Jesus and John Wayne

• How did these patterns, ideas, and beliefs manifest in my own church upbringing?
• What can we do to reverse or improve this situation?
• Why the constant emphasis on culture war BS?
• This struggle is very much cyclic in nature, and they always seem to fight extra hard after a lull. How can we halt the next reactionary wave? It is worth noting that the bulk of the text covers the last century and change, so most of the players have come from the same two generations or so. I'm well aware that their project has been heavily focused on ensuring their message's longevity, but is it possible that they'll quiet down as their figureheads and loudest followers die off?

• the author teaches history and gender studies at Calvin University, which is affiliated with the Christian Reformed Church of North America

  • I don't mean to undermine her arguments on that basis; in fact, I think that as a Christian educator criticizing fellow Christians, her perspective will be particularly valuable
  • the university's official position on queer sexuality is somewhat disappointing: they specifically distinguish between homosexuality and homosexualism, the former (same-sex attraction) being perfectly acceptable and the latter (same-sex intimacy) being sinful
  • again, this is not necessarily the author's position, but I think it adds some important context
• one inspiration for this book was a post-lecture book recommendation the author received from her students in the early 00s: Wild at Heart: Discovering the Secret of a Man's Soul by John Eldridge; the book, popular in evangelical circles at the time, posits a muscular, militaristic Christian manhood patterned after a warrior God
• as the invasion of Iraq proceeded, she began to examine the connection between this version of Christian manhood and politics (militaristic foreign policy, domestic culture wars)
• Du Mez focuses on white evangelicals as a political force, quite accurately so
• in 2016 commentators struggled to reconcile evangelicals' ostensible “family values” with their support for Trump; in fact, he embodied the very image of masculinity that conservative evangelicals identified with God-given authority to lead

  • I wonder if she's read The Authoritarians or is otherwise familiar with authoritarianism, which is strongly correlated with evangelical Christianity and similarly explains this behavior
• Trump's (and evangelicals') response to COVID-19 played on this idea of masculinity further: wearing masks or social distancing was equated with low masculinity; they called for Americans to act as “warriors” to reopen the economy; “faith over fear” was invited to keep worship services in-person in defiance of health officials, calling those who used hand sanitizer “losers” and “pansies”
• despite his refusal to condemn the alt-right, Trump declared himself “the president of law and order” in the wake of the George Floyd protests, forcing peaceful protesters away from the White House for a photo op with a Bible in front of St. John's Church
• he played on nostalgia for heroic white manhood and a time before PC “cancel culture”; white patriarchal power was what the MAGA heads wanted to restore
• p. xvii: “evangelical support for Trump was never a top-down affair…”; public disgrace of figures like Jerry Falwell did not erode that support
• some evangelicals have resisted these militant tendencies, but they are far from the loudest voices; Trump's presidency drew a clear divide between those factions
• even those horrified by the actions of their fellow evangelicals acknowledge the pressure to conform, on punishment of loss of followers or family
• p. xviii: “The 2020 election seems to have brought American evangelicalism to its breaking point.” Is this true, though?
• younger evangelicals in particular have begun to abandon the tradition, though older ones have also been questioning their position within evangelicalism and even their identities as Christians
• the remaining communities are in turn growing more monolithic and potentially more radicalized
• historically, militant white evangelicalism has thrived on a sense of embattlement; Trump was remarkable in his ability to stoke that feeling while granting white evangelicals considerable privilege and power; with him now gone, that feeling is unlikely to dissipate
• whitebread-in-chief Biden: “The Bible tells us to everything there is a season, a time to build, a time to reap and a time to sow. And a time to heal. This is the time to heal in America.”; nice aggressive centrism there, buddy
• for any such healing to take place, the militancy in white evangelicalism must be confronted; by understanding its history, we can begin to do so
• side note: this preface was composed in November 2020, before the January Capitol riot and coup attempt (what a time to be alive!); I wonder how the author reacted to that news

• evangelical support for Trump, according to Jeffress, was because they were “sick and tired of the status quo” and were looking for a leader who would “reverse the death spiral of this nation”
• Du Mez, who was intimately familiar with the college and town where Jeffress unofficially endorsed Trump, felt profoundly disconnected from the attendees
• Trump's blusterous confidence in his evangelical followers turned out to be well-placed despite his mockery of opponents, calls for violence, boasts of his manhood, and sexual indiscretions (including the “locker room talk” tapes)
• evangelicals had already traded a faith that elevates “the least of these” for one that derides gentleness as the province of wusses (replacing the Jesus of the Gospels with a vengeful warrior Christ); they sought to defend their faith and their nation, believing the ends would justify the means
• more than any other religious demographic in America, white evangelical Protestants:

  • support preemptive war
  • condone the use of torture
  • favor the death penalty
  • believe guns should be carried in most places
  • feel safer with a firearm around
  • oppose immigration reform
  • have more negative views of immigrants
  • do not believe the US has a responsibility to host refugees
  • support the border wall
  • perceive natural conflict between Islam and Christianity
  • think a majority nonwhite US would be a negative development
  • are significantly more authoritarian
  • believe that Christians face more discrimination in the US than Muslims
• Christian nationalism sure is a thing
• rugged, aggressive, militant white masculinity binds together these issues for white evangelicals; “A father's rule in the home is inextricably linked to heroic leadership on the national stage, and the fate of the nation hinges on both.”
• the National Association of Evangelicals defines evangelicalism according to four distinctives:

  • to uphold the Bible as one's ultimate authority
  • to confess the centrality of Christ's atonement
  • to believe in a born-again conversion experiment
  • to actively work to spread this good news and reform society
• this definition leaves a great deal of wiggle room: what sort of Jesus (conquering warrior or sacrificial lamb)? Which verses are of prime importance for daily Christian life?
• in truth, there is little common theological ground to American evangelicalism; theological illiteracy abounds within it

  • this is not a surprise after reading Hofstadter's account of its development; the revivalist tradition eschewed deep theological exploration in favor of simple emotional messaging
• many who do stand by the four distinctives do not call themselves evangelicals; this is especially true of Black Christians, who have long understood that the label describes more than simple beliefs
• surveys show that on nearly every social and political issue, Black Protestants apply their faith in ways counter to those of white evangelicals
• “in practice, the seemingly neutral 'evangelical distinctives' turn out to be culturally and racially specific.”

  • more on this?
• to many Black Christians, evangelicalism has become a white religious brand
• for white evangelicals, the “good news” of the Gospels has become linked to patriarchal authority, gender differences, and Christian nationalism, all of which are tied to white racial identity
• this faith creates affinities across denominational, regional, and socioeconomic differences even as it divides Americans as a whole; this is a major source of polarization
• White evangelicalism has the reach it does thanks to the pop culture it's produced: Christian Contemporary Music, Focus on the Family, VeggieTales, terrible films, etc.
• Is the Christian Reformed Church descended from the Dutch Reformed (as mentioned by Hofstadter)?

  • yes, yes it is
• evangelical pop culture has diffused heavily into traditional non-evangelical denominations and even secular culture (see VeggieTales), blunting the value of our definition of evangelicalism
• it's instead worthwhile to think of evangelicals in terms of how much they participate in this culture; some consume media only from this sphere, others also engage with secular media (think degrees of involvement)
• over the last several decades, conservative Christians have consolidated their power in evangelicalism through compelling ideology and strategic organization
• most importantly, the conservatives dominated evangelical pop culture
• LifeWay in particular, by dropping materials that defy the conservative orthodoxy, especially related to sexuality and gender
• side note: LifeWay is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention
• today's “conservative evangelicals” share more common ground on cultural values than on theology; Edwards and Whitefield are less revered than John Wayne, Teddy Roosevelt, Patton, MacArthur, and American soldiers in general
• Wayne is of particular interest to this book (surprise!); long admired by conservative politicians, he eventually became an icon of Christian masculinity for his toughness and swagger
• despite not being an evangelical Christian himself (or even living a life they would consider moral), Wayne symbolized for them a nostalgia for a mythical “Christian America”, traditional gender roles, and reassertion of (white) patriarchal authority
• the heroes who best embodied militant Christianity were those unencumbered by traditional Christian values

  • why was this?
• antecedents of the current evangelical movement were rooted in 19th century Southern evangelicalism and the muscular Christianity of the early 20th; it especially took form in the 40s and 50s under Billy Graham as a mix of gender traditionalism, militarism, and Christian nationalism
• with the assertion of masculine power, evangelicals hoped to keep America Christian, families strong, and the nation secure
• the upheavals of the 60s led Americans to question “traditional” values: gender/sexual norms, America as an unalloyed good, God's backing of the US
• the “family values” politics of the 70s and beyond have always been covers for issues of race, sex, power, and nation; white patriarchy is central to all of these
• the aforementioned evangelical media network served less as a soul-saving enterprise and more as a maintainer of evangelical identity, one rooted in “family values” and infused with a sense of cultural embattlement
• by the 80s, this strong identity allowed them to mobilize as a powerful partisan political force
• militant evangelical masculinity is deeply linked with a culture of fear (see Altemeyer's characteristics of authoritarian followers); once the “communist menace” of the Cold War had been defeated, they moved on to a culture war and later the so-called “War on Terror” (now a new culture war!)

