Predominately white conservative evangelicals, of the Southern Baptist kind, are my people. I have studied it, but I have also witnessed it unfold as a seminary student, as a member of a pastoral staff in a Southern Baptist church, as a Christian school teacher, as a seminary professor, and as a husband and father. Still, since coming to Christ in 1988, I have partaken in the recent history of evangelicalism. Thus, the history of evangelicalism in the 1970s and 1980s was a history I learned about in books, and had no direct experience thereof. I came to Christ after I went to college, and initially joined a Southern Baptist church because the person who led me to Christ was a Southern Baptist. I was raised in a family of mainline Presbyterians and Episcopalians, and did not go to church except on holidays during my childhood and teenage years. In fact, I am the first evangelical Christian in my family’s history, as far as I know. I was not born into an evangelical family. In short, I do not read Du Mez’s book from the standpoint of total objectivity, nor do I approach her subject matter as a set of pure abstractions in which I have no part.įurthermore, I bring my own experiences as an evangelical to the narrative that Du Mez has produced in her book. And lastly, I am a Christian historian myself, and am constantly thinking about how to be a worthy student and teacher of history, as well as a creditable teller of past stories for present audiences. I also am a white, conservative evangelical Christian, so I read the pages of this book with the realization that my people are the subject of this book (although I do question how valid the way DuMez normativizes the concept of “white evangelical” is). For one, I know Professor Du Mez professionally and I have a deep and abiding respect and admiration for her. I am deeply invested in more than one element of Kristin Kobes Du Mez’s Jesus and John Wayne. Consider this review a cri de coeur over a book written as a cri de coeur. I have reviewed dozens of books in my professional life, but this review will be different. Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation by Kristin Kobes Du Mez (New York: Liveright, 2020), 386 pages, $18.95 (Hardback).Īs I begin, please indulge me as I make a few personal prefatory remarks.

Du mez book