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I've been waiting a long time for this @CTmagazine review of JESUS AND JOHN WAYNE, and, well, it looks like I won't be winning any CT book awards this year. As you might imagine, I have some thoughts. And so, a thread: 1/15 https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2020/october-web-only/jesus-john-wayne-kristin-kobes-du-mez-masculinity.html
I'm gratified that new editor in chief @DanlHarrell shared his thoughts. The book is personal for many white evangelical readers and I love the deeply personal engagement it elicits. That said, I'm not quite sure what to make of Harrell's framing the review... 2/15
...in terms of a bad relationship with his girlfriend and Bill Gothard's guidance in seeking/demanding forgiveness. Is he troubled by his insistance that his girlfriend must obey and forgive him? Because...I am. I'm at a loss here. 3/15
To me this anecdote feels troublingly unresolved, but it is an important detail that seems to frame the entire review. A framing I confess I do not fully comprehend. 4/15
On the one hand, Harrell finds my thesis "compelling and extensively researched" and accepts that for many white evangelicals, their "faith" is inextricably linked to the ideology I unpack in this book, to this larger cultural identity. So we're good on that. And yet... 5/15
Harrell finds me guilty of "a bit of confirmation bias," asserting that "she mines American history for classic deplorables." I suppose that's open for interpretation. Is James Dobson a "classic deplorable"? Billy Graham, Piper, Eldredge, Metaxas, the Jerry Falwells... 6/15
Farrar, Weber, McCartney, and of course the list goes on and on. The point, rather, is how any true "deplorables"--Gothard, Wilson, Phillips, Driscoll, Patterson, etc., connect to the presumably "respectable" types--Piper, Dobson, and, yes, Christianity Today. 7/15
Here's the most puzzling part to me: "On the other hand are plenty of white evangelical men canceled out for political acts never committed but only assumed and whose patriotism gets distorted as nationalism simply because they’re white, Christian, and male." 8/15
Is Harrell suggesting that *I* am somehow "canceling" all white evangelical men? All conservative white evangelical men? All patriotic white evangelical men? I'm not really sure, but this is certainly not how the book is being read by many, many...white evangelical men. 9/15
And then: "As a political force they barely register compared to Amazon, Facebook, and Hollywood." I have no idea what this means. And then Harrell quotes Arthur Farnsley to claim that evangelicals will still be here after the election: they are... 10/15
..."our fellow-citizens, part of our country's lifeblood. We need to be building bridges toward evangelicals of goodwill, not burning them." Agreed! But we need more than "goodwill" to go on. There is much within white evangelicalism that must be confronted. 11/15
And this is where I confess I'm disappointed in the review. This isn't about canceling well-intentioned people. This is about helping even those with the best intentions take an honest, hard look at our own traditions, values, and complicity in what we have created. 12/15
It is critically important that white evangelicals who continue to wield significant cultural and religious power engage in this self-critique. "It's possible I'm part of the problem and that I have little ground from which to critique Du Mez's argument," Harrell writes... 13/15
"Hierarchy has its upsides...when you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression." And yet, it does feel as though Harrell backs down from this truth. TBH, in the end I'm not at all clear what lesson he learned from his girlfriend by "stewing in those juices." 14/
But I can agree with his closing thoughts: that we should aspire to "a hierarchy that locates our own interest at the bottom of the pile," and "if Jesus is the ideal, so much for John Wayne." But I think in the end I'm recommending a much tougher love. 15/15
Oh, and if you want to read the actual book that inspired this not-an-actual-review, here you are: https://bookshop.org/books/jesus-and-john-wayne-how-white-evangelicals-corrupted-a-faith-and-fractured-a-nation/9781631495731