  • see Hofstadter's observation that the anti-communists need their communists; see also the way that fascists require an enemy to find and destroy
• note the particular fear that Americans had grown “too soft and feminine”
• these fears were not simple responses to the changing times but had been actively stoked by evangelical thought leaders for decades to secure their own power
• these followers had been primed to respond to their imaginary fears by looking to a strong man for rescue
• Jeffress: (pp 13–14)
• this militant, masculine expression of Christianity is a cultural movement, not the inevitable result of “Biblical literalism” or the only possible interpretation of the Christian faith

• by the early 20th century, American Christianity had a masculinity problem, partly as a result of Victorian Christian emphasis on gentility, restraint, and emotional response
• as the nation's economy transitioned from physical labor toward corporate consumerism, American masculinity faced a similar disruption
• at the same time, new immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe were arriving, and women were expanding their horizons (riding bicycles, going to college, entering professions, having fewer children)
• newly unsure of their place in this changing environment, white Protestant men began to assert a rougher, tougher masculinity
• Teddy Roosevelt, who had been ridiculed as insufficiently masculine as a young man, struck out west to reinvent himself as the “Cowboy of the Dakotas”
• others similarly looked to the Wild West as a means to recapture some lost sense of masculinity; however, such opportunities were already drying up by Roosevelt's time
• instead they needed to look to the global stage with new American imperialism, encapsulated by Roosevelt's own Rough Riders and the Spanish-American War (also partly Roosevelt's work)
• Roosevelt's presidency in 1901 brought that fight for a ruggedized masculinity into national politics

  • what does Hofstadter have to say about this period?
• his hypermasculinity appealed to ordinary men anxious about both their status and the nation's; eventually the two would becomes fused
• look into: Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States (Bederman), chapter 1 footnote 2
• American Christians had to reconcile this new expression of masculinity with traditional Christian values; in the 1910s, they insisted that Christianity was essentially militant and warlike, calling on men to retake the church
• in much the same way, white Southern men had for decades used “Christian values” to maintain a tight social hierarchy despite the egalitarian message of Christianity
• enter Billy Sunday, baseball player turned preacher of muscular Christianity
• Sunday had no patience for nuance and was generally horny for war, one of a series of revivalist preachers (compare Hofstadter)
• following the Civil War, these revivalist movements started borrowing from modern marketing techniques to push a nondenominational “fundamentalist” version of the faith; they branded their efforts as purer and based on supposed plain reading of the Bible
• the fundamentalists were united against Biblical modernists, who rejected the “plain reading” in favor of critical scholarship (≈ critical theory?); they also focused on systemic dimensions of Christianity rather than the highly individualistic fundie view
• both groups, however, sought to masculinize the faith; the modernists saw their social activism as manly exercise, while the fundies focused on staunch defense of doctrine (masculine courage and conviction)
• the two factions were divided in response to WWI
• interestingly, the fundies did not at the time believe the US was a Christian nation, arguing that no such thing could exist until Christ's return; in response to the modernists' charge that they were unpatriotic, the fundies pointed to the German origin of Biblical criticism (sound familiar?)
• apparently both forgot that Protestantism also originated in Germany, but whatever
• disillusionment reigned after the war, taking some of the steam out of the militant Christian masculinity; in its place rose the ideal of the Christian businessman, efficient and charismatic (Barton's The Man No One Knows)
• the premillennialist fundies, on the other hand, exited the war with their militancy intact, viewing the war through an apocalyptic lens; they blamed German wartime barbarism on liberal theology and evolutionary theory and sought more than ever to protect American Christianity against those hazards (SOUND FAMILIAR???)
• as the fundies failed to take control of major denominations, their combativeness only felt more appropriate
• their masculine posturing turned them into objects of ridicule among American culture as a whole, further enhancing their sensation of outsiderdom
• they created an array of independent religious institutions of their own, eventually deciding to band together in the 40s
• the more militant fundies established the American Council of Christian Churches; in 1942, other fundie leaders rebranded as “evangelicals under the National Association of Evangelicals, trying to distance themselves from the more overtly reactionary latter group
• this is not to say the two factions were wholly separate, and indeed the hardcore fundies would exert massive influence over the evangelical movement as a whole
• all in all, they worked toward an offensive to rebuild American Christianity in their image
• all that was needed was a network to support and amplify their individual efforts
• enter Billy Graham, Fuller-Busch salesman from NC turned preacher
• kinda yuck how newspapers horned in on his appearance as “all-American male…Scottish genes and Nordic looks…craggy face, blue eyes, square jaw.”

  • this is white supremacy at work—why is Scottish/Nordic heritage the defining characteristic of “All-American”?
• George Marsden: the simplest definition of “evangelical” might as well be “someone who likes Billy Graham”
• as one who had once believed Christianity was “for sissies”, Graham made sure to emphasize Christ's manly man manliness in his own preaching, to much success
• following the attack on Pearl Harbor, WWII was an obvious battle between good and evil, reviving the militant, militaristic model of muscular Christianity
• interestingly, the fundie evangelicals and liberal Protestants swapped attitudes about war, the former capitalizing on the opportunity to leave the cultural fringes
• that said, they also viewed the military itself as a gateway to sin and moral decay—and thus a ripe target for missionary work
• look into: American Evangelicals (Loveland)
• the military, hoping to improve the discipline and moral vitality of its troops, welcomed the evangelical organizations
• Graham began his revivalist career with Youth for Christ (YFC) during WWII; his rallies featured patriotic displays and a gospel of heroic Christian nationalism, earning him a place as an evangelical star by the war's end
• following a crisis of faith in the fall of '49, Graham put aside his intellectual difficulties and submitted completely to the Bible's authority
• he expected “something unusual” on his upcoming trip to LA, and he got exactly that: the threat of nuclear annihilation and the conversion of a celebrity cowboy
• two days before that LA revival, Truman announced that Russia had successfully tested a nuclear bomb, creating an atmosphere of fear that Graham readily exploited
• calling Communism “a religion inspired, directed, and motivated by the Devil himself”, he argued that the city was a prime target not for its strategic value but rather for its moral depravity (crime, drinking, sexual immorality, and gasp divorce)

  • OK, if the Devil is directing the Commies, why would they want to destroy LA for its depravity? I'd imagine the Devil would find LA pretty rad for those features, but whatever
• for national morality and stability, a strong (patriarchal) family was key for Graham; women, he said, had been cursed by God to exist fully under the thumbs of men
• basically, they needed to suck up to (and probably suck off) their husbands, while the husbands just needed to occasionally throw some candy or flowers their way; pretty sweet deal!
• not all evangelicals at the time shared Graham's strict patriarchal beliefs; some even supported women's rights
• Graham's attitude reflected that of the early 20th century fundies, but he added some heavy Christian nationalism into the mix
• “traditional” gender roles were quite popular in Cold War America, even outside the evangelical sphere; Cold War masculinity was intimately tied to militarism (gotta protect our women!)
• the second part of Graham's LA miracle took his already widely resonant message to the moon
• Stuart Hamblin, a celebrity cowboy/singer, bonded with Graham over their shared Southern upbringing and shortly afterward converted at one of Graham's services; this sparked a series of celebrity conversions across the city and catapulted Graham himself to celebrity status
• the Cold War defense industry had brought millions of Southern evangelicals into Southern California and the Sunbelt, bringing with them their combative fundie faith
• the myth of the American cowboy was a perfect fit for that faith
• p. 28: “signifying an earlier…harnessed for political ends.” (copy entire passage)

  • emphasis on the idea that white men enforced order by wielding power unchecked
• Hamblin, meanwhile, began incorporating the darker aspects of the Christian story into his music, blurring the line between sacred and secular
• as the evangelical media empire expanded (radio, magazine, the Christian Booksellers' Association, colleges), it also had to sand off denominational differences to maximize their reach
• the Christian publishing industry helped create an identity based around a more genuine evangelical ethos
• John Wayne, not even remotely evangelical-adjacent, was an interesting figure for evangelicals to look to; it was his masculine identity, rather than theology, that attracted them to him
• his breakout films were released in 1948, at the outset of the Cold War when a new American imperialism was rising
• in an environment of rising nationalism and moral exceptionalism, the Western offered a simplistic good versus evil morality tale
• later, with Sands of Iwo Jima, Wayne combined the mythology of the American cowboy with that of the freedom-fighting soldier
• this heroic masculinity would come to serve as a template for the evangelical Christian manhood

