eyes you couldn’t tell the difference; all because they speak as one voice. It’s odd really.
A case in point is Professor of History and Gender Studies Kristin Kobus Du Mez latest book; Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation.
Her scholarly work is an ideological treatise that misses the mark by a mile; with its choc-full, twisted assumptions about US Evangelicals; you could say it’s a real a la mode hatchet job.
That it says all the right things from a progressive angle tells you all you need to know.
If you’re in need of a couple more adjectives to describe Du Mez’s ideas of what makes an evangelical; the words hackneyed and cartoonish spring to mind.
Du Mez premise is along the lines; today, what it means to be a conservative evangelical is as much about culture as it is about theology.
Looks like she has a bad case of the ‘ol cognitive dissonance disorder; you know the one where they say, I know what you are.
Then forget to expound on that troublesome bit, but what am I, as she takes the problems of blind-sidedness and denial to new heights.
So to paraphrase a bit of scripture; take the log out of your own eye before you can see the splinter in someone else’s.
She begins with that old chestnut about evangelicals who voted for Trump having brought disgrace on their own heads, an argument if that’s what its supposed to be, long cooked to a cinder; so I won’t go there.
Du Mez criticizes Evangelicals for their support of celebrity religious- culture and of buying their theology at book outlets, even though it’s patently untrue, it is the reverse in fact.
How many progressive Christian authors do you know who’ve attained fame and fortune this way, please, it’s how they acquired their millions of followers with itching ears; and still do?
Let the roll-call begin ……..you know who they are.
The fact remains celebrity culture is endemic to Americans; it’s not just an evangelical thing, with the concept completely foreign to foreigners.
Stranger still, Du Mez imbibes from the same feeding trough yet doesn’t see it as a problem.
Du Mez then says evangelicals love terrible music and the military; okay so it’s down to personal preferences, what of it?
She takes a swipe at evangelicals and guns through the title of her book; all because conservatives believe it’s their constitutional right to bear arms; that and the Donald Trump thing; again.
Then it’s gets meatier; she throws around terms like militant masculinity, Trump proclaiming himself savior, don’t know about that, but compared to Obama it was a downgrade, some of HIS supporters actually called him the Messiah; oh yes they did.
Listen to her words; conservative white evangelicals had already traded a faith that privileges humility and elevates ‘the least of these’ for one that derides gentleness as the province of wusses.
Just what are you trying to say oh learned one.
There’s more; rather than turning the other cheek, they’d resolved to defend their faith and their nation, secure in the knowledge that the ends justified the means.
So evangelicals just won’t roll over and submit or go with the flow is what she means.
Du Mez is upset that the Jesus of the Gospels has been replaced by a vengeful, warrior Christ; yes, the fragile-minded really dislike warriors for some sad reasons all their own.
I don’t know what Gospels she refers to; Jesus Christ called his disciples Sons of Thunder, which doesn’t conjure up images of gentleness, neither does the Book of Revelation.
Then there was that time Jesus drove people out of the temple with whips in true Old Testament-prophet style, and all those woe to you diatribes of His, plus calling his detractors sons of hell and whitewashed tombs.
Has this woman read anything?
What to say, a Christ in the vein of a William Wallace has these types reaching for the smelling salts as well they might.
As far as all matters patriarchal go; the corruption (sin) of Adam and the deception of Eve destroyed the balance between the sexes.
This gave way to Adam’s dominion countered by Eve’s grasping attempts at a coup with the result; endless power struggles.
So don’t let’s pretend the debate and push for women clergy is motivated by altruism, it’s not.
It’s all about his real and imagined power and she who wants it.
Some radicals are honest enough to admit their aim is to swan around in the scarlet robes to approximate the sense of power that goes with it, and gain their voice; so you just sit down and listen.
Too many aren’t that honest but speak the language of entitlement nonetheless, strange how these groups always have rights where individuals don’t get as much as a look-in.
But they are desperate where self-sacrifice never is; that’s how you can tell.
Just because there are males who happen to be in the wrong place and in it for the power doesn’t mean the barbarians at the gates should just be let in to overrun the place.
No one in their right mind exchanges one wrong for another, that’s not how it works, nor should it.
While progressives reject all that dogma stuff they actually expect everyone to go along with whatever some pastor on tick-tock pulls out of his or her left ear.
Or whatever Kirsten Du Mez and academia has to say; which amounts to the same darn thing.