• unlike today, the evangelicals of the mid-20th century were nearly all Democrats; today's evangelical-Republican alliance was born from a realignment between the 50s–80s
• the central drivers were the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, and “family values”, all of which were unified by a defense of white patriarchy
• Graham was a central figure in the realignment; dissatisfied with Truman's handling of the Korean War (which he called a “half-hearted war”) and a disastrous meeting with the president, Graham personally urged Eisenhower to run for the presidency
• Eisenhower agreed and requested Graham's support, and 60% of evangelicals voted Republican in 1952
• Eisenhower maintained a relationship with Graham and the evangelicals; in particular, he appeared at the first National Prayer Breakfast (1953), oversaw the addition of “one nation under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance (1954) and “In God We Trust” to the nation's currency (1955)

  • interesting given that the Pledge was once seen as really weird and fashy
• these happenings lent support to the claim that America was a Christian nation and boosted the social/cultural/political power of the evangelicals
• Eisenhower and Graham both believed that Christianity would help America in the Cold War; Eisenhower could exploit the nation's peaking religiosity, and Graham could cozy up to Cold War presidents by selling as a moral crisis
• Eisenhower's presidency saw the explosion o the military-industrial complex; in his farewell address, he stated that only a strong military would keep Americans free to worship their God
• by the end of the 50s, the conflation of God and country further inflated the militarism of Christian nationalism and the evangelicals themselves
• with the baby boom of the 50s, the “traditional” nuclear family appeared to be flourishing
• note that the nuclear family with male breadwinner originated in the 1920s and peaked in the 50s–60s; until then, multigenerational families with multiple contributors were the norm
• with rising religiosity and a political system united over the Cold War, the evangelicals had been fully mainstreamed, were active players in national politics, and were decidedly Republican (though the modern Religious Right was still two decades off)
• however, the upheavals of the 60s–70s would seriously threaten their position—specifically, they would challenge the authority of white patriarchal rule
• evangelicals were not all against the civil rights movement; most evangelical resistance came from the Southern and fundie factions, who crusaded against integration as “a denial of all that we believe in”
• civil rights activism was to them disorder and disruption
• “moderate” evangelicals, though ostensibly supportive of the movement's goals, began withdrawing support as activists engaged in civil disobedience

  • smacks of Danskin's observation: “we support your goals…but not like this!”
  • see also MLK's new phase interview
• extremely important passage (p. 38): “Many evangelicals, too, found it hard to accept that the sin of racism ran deep through the nation's history. To concede this seemed unpatriotic. Having embraced the idea of America as a 'Christian nation', it was hard to accept a critique of the nation as fundamental as that advanced by the civil rights movement.”

  • it's easier to believe that the status quo is just and moral or somehow “natural” than to acknowledge the reality—which requires confronting one's own complicity in those oppressive structures
• we can observe in this shift a template of the “color blind” euphemistic approach of today; phrasing like “family values”, “law and order”, “parents' rights”—these are absolutely racially loaded and always have been, but they make excellent rallying points for those who consider themselves non-racist
• the election of JFK, a Catholic Democrat, was doubly concerning for evangelicals, especially the fundies, who saw him as soft on communism
• Pepperdine (a very conservative evangelical college) hosted a “freedom forum” in 1961; 1500 businessmen and educators came together, floating ideas like outlawing the Communist Party, keeping China out of the UN, disbanding the Peace Corps, and commending the John Birch Society

  • Pepperdine College—is that where Samantha was studying recently? The name sounds familiar.
• Barry Goldwater's “cowboy conservative” was very attractive to teh evangelicals; he called for strong defense and courageous citizenry over peace
• quoting Pat Boone: “I would rather see my four girls shot and die as little girls who have faith in God than leave them to die some years later as godless, faithless, soulless Communists.”

  • Yikes, dude. Yikes.
• fundie Drake meme: calling for a “peace race” instead of an arms race—nah; indoctrinating troops with far-right anticommie propaganda—yeah
• anyway, when General Walker got into trouble for doing exactly that, Goldwater, Thurmond, and others called for a hearing on “military muzzling”; when JFK warned against following extremists, Thurmond whined about pussyfooting “diplomats”
• General Walker then proceeded to incite rebellion over the integration of Ole Miss (because of course) and running anticommie “crisis crusades”
• and then there's Bob Wells, pastor of LA's Central Baptist Church, who established some Christian schools in Orange County to teach “Christian Americanism”
• these schools rigorously screened textbooks to ensure Christianity featured heavily in American history and put on “patriotic” activities featuring Union, Confederate, and WWII figures on the same level
• Wells strongly backed Goldwater's 1964 presidential bid, including promoting it with his church's resources
• Goldwater seemed down to incite nuclear war and was unbothered by accusations of extremism; he also wanted to exit the UN
• unsurprisingly, Reagan was all for Goldwater, calling on Americans to preserve “the last hope of man on earth” for their children

  • 14 words, anyone?
• Goldwater (thankfully) lost in a landslide to LBJ, as most evangelicals outside the Sunbelt thought him too radical
• Graham had been politically quite for this election, but that would change with Nixon's 1968 campaign; he was loud and proud in his support, a decision he would live to regret in '72
• Nixon had strong support among evangelicals; his Southern strategy successfully drew in segregationists
• look into: the 1965 Watts riots
• as the civil rights movement grew louder, “states' rights” and “law and order” politics became even more alluring
• because I'm 12: 69% of evangelicals voted for Nixon in 1968 (nice)
• Graham had long coached Nixon on appealing to evangelicals, and Nixon worked to keep up that alliance
• Pat Boone at Nixon's “Honor America Day: ”[America has] had some problems, but we're beginning to come together under God.”
• Nixon's foreign policy was—thanks in part to Special Counsel Colson—endorsed by the Southern Baptist Convention and Billy Graham (this includes the secret bombing of Cambodia)
• McGovern, Nixon's opponent, was vocally opposed to this culture of militarism, fighting calls of “America—love it or leave it” by urging Americans to fight for positive change “so we may love it the more.”
• Campus Crusade's Explo '72 was a successful prototype of Christian popular culture as an outreach tool
• a massive spectacle (including the 8-hour “Christian Woodstock”), it hilariously took place the same week of the Watergate break-in

  • look into: the whole Watergate thing
• when the scandal later broke, Graham regretted his outspoken political involvement; his successor would learn no lessons from that misstep
• the antiwar left was not the godless bunch the evangelicals made them out to be; many mainline clergy were disgusted by the brutality of Americas involvement in Vietnam
• the evangelicals, who had invested considerable effort on military evangelism over the previous two decades, actively minimized said brutality; Billy Graham responded to the My Lai massacre like so: “[I have] never heard of a war where innocent people are not killed.” and, “We have all had our Mylais [sic] in one way or another, perhaps not with guns, but we have hurt others with a thoughtless word, an arrogant act, or a selfish deed.”

  • because these are all definitely in the same league
• Vietnam led many to question the exercise of American power and the supposed greatness of the nation itself; the evangelicals, however, believed the US wasn't exercising enough power
• once again, the evangelicals felt themselves to be a faithful remnant, the nation's last hope for spiritual survival
• there was a tiny evangelical Left critical of the militarism and patriarchy of their right-wing counterparts, but it was still dwarfed by the latter
• economic populism began to crystallize within the evangelical circles: children of blue-collar workers were dying in Vietnam while the children of the elite protested the war on college campuses
• nostalgic celebration of rugged masculinity drew evangelicals and the white working class together
• American failures in Vietnam supposedly indicated serious shortcomings of American manhood; the evangelicals saw this as a religious issue best addressed within the Christian family
• in his 1972 book How to Rear Children, Jack Hyles laid out their ideal gender roles: boys needed to be violent winners, lest they allow their nation to bow before “lesser” ones; girls must be submissive and immediately, unquestioningly obedient; both should be spanked extensively (10–15 minutes per session) and violently (leaving visible striping)—that includes infants

  • re-watch the Fundie Fridays episode on Hyles
• red-blooded American manhood and God-and-country virtues came to be indistinguishable
• from Hyles's book: “God pity this weak-kneed generation which stands for nothing, fights for nothing, and dies for nothing.”

  • (not sarcasm) where have I heard that before?
• John Wayne, meanwhile, had been engaged heavily in conservative activism since we last saw him; he was involved with the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals (no relation to the MPAA), supported the House Un-American Activities Committee, produced anticommunist propaganda, and voiced a Goldwater campaign ad
• Wayne's Chisum was Nixon's platonic ideal of “law and order”
• the two films he directed, The Alamo and The Green Berets, offered simplistic, black-and-white views of their respective conflicts and war in general; their critical pannings proved to conservatives that cultural elites disdained heroic masculinity
• inspired by Wayne's mythologized wars, many young men jumped unprepared into the real thing and paid dearly for it; in the words of one Ron Kovic: “I gave my dead dick for John Wayne.”
• Wayne's work was undeniably imperialist (white heroes subduing nonwhite masses), racist (“I believe in white supremacy until the blacks are educated to a point of responsibility.”), and militaristic
• on student protesters, he said, “There doesn't seem to be respect for authority anymore.”
• his crassness was key to his appeal with evangelicals, something that would become a pattern among their heroes
• again, his popularity among them came in spite of his personal life, which was very much at odds with their stated virtues; his attitudes, his affect, and the masculine ideal he represented drew them to him
• he modeled masculine strength, aggression, and redemptive violence
• evangelical politics in the postwar period had been driven by fear (of godless Communism, immorality weakening the nation)
• by the 1960s, they had begun to feel like a powerful force in the nation; the upheavals of that decade brought the realization that they were out of touch with the larger culture
• naturally, their long-standing rhetoric of fear continued, bolstering the role of the heroic masculine protector

• Marabel Morgan, in the midst of her own marital struggle, discovered the ideal path for all marriages: women just needed to shut up and do everything their husbands wanted, stroking his manly ego as hard as she stroked his manhood itself
• she outlined this theory in live seminars as well as a 1973 book, both titled The Total Woman; both were massively popular among evangelical conservative women
• judging by her cited examples, marriage sucked in those days
• interestingly, the book was flush with sex tips, one of which was to be available 24/7
• she based these ideas on her interpretation of the Bible
• she also argued that absent fathers resulted in gay sons, a talking point her friend Anita Bryant ran with to become a leading voice in antigay evangelical activism
• as an aside, the antigay sentiment within conservative Christianity was rooted in the significance they placed on strict, distinct gender roles
• Morgan gained some early notice in 1972, when twelve wives of Miami Dolphins players attended her Total Woman courses, after which the team enjoyed the first undefeated season in NFL history; coincidence? definitely, but it earned her some inquiries from other teams the next year
• her book reached the wide audience that it did due to the emerging Christian Booksellers Association
• though its focus was on women, it also painted a clear picture of masculinity: men had fragile egos, vigorous libidos, and an entitlement to lead, rule, and have all their needs met completely on their terms
• Morgan's message resonated with so many women because it offered what seemed to be a more viable path to positive change than feminism did; after all, many unhappy housewives had few realistic options outside their homes, so it made more sense to improve upon what they had; many also felt demeaned or ignored by feminism, which had seemingly little room for housewifery
• Elisabeth Elliot's 1976 book Let Me Be a Woman had a similar perspective on womanhood
• equality of the sexes was non-Biblical, according to Elliot; even the concept of a trinitarian God had hierarchy and submission built right in
• evangelical women would come to form an important component of the Religious Right
• Phyllis Schlafly, though not evangelical herself, was one of the most influential figures in women's evangelical politics
• contrary to the image of “traditional” womanhood she promoted, her own life was less than traditional; she held a master's degree, worked at the American Enterprise Association (forerunner of the American Enterprise Institute), and twice campaigned for Congress
• Robert Welch (founder of the John Birch Society) called her one of their most loyal members, though she denied membership in the organization
• unsurprisingly, she was a fan of Barry Goldwater, even publishing a book to promote his campaign that helped him secure the nomination
• she was originally neutral on the Equal Rights Amendment until she read conservative critiques
• among her takes on the ERA: American women were not oppressed, in fact holding the most privilege of any group in history; men and women were obviously different — women had babies, and men didn't; therefore, “Judeo-Christian” societies created laws requiring men to protect women; in fact, equal rights “fanatics” threatened women's rights (to have babies and be protected)
• these “radicals” were waging war on marriage, children, and family; they sought free sex (oh noes!), Federal day-care centers for babies (instead of homes! How communist!), and abortions instead of families
• the truth according to Schlafly was that women liked being housewives and homemakers; who would rather cuddle a typewriter or factory machine than a baby?
• among working-class women, Schlafly's image of happy homemaking certainly sounded preferable to their unfulfilling work and low pay
• Schlafly, as a Catholic, was an early arrival to the anti-abortion brigade; even most evangelicals, though disapproving of “abortion-on-demand”, were perfectly fine with abortions in necessary situations (rape, incest, fetal abnormalities, high-risk pregnancies); the Southern Baptist Convention urged states to expand abortion access in 1971
• this attitude changed once proponents began to frame the issue in terms of women controlling their reproduction; once abortion became linked to feminism and the sexual revolution, evangelicals started to see it as an assault on women's God-given role, the family, and Christian America
• Schlafly, like Graham before her, connected family issues and national security
• in an…interesting derivation, she also claimed that the ERA would make women more vulnerable to sexual exploitation: the feminists were forcing women into roles they didn't want and depriving them (and their daughters) of masculine protection
• though nonsensical, this argument mobilized conservative women to fight against the ERA
• Schlafly's 1977 book The Positive Woman (later republished as The Christian Woman with negligible changes) essentially foreshadowed today's anti-feminist discourse in all its anticommunist, Christian nationalist, militaristic glory, right down to invocations of “Judeo-Christian civilization” and the destructiveness of equality
• though Schlafly did not explicitly discuss race, her views definitely aligned with those opposed to civil rights
• after losing the battle for segregation, conservatives rallied around opposition to the ERA, using language very similar to that of segregationists (“forced” busing → “forced” women, desegregation → “desexegration”)
• and of course there's the “restroom question”: not only were public restrooms recently integrated, the ERA threatened to make them unisex (gasp!)
• as I well know, the South has a long tradition of unfounded fearmongering over white women's sexual vulnerability versus black men, mirroring today's similarly-unfounded right-wing fury over transgender people in public restrooms
• when first skimming this chapter, I chafed at the characterization of Schlafly as “brilliant”; having now read the chapter, I can admit that this is true in the most infuriating way; she was essentially the first to turn triggering the (women's) lib(ber)s into an art form
• at speaking engagements, she liked to thank her husband for “allowing” her to do so, just to piss off her opponents; she received a death threat in a Houston restaurant, then simply smiled and asked for milk in her coffee; accused of hypocrisy for not living her tradwife ideal, she used her life as “proof” that the ERA was superfluous; of her opponents, she said, “They're losing, so they're irrational and mad.”
• Morgan and Elliot unified white Christian women around a shared domestic identity, and Schlafly turned them into a political force fighting a “religious war”, united even across denominational lines
• as with Project REDMAP, it's hard not to respect the strength of her vision and her successes, even if one finds those goals repugnant

• the postwar evangelical sphere contained both culturally-engaged figures like Billy Graham, Anita Bryant, and Marabel Morgan, as well as a more reclusive separatist element
• the two would grow more united in the 70s over patriarchal authority, thanks in part to the two individuals discussed below (Bill Gothard & James Dobson)

  • rewatch the Bill Gothard episode of Fundie Fridays
• after earning his master's in Christian education at Wheaton College, Gothard sought to apply Christian principles to resolve conflicts between parents and their “wayward” children; to do this, he founded Campus Teams in 1961 (later the Institute in Basic Youth Conflicts and later Institute in Basic Life Principles)
• Gothard's ideas were influenced by those of Rousas John Rushdoony, who in the 60s and 70s advocated for Christian Reconstructionism and strict adherence to “biblical law”
• here are a few of Rushdoony's beliefs:

  • America was founded as a Christian nation (so far, so pedestrian)
  • Enlightenment notions of equality were dangerous and wrong (uh oh)
  • democracy was antithetical to God-ordained governing structures
  • the Civil War was not a battle over slavery but was instead a religious war in which the South was defending Christian civilization (oh no)
  • slavery had been voluntary and was beneficial to the slaves (dude, stop)
  • women and African Americans shouldn't be educated, and women shouldn't speak in public (yikes)
  • instituting Old Testament law was the only way to fix the disorder of modern society
• so yeah, not a great dude
• Rushdoony believed that things could only be good if everyone submitted to the proper (God-ordained) authority
• he argued that churches and families should be free from state interference; naturally, this led him and his followers to oppose public schools in favor of Christian schools or homeschooling

  • look into: Building God's Kingdom: Inside the World of Christian Reconstructionism
• Gothard also believed that submission to authority was of utmost importance and proposed a divinely-ordained chain of command
• in each sphere (family, church, government), authority figures were to wield absolute power over those below them

  • the implications of this are just staggering
• this extended even to the world of business, wedding patriarchal gender roles to free-market capitalism
• Gothard viewed those in authority as stand-ins for God; thus the notion of personal rights was directly at odds with God's perfect hierarchical structure
• the aggrieved should not struggle against authority but submit to it and be rewarded in heaven
• anyway, they were both really turned on by the thought of independent or feminist women seeking the protection of a man
• Gothard's solutions for family conflicts included:

  • no dating; courtship should be arranged by daddy
  • girls should be covered head to toe, focus on training domesticity, and ignore higher education
  • still can't resolve your issues? Just send your kids to the IBLP to be institutionalized!
• the intense authoritarian conditions at the IBLP were ripe for abuse, and to nobody's surprise, it was revealed in 1980 that Gothard's brother (and IBLP VP) had had affairs with 15 women within the institute
• Gothard had known of this behavior for some time and had been active in covering the abuse up; in 1976, he introduced a new rule (supposedly based on Matthew 18) barring staff from saying anything about another that wasn't “nice”; very normal, very cool
• there were a few within conservative evangelical circles who criticized Gothard's authoritarianism, pointing out that he did not place himself under any authority, but they were a minority; he and his followers were trying to live faithfully in these secular times, so going a little overboard is perfectly understandable
• at any rate, his followers could easily ignore criticisms by claiming the critics just didn't want to submit to proper authority
• Gothard was not well-known outside of conservative evangelicalism, but within it he had massive influence; his homeschool curriculum spread the tenets of Christian Reconstructionism quite far, even to those who might not have identified as such
• while Gothard did not engage directly in politics, he influenced many who did

  • Howard Phillips joined Rushdoony to fight the “IRS assault on Christian schools” in the mid-70s
  • Phillips's son Doug would later become a key figure in the Christian homeschool scene
  • Pat Robertson and D. James Kennedy hosted Rushdoony on their broadcasts, helping to mainstream his ideas and infusing them with some prosperity Gospel
  • law school faculty at Oral Roberts University, CBN/Regend University, and Liberty University cited Rushdoony
  • then there are Francis Schaeffer, John Wayne Whitehead, and Tim LaHaye
• despite his reputation as the crazy uncle of the Religious Right, Rushdoony's ideas would a generation later be core to its identity
• alarmed by the number of troubled children coming into his office in the 60s, little-known child psychologist James Dobson published Dare to Discipline in 1970
• Dobson believed that the issues he witnessed were all the result of the breakdown of the social order (the sexual revolution, divorce, dissolution of the family) and sought to combat them with old-fashioned parenting advice and “Judeo-Christian values”
• his work directly contradicted the celebrated advice of Dr. Benjamin Spock, arguing that all children were naturally sinful and needed a stern hand to keep them in line; this was possibly projection of his own history as an unruly child

  • look into: Benjamin Spock
• though descended from three generations of evangelical ministers, Dobson decided to pursue psychology, particularly child psychology; given his aforementioned conclusion as to the root of all problems with the youths, I'm not sure he got his money's worth out of his education
• Dare to Discipline, though not an overtly political book, definitely addressed the political questions of the day; Dobson spoke to parents bewildered by a world vastly different than that of their own childhoods, promising that those differences could be smoothed out by reasserting an authoritarian family structure
• quoting Dobson: “Respect for leadership is the glue that holds social organization together. Without it there is chaos, violence, and insecurity for everyone.”
• Dobson resigned from the American Psychological Association in 1973 when they removed homosexuality from the DSM; soon thereafter, he departed from USC and Children's Hospital to spread his ideas via radio and seminars
• one of his last talks was recorded as a 7-part series and marketed to evangelical churches; the segment on distant fathers was packaged as a 1-hour TV special titled Where's Dad? and aired across the country on donations from local evangelical businessmen
• Dobson founded Focus on the Family in 1977, and by the mid-80s his half-hour daily show was airing on 800 stations nationwide
• though his first book had little to say about gender roles, he soon concluded that reinforcing “traditional” gender roles was a must to fight back against the social chaos ruining the youths
• global economic changes in the 70s were once again reining in the myth of a single male breadwinner, leading more women into the workforce
• divorce rates began to rise sharply as well (in part thanks to greater economic independence for women); the evangelicals viewed this trend as a crisis of the family
• at the same time, legislative actions (Title IX, the ERA, Comprehensive Child Development Bill, Roe) and the increased strength of the feminist movement served as proof to the evangelicals of a coordinated assault on God-ordained gender roles
• Dobson's views on distinct gender roles were as much about national preservation as they were about “protecting” marriage; the future of the nation depended on, in his mind, “how it sees its women”

  • stew on that phrasing for a bit; what is he getting at?
• he argued that the media and feminism were colluding to erode masculinity
• the stability of the nation depended on men supporting and protecting women, he said; failure to keep this course would result in certain ruination; those who didn't expend their energies in support of the home were bound to end up alcoholics, drug addicts, sexually impure, and aggressive en masse
• his prescription: a “call to arms” to return to traditional masculinity
• importantly, Dobson presented himself and his ideas as apolitical, which helped to further his reach; parents would tune in for child-rearing tips and would receive a dose of politics as a chaser
• similarly, he made sure to work alongside local churches rather than taking their place
• by avoiding divisive theological issues, FotF could draw in a wide audience—evangelicals, fundamentalists, mainline Protestants, Catholics, and nonchurchgoers (“believers but not belongers”) alike; that audience was still mostly white
• a decade after publishing Dare to Discipline, Dobson had become a powerful figure in evangelicalism; in the mind of Richard Land (of the Southern Baptist Convention), his influence had surpassed even that once held by Graham
• Dobson's work, couched though it was in terms of apolitical parental advice, clearly had political implications; central to both Dobson and Gothard was the belief that society's ills could all be traced back to the erosion of patriarchal power

  • look into: George Lakoff, specifically Moral Politics, Metaphor and War, and Don't Think of an Elephant
• the alliance between separatists and “respectable” branches of evangelicalism forged over a shared defense of patriarchy would over time come to define the boundaries of evangelicalism itself

• family values politics was never about protecting the well-being of families generally; it was fundamentally about sex and power
• it required the enforcement of women's sexual and social subordination in the home and the promotion of American militarism on the national stage
• building upon the work of Phyllis Schlafly, Tim LaHaye, Beverly LaHaye, and Jerry Falwell established themselves as architects of the Religious Right
• LaHaye's Left Behind series is filled with paragons of rugged masculinity and redemptive violence, culminating in a detailed bloodbath at the hands of a conquering Christ

  • huh, apparently Rayford Steele's wife was into Amway
• his earlier writing concerned marital relations, promoting “male headship”
• his 1968 book How to Be Happy Though Married arrived at a time when conservative evangelicals were increasingly worried about sex; the introduction of the birth control pill and subsequent relaxation of secular opinions surrounding sex, they were deeply concerned about sex education in public schools
• Billy James Hargis (a 50s/60s anticommunist fundie pastor) brought his anticommunist attitude to the sexual morality issue in the mid-60s, fusing the two the way Graham had
• amazing pamphlet title: Is the School House the Proper Place to Teach Raw Sex?—like, dudes, I wish they were teaching that
• conservative Christian leaders across the country stoked a battle against sex ed; curiously, many of them were also fighting against gun control and deeply unsettled by the prospect of interracial dating in integrated schools; just a coincidence, I'm sure
• Hargis was joined in his crusade by such renowned groups as the John Birch Society and the KKK; again, I'm sure that's just a coincidence
• what took Hargis down was, of all things, sexual impropriety; allegedly a student of his college told his bride on their honeymoon that he'd had sex with Hargis and promptly learned that she had as well

  • it's just like Falwell Jr.! It's fine to be a freak (though not to have sex with students), but don't berate other freaks who are doing no harm
  • fellas, is it gay to have sex with one of your students—and his eventual wife?
• Tim and Beverly LaHaye picked up where Marabel Morgan left off, coauthoring The Act of Marriage, a detailed Christian sex manual
• much as Morgan did, they instructed wives to clean up and be ready to put out essentially 24/7; they went further by arguing that men were designed to be aggressive leaders, and that came with an aggressive sex drive
• men have fragile egos, you see, propped up by sexual satisfaction from their wives; when a husband lacked confidence, his wife should make aggressive love to him to help him bounce back
• a wife's bedroom failure, the LaHayes said, would turn her husband carnal, nasty, and insulting
• but ah! a problem: men were supposed to have voracious sexual appetites (giving rise to their very leadership), but their wives had been taught from childhood that their own sexuality was wrong
• that was the gap The Act of Marriage was meant to fill (did it include pull-out charts? I'm sorry, I'll stop)
• their solution to this paradox: men, be turbo horny but satisfy yourself with your wife; women, restrain yourselves until you have a husband you must satisfy; bim bam, problem solved
• “Ladies, you know you all want Prince Charming…but he doesn't exist, so you'll have to settle for some troll.”
• the LaHayes met in the 40s at Blow Job Bob Jones University (which later was at the center of debates over segregation and private Christian schools), later joining the postwar migration to southern California
• Beverly founded Concerned Women for America, an anti-feminist evangelical organization which would rapidly surpass Schlafly's Eagle Forum in membership and Dobson's following in political engagement
• Tim, meanwhile, was a pastor, author, and speaker with ties to the John Birch Society; in his many books, he rants at length about such topics as: abortion-on-demand, gay rights, big government, the elimination of capital punishment, national disarmament, increased taxes, women in combat, the ERA, unnecessary busing, etc., all of which were to him different facets of the same battle
• and battle was what he was after; he sought to work Christians into a lather over the corrupt, liberal humanist, pornographic media, blah blah blah
• he had a particular bone to pick with American news stations for “slanting” their coverage of the Vietnam War and disillusioning a whole generation with their country
• he longed for a closed conservative news bubble that would indoctrinate viewers into defend traditional moral values

  • I wonder if he lived long enough to see that wish come true; I don't feel like looking it up, though
• unsurprisingly, LaHaye was inspired by Christian Reconstructionism and Rushdoony; somewhat surprisingly, he was a premillennialist where most Reconstructionists were postmillennialists
• piece by piece, this not-insignificant theological divide was smoothed over to make way for their common struggle against the secular world
• LaHaye also built much of the Religious Right's organizational scaffolding; one such organization was the Council for National Policy, a conservative policy incubator that helped nudge the Republican Party further right
• Jerry Falwell would continue the project started by the LaHayes, Dobson, and Schlafly by doubling down on the militancy and militarism
• after his education at a Baptist Bible college, Falwell returned to his hometown of Lynchburg, VA to start his own fundamentalist Baptist church in 1956; the nascent military-industrial complex was bringing factory jobs to the area and further tied Falwell's church and community interests to the Cold War
• his ministry was pro-segregation, anticommunist, and militantly masculine, which suited his community well
• Falwell launched the Moral Majority in 1979, the stated goal of which was to wrench control of the nation back from the “godless minority”; in the years prior, he had been championing Christian nationalism with shows of patriotic pageantry

  • isn't extreme patriotic pageantry one of the signs of emerging fascism?
• in 1980 Falwell published the Religious Right manifesto Listen, America!; he opened with graphic details of communist-adjacent atrocities, arguing that the US would be headed that way if it didn't address its moral rot
• he claimed that this moral rot was exemplified by egalitarian and civil rights pushes; to conservatives, welfare and public education expenditures should have instead been spent on defense
• “defending the family” was the core of Falwell's ideology; strong God-centric families were necessary for procreating and controlling the earth, and protecting families meant a powerful military
• his solutions for this supposed moral rot were free enterprise (supposedly from Proverbs??), patriotism, turning to God over government, resisting feminism and the ERA, and fighting against gay rights
• Falwell made it clear that Christianity was down with military aggression; in an interesting derivation, he called government officials “ministers of God” to whom the citizens should submit and who were responsible for “being a terror to evildoers within and without the nation”

  • note the contrast: people should look to God over their government, but they should also submit completely to that government
  • we can only conclude that his gripe was not with the government itself but rather with its pursuit of civil rights; as long as the government was visiting destruction on people he didn't like, they were all good with him
• his overt political activism was on the surface a shift from his 60s arguments against Christian activism; this was merely a surface shift, as those admonitions were addressed to those involved in the civil rights movement

  • see previous remarks
• Falwell, a segregationist, viewed the call for civil rights as Marxist plot to destabilize the US (seriously); he led efforts to fight integration and opened a private segregation academy in 1967
• his political language was explicitly militaristic: he was fighting a “holy war” against feminism/civil rights/the gays; church was an “army equipped for battle”; Christians, like “slaves and soldiers” needed to ask no questions and advance on the enemy “with bayonet in hand”
• this enemy was, of course, anyone who didn't subscribe to Falwell's brand of fundamentalism
• accordingly, Falwell hated depictions of Jesus that were not sufficiently masculine (“Christ was a he-man!”)
• this was clearly a maturation of earlier fundie militancy, and it resonated with the military-oriented Lynchburg
• still, his authority rested upon his ability to play up the strength of outside threats to his followers, which meant continually fabricating new enemies
• during the 70s, plenty of groups were interested in strengthening American families, many of which actually wanted to strengthen families
• Carter's White House Conference on Families was an attempt to bring all of these groups together over a common cause
• obviously, this was never going to go well; ideological divides were steep over both the definition of family and the government's relationship to them
• conservatives had already spent a decade building networks and refining policy, and they knew their opposition
• conservatives immediately began whining about their representation within the conference participants; Dobson in particular urged his listeners to write to the White House to demand his inclusion (in spite of his claims that FotF was not a political organization)
• despite 80,000 letters to that effect, he was only invited to address a preconference event
• with their ideas rejected for consideration (banning abortion, defending school prayer, and opposing gay rights), conservatives claimed a liberal scheme to hijack the conversation
• in response, they organized their own counter-conerence in Long Beach, CA, just weeks away from the 1980 election; their goal was to unseat the “wimp” Carter

• a month after the Long Beach Pro-Family Conference, conservative Christian leaders reconvened in Dallas for the Religious Roundtable; Falwell, Schlafly, the LaHayes, Pat Robertson, James Robison, D. James Kennedy, Tim Landry (Cowboys coach), and Richard DeVos (Amway founder and father-in-law of Betsy DeVos) were all in attendance
• Robison's mission was to convert his audience to politics, specifically the Republican Party, saying, “Not voting is a sin against Almighty God!” and other such nonsense
• following Robison came the guest of honor: Ronald Reagan, who gave his, “I know that you can't endorse me, but I want you to know that I endorse you, and your program.” speech
• to the evangelicals at the time, Reagan seemed a splendid ally, despite his religious shortcomings (sporadic church attendance and a divorce)
• one Christian Right leader: “Reagan was not the best Christian who ever walked the face of the earth, but we really didn't have a choice.”

  • revisit this statement and how it fits with evangelical attitudes toward Trump
• his record as governor of California was similarly mixed to them (supported the ERA, legalized therapeutic abortion, and refused to support an anti-gay referendum), but by 1980 he was able to speak directly to these conservatives
• Reagan had been drawn to the Republican Party by the same forces that attracted the evangelicals: anticommunism, Christian nationalism, and nostalgia for a mythical American past
• in addition, his masculine appearance and posture were a perfect fit for the Religious Right
• appearing on TV the night before the election, Reagan spoke grimly of the state of the nation: “riots and assassinations”, Vietnam, and the “drift and disaster in Washington”; invoking the image of his good friend John Wayne, Reagan called on Americans to choose (his) heroism
• only a month before the Kent State Shootings in 1970, he had said of the widespread student unrest: “If it takes a bloodbath, let's get it over with. No more appeasement.”
• his tough-on-crime platform was a clear message to conservatives, who were concerned only with the threat of Black men (just existing)
• white men were attracted to Reagan's big tough daddy energy, a stark contrast to Carter's “wimp” image
• although Carter was himself an evangelical, 67% of white evangelical voters chose Reagan over him, a noteworthy shift from four years earlier (where they were split almost right down the middle)
• despite their contribution, white evangelicals were not the sole deciding factor in the election; Carter was widely unpopular for a number of reasons
• the election did secure the loyalty of evangelicals to the Republican Party, a relationship that would come to be symbiotic in the worst way
• Reagan continued to employ the Republican southern strategy, using racially coded rhetoric like “states' rights”, “law and order”, and “forced busing” to appeal to white voters; some of his campaign stops included blatantly anti-civil rights nods
• by the 1980s, the Democratic Party had become the party of liberals, African Americans, and feminists; the Republican Party had become the party of conservatives, traditionalists, and segregationists
• the white evangelicals were active participants in this realignment
• the Southern Baptist shift to the Republican Party is illustrative; largely insulated from the theological crises of the 20s and 40s, they had allowed for a wide range of views on theological and social issues, hence the ability to house Billy Graham, W. A. Criswell, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton
• when explicit white supremacy was no longer tenable, questions of gender filled those places and served as the battleground for fundie takeover of the SBC
• beginning in 1979, conservatives in the SBC slowly took over the denomination by filling key offices, then purged their seminaries of moderate faculty
• these battles were ostensibly fought over the question of biblical inerrancy, but that was largely a smokescreen for gender issues; not only were conservatives worried about women's liberation, abortion, and views on sexuality, they were also alarmed by the number of women claiming church leadership positions
• these women frequently interpreted the Bible contextually, whereas the conservatives insisted on “the simplest, most direct interpretations”, chafing at the addition of needless complexity to what they firmly understood

  • it's a very feminine vs masculine approach
• this divide made for a nice proxy war over what was essentially a struggle for male domination of the church; it rapidly came out that many Southern Baptists had zero theological prowess whatsoever (including the officials)
• interestingly, many Baptist women also pushed for more conservative gender roles within the SBC
• quoting Al Mohler (who oversaw the purging of moderates from the seminaries): “Mr. and Mrs. Baptist may not be able to understand or adjudicate the issue of biblical inerrancy when it comes down to nuances, and language, and terminology. But if you believe abortion should be legal, that's all they need to know…”

  • ugh, that reminds me of Amy; and it's (hilariously) very true of her
• “Inerrancy mattered because of its connection to social and political issues.”

  • I think this is well-supported by the above, but it bears explicit repeating
• this takeover shortly brought Southern Baptists into alignment with the larger evangelical world
• whether or not the evangelicals were the deciding factor in the 1980 election, they and others certainly believed that was the case
• Falwell: “[Reagan's election was] the greatest day for the cause of conservatism and morality in my adult life.”

  • so that's cool
• despite early appearances, Reagan's presidency was less than the total victory they'd imagined; he did not outlaw abortion, back Bob Jones university against the IRS, push the family values agenda he'd campaigned on, renew prayer in public schools, etc.
• Falwell, one year into Reagan's presidency: “[I had expected] more with one of our 'own' in the White House.”

  • again, very normal and very cool
• his foreign policy, however, was exactly the projection of masculine strength they wanted to see
• several books (Listen, America!, The 1980s: Countdown to Armageddon, The Late Great Planet Earth, America at the Crossroads) had lamented America's lack of commitment to power, greatness, etc., tying this to a turn away from God
• Hal Lindsey in particular claimed that the Bible was somehow telling America to become a major military force again

  • VERY NORMAL, VERY COOL
  • these books were basically MAGA: The Prequel Nobody Realized Was a Prequel
• several televangelists were active in promoting Reagan's foreign policy agenda, pushing back against nuclear disarmament
• interestingly, even Billy Graham thought that nuclear weapons were a bit much for Christianity
• Falwell ran massive ad campaigns against “freezeniks”, “ultralibs”, and “unilateral disarmers”, which included even some evangelicals
• these televangelists also pushed the Strategic Defense Initiative as a moral imperative
• speaking to the NAE in 1983, Reagan cautioned against treating the arms race as a “giant misunderstanding” instead of what it clearly was: a struggle between good and evil
• this aggressive posturing made sense for many evangelicals; a strong military would prevent a takeover from godless communism, they believed they'd go to heaven in the event of nuclear destruction, and maybe such destruction was part of God's plan anyway
• and we mustn't forget, they were all about shows of masculine strength; they were never above accusing the “freezeniks” of lacking manliness
• the Nicaraguan Contra War nicely exemplifies the connections between the Religious Right and the Reagan administration
• in the summer of 1979, the revolutionary leftist Sandinistas had overthrown the dictatorial Somoza regime; Reagan, suspecting the Sandinistas were supported by Cuba and the Soviets, promised military aid to the counterrevolutionary Contras
• within Nicaragua itself, Christians of all stripes were divided in support, but many conservative evangelicals banded together against the Sandinistas and allied themselves with the NAE
• though not primarily a religious war, that's exactly how it was framed within the US; conservative Christian organizations were quickly mobilized to support the Contras, accusing the Sandinistas of committing atrocities against conservative evangelicals and Catholics
• progressive Christians countered

  • look into Jim Wallis
• Congress initially refused to support Reagan's call for American military intervention in Nicaragua, rightly pointing out that the goal was to overthrow the Nicaraguan government
• Reagan looked to his evangelical allies to drum up public support, inviting them to special White House events where administration officials peddled stories of Marxist guerrillas committing horrible acts of violence against Christians
• the Office of Public Liaison started holding weekly briefings in 1983 on US-Central American relations and specifically invited religious leaders
• the Conservative evangelicals happily used their media apparatus to spread the administration's messaging
• the White House invited figures including Falwell, Robertson, and LaHaye to receive special briefings from Oliver North
• at last the administration received congressional support to provide humanitarian aid to the Contras and immediately pivoted to securing aid for military support as well
• in early 1986, Reagan provided several Christian media outlets with messages arguing in support of the Contras
• this push worked, and Congress approved $100 million in spending to aid the Contras
• throughout that whole process, the administration had also been covertly sending them cash; in one instance, the administration illegally sold 1500 missiles to Iran and sent part of the payment to the Contras
• this affair was discovered in part due to a typo in a bank account number, leading Oliver North (who was responsible for the exchange) to be called before Congress in May 1987
• though he didn't deny his actions (or his efforts to cover them up), North refused to implicate Reagan by name
• altogether, North emerged a hero of the Christian Right; much like the conservatives who took over the SBC, he had skirted conventions in service of a greater good—Christian nationalism in both cases

• “Olliemania” was a thing for a brief moment, but it lasted a lot longer among the evangelicals
• Falwell (in a fundraising letter): “In my judgment, petty partisan politics have made Ollie North, his family, and the very lives of Nicaraguan freedom fighters pawns in a liberal campaign to justify President Reagan.”
• it certainly appeared that figures like Falwell and Beverly LaHaye made bank selling Ollie merch
• the evangelicals saw North's actions as being in service to God and country
• as it turns out, North had a history of remorselessly engaging in shady shit: with his commission in jeopardy due to injuries, he broke into the Naval Academy administration building to alter his records; when caught, he said, “the higher ideal of serving our country [was] worth the risk…as long as [I] was doing it for our country, it couldn't be wrong.”
• the Academy was cool with that, and he jumped straight into Vietnam in 1968, later becoming an instructor at Quantico
• one colleague of North's: “He invented Rambo before Rambo made the movie. He was the creator of his own myth.”
• North was deeply frustrated with Americans who didn't buy into that myth, and he blamed the media for warping the image of the military with stories of “alleged” war crimes
• in 1978 North converted to charismatic Protestantism, thanks in part to the efforts of a commanding officer; some years prior, he had discovered Dare to Discipline, which he later credited with saving his marriage
• the church he joined post-conversion seamlessly blended patriotism and Christianity; “Wherever we are, the Lord has put us there to make the difference for Him.”
• North's God-and-country faith made him “a shining example of American Righteousness”; this faith was on full display during the Iran-Contra hearings, and it delighted his supporters and annoyed his detractors
• Senator George Mitchell: “Although he's regularly asked to do so, God does not take sides in American politics. And in America, disagreement with the polices of the Government is not evidence of lack of patriotism.”

  • the whole quote as given on p. 123 is great, but I have to emphasize this last portion
• the conservative evangelicals saw no two sides; at the 1991 SBC, North urged the attendees to become politically active to counter “a veritable Sodom and Gomorrah on the banks of the Potomac.”
• he published a memoir, spoke at evangelical churches (for undisclosed amounts), and raised funds through direct mail campaigns; all of this helped to pay for his legal fees and his failed Congressional campaign
• the latter targeted all the typical conservative talking points, from guns to abortion to school prayer; he managed to raise $16 million in a single year through direct mail alone
• critics noted his authoritarian tendencies and lack of concern for truth
• his supporters pointed to the distinction between what was right and what was legal, arguing that if he had lied, then it must have been necessary—after all, he was clearly a good soldier

  • authoritarianism on full display—he's a good person, so if he did something bad, then it must have been for the right reasons
• North's rise to evangelical herodom came at an ideal time
• Edwin Louis Cole (“father of the Christian men's movement”) had been concerned with an “anti-hero syndrome” that he claimed pervaded the nation
• he built his call for Christian manhood upon the foundation of prosperity gospel; men who followed God's plan would see returns in every aspect of their lives
• men had three roles according to Cole: to guide, guard, and govern, and they need to be both tender and tough to fulfill those roles
• Jesus perfectly exemplified that mixture; he was both good with kids and down to fight (the moneychangers in the temple)

  • ironic that conservatives latched onto the violence in that story, when what prompted him to it was the blatant profiteering going on within the temple
• to Cole, Christlikeness and manhood were synonymous, and manhood required a certain measure of ruthlessness
• he worked to distinguish his vision of manhood from the macho image, but he was also clear that tenderness should not be confused with effeminacy
• Cole: “today it is the softness that is killing us”
• women, churches, and nations all needed masculine decision makers, he argued, and America's greatness hinged on the greatness of its men
• his anti-hero syndrome was evidenced by television's portrayals of male authority figures as foolish (e.g. Archie Bunker), fostering resentment toward authority figures in the youths
• Christian broadcasting was his proposed cure for this alleged sickness, but unfortunately for him, the world of Christian broadcasting was being rocked by sex scandals at the time
• in 1986 Jimmy Swaggart accused Marvin Gorman of committing adultery with several women; Gorman eventually confessed to one act of adultery but claimed one pastor's wife had started it
• the same year, Swaggart accused Jim Bakker of a “15-minutes tryst” with church secretary Jessica Hahn; Bakker had arranged for $279000 in hush money to Hahn, who alleged Bakker had plied her with wine, drugs, and his authority; Bakker maintained that he was the victim (because of course)
• in 1988 Swaggart himself was caught with a prostitute by Gorman; a few years later, he was again caught with a prostitute but told his congregation, “The Lord told me it's flat none of your business.”
• all of these scandals highlighted the hypocrisy at the core of the Religious Right; many reveled at the sight of the movement's leaders partaking in activities they had long claimed were the product of secularism, liberalism, and feminism
• conservative evangelical organizations had seen significant donation losses in the wake of the scandals; the Iran-Contra affair provided them with a much-needed hero and donation revitalization
• evangelicals would look to the military more generally for the heroism their leadership lacked; this began during the Vietnam War, when the military stood as a last bastion of authority and traditional values
• Falwell and others worked in the 1980s to tighten connections between the evangelicals and the military; Falwell in particular often called on retired military men to help him make the case against disarmament
• in 1983 army chief of staff Gen. John A. Wickham Jr. recruited Dobson to push evangelical family values onto the military
• Dobson's Where's Dad? was made required viewing for all 780000 active-duty soldiers in 1985, and the film became the basis for the army's “Family Action Plan”
• the two believed strongly that the strength of the nation depended upon a patriarchal family structure at home
• this partnership was mutually beneficial: Dobson was able to expand his reach, and Wickham's army received an image adjustment
• other military leaders were also actively proselytizing to those in their command at this time
• given their embrace of the military, evangelicals were not equipped to critique militarism; after all, if the military was a source of virtue, then war (including preemptive war) must also be virtuous
• Christian Reconstructionist Rus Walton outlined a crusade theory of warfare in which “righteous states” were justified in offensive Christian conquest against their enemies; adherents could effectively justify any use of military force in the defense of Christian America
• the end of the Cold War was disorienting for the evangelicals, who had long been united in fervent anticommunism; moving forward, they would need to identify a new target

• in his 2000 bid for president against Bush, John McCain had openly denounced people like Robertson and Falwell who weaponized their religion to foster division and intolerance; 10 days after that speech, he dropped out of the race
• in 2008, he tried to cozy up a bit to the Religious Right, who weren't buying it; Dobson in particular found McCain insufficiently conservative
• but Barack Obama was even more distasteful to the evangelicals, being Black, having Hussein as a middle name, being Black, criticizing aspects of the nation's values and history that the evangelicals held dear…oh, did I mention he's Black?
• sure, he was a Christian, but he wasn't the right kind of Christian to them
• the biggest strikes against him and his wife (for the conservative evangelicals) were their critiques of America
• Michelle had noted that the support for her husband had led her to feel national pride for the first time in her adult life; surely, conservatives argued, there had been something in the last 25 years of American history worthy of pride; Cindy McCain fired back that she had always been proud of her country

  • on this last point, it's interesting how Meghan McCain employed a similar retort against Trump: “My father's nation has always been great.” Don't misunderstand, these two lines are not as different as they may appear
• Barack's crime was failing to disavow his pastor (Jeremiah Wright), who had been vocal in his opposition militarized furor following 9/11, the use of terror tactics to “fight terror”, the nation's general history of racism, and the false pretenses underpinning the Iraq War; “God damn America—as long as she keeps trying to act like she is God and she is supreme!”
• in a beautiful display of centrism, Obama professed his belief in the general goodness of the American people while criticizing its historical failures to live up to its own ideals; he expressed distaste for Wright's harsh rhetoric but refused to denounce him outright
• Dobson was not having it, using phrases like “fruitcake interpretation of the Constitution” and “lowest common denominator of morality”; he particularly hated Obama's 2006 speech in which he questioned which Christianity should guide national policy: that of Dobson or of Al Sharpton? The Old Testament's approval of slavery and disapproval of eating shellfish or just the Sermon on the Mount?

  • I especially like his take on the latter: “… the Sermon on the Mount—a passage that is so radical that it's doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application.”
• young evangelicals appears to be drifting away from the Religious Right; others, including NAE president Richard Cizik and megachurch pastor Rick Warren openly voiced support for Obama
• some sought to expand “values issues” to include poverty, the environment, and health care
• McCain's surprise selection of Palin cute running mate easily returned the election to a familiar culture war battleground
• many conservative evangelicals strongly disliked the idea of a female VP, but that option was far more palatable than her opponent
• for most, however, she was a perfect fit; she appealed to plain-folk evangelicals tired of “liberal elites”; she was a pro-gun, anti-abortion creationist mother of 5, a modern Phyllis Schlafly for a new generation
• her unpredictability and general ignorance of world affairs, though turn-offs for many, were some of her most appealing traits to the conservative evangelicals

• for a brief moment after the election, some in the press preemptively hailed “the end of white Christian America”; Obama managed to draw nearly twice as much support among younger white evangelicals as Kerry had in 2004, even pulling in 24% of white evangelicals
• if you've been paying attention, however, then you're aware that militant evangelicalism thrives on a sense of embattlement, and boy did they feel threatened by this turn of events
• race was a core (if unstated) element to the white evangelical identity, so naturally birtherism spread rapidly within evangelical circles
• to Christian nationalists, questioning Obama's faith was functionally the same as questioning his citizenship
• Franklin Graham (son of Billy) was quick to paint him as a secret Muslim or Muslim sympathizer
• Phyllis Schlafly (who was still alive!) hosted a “How to Take America Back” conference (ugh), featuring panels such as “How to Counter the Homosexual Extremist Movement”, “How to Stop Socialism in Health Care”, and the ever-useful “How to Recognize Living under Nazis and Communists”

  • fuck, it just hurts me to see these ding-dongs conflate those things; the Nazis were not any flavor of socialists
• Boykin contributed to a report by a neocon think tank, which argued that Muslim social groups wanted to impose shariah law and were all fronts for “jihadist extremists”

  • ironic as always, considering what efforts he was involved in
• Wayne Grudem (cofounder of the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood), who had been focused on theology and gender, published a 600-page tome in 2010 titled Politics According to the Bible: A Comprehensive Resource for Understanding Modern Political Issues in Light of Scripture

  • it might be worthwhile looking into this extremely spicy book to get a feel for the arguments
• Grudem's book trod all the usual ground (LGBT rights, abortion, “religious freedom”, national sovereignty) but also featured rants against the “too many” legal immigrants who weren't assimilating, an argument for complete border closure (particularly with Mexico), and a call for preemptive war over law enforcement to stop terrorism
• he also criticized those who would vote “candidate over party”
• evangelicals did stray away from Obama for his re-election, but their failure to vote him completely out cranked up their resentment
• the ACA's contraceptive mandate, the Masterpiece Cakeshop debacle, Obergefell v. Hodges, Kim “STFUGTFO” Davis, and North Carolina's bathroom bill all made solid battlegrounds for conservative evangelicals
• the trans bathroom “debate” proved an especially strong rallying point for calls to greater militancy (also death threats!)
• note in particular how Dobson's objections drew on assumptions of unrestrained male sexuality and female vulnerability; horny teen boys were just going to waltz right into girls' bathrooms and jerk off in front of them, and we won't even be able to stop them anymore!

  • ah yes, because the only thing stopping predatory creeps from being their creepy selves is a fucking sign on the door
  • but note how this mirrors arguments against integrated public restrooms
• Eric Metaxas, who had been a writer for BreakPoint and VeggieTales, emerged as a leading voice in Obama-era Christian masculinity; he brought a more literary approach than his peers

  • why do we keep giving these people microphones?
• he wrote a few, uh, history-adjacent “biographies” of people like Dietrich Bonhoeffer and William Wilberforce; he painted his subjects as typical conservative evangelicals, who were always the heroes fighting slavery and the Nazis; historians were not fans (surprise!)
• his overarching goal, laid out in 7 Men: And the Secret of the Greatness, was to answer the questions, “what is a man?” and, “what makes a man great?”; he started with John Wayne

  • criticism of this book: the title is excellent, but I think early chapters try too hard to shoehorn Wayne into the narrative, so that when he dies and is rarely mentioned again, it feels like a dropped point
• Metaxas described how Wayne's model of masculinity inspired generations of men until the 1960s; and what could have happened that decade? “I dunno, Watergate or Vietnam or something,” writes Metaxas
• since the 1960s, Americans were much more skeptical of public figures, making heroes a hard sell; and what's worse, they projected that skepticism backwards! Washington and Columbus are villains now, is nothing sacred?!!1!??!1! Sure, idol worship is bad maybe, but being overly critical of great men is worse, you guys!
• Metaxas connected the decline of heroic masculinity with the erosion of patriarchal authority, as evidenced by TV depictions of fathers
• nothing of his writing was new to the evangelical sphere, but the looming loss of the culture wars helped it resonate further
• and of course we have the duckfucker Robertsons of Duck Dynasty, which featured a clear delineation between the big, burly men and their perfectly accessorized wives and daughters
• oh, dear; Phil claimed that homosexuality would lead to “bestiality, sleeping around with this woman and that woman and that woman and those men”; I don't even know where to begin with that
• once again, conservative Christians were drawn to his no-holds-barred, “tell it like it is” style
• the Christian publishing industry certainly milked them for all they were worth
• Thomas Nelson had formed a partnership with Walmart in the 1990s over their shared “family values” base, leading Walmart to become the nation's largest supplier of Christian merchandise within 10 years

  • that's…worrisome. The author sources To Serve God and Walmart, pages 90–91, so that's a book I should look into
• by the early 2000s, the line between “cultural Christianity” from more “authentic” evangelicalism was extremely blurred, bordering on nonexistent

• there was a constant stream of literature lying somewhere between the Robertsons and Metaxas, all of which called for militant Christian masculinity; works by military veterans were particularly popular in this genre
• some of them were particularly on the nose, e.g. McDougall's Jesus Was an Airborne Ranger: Find Your Purpose Following the Warrior Christ; some choice quotes: “in Ranger vernacular, Jesus was a badass”, “a wild-at-heart Ranger on a mission”, “you can't spell 'Ranger' without 'anger'”
• Boykin and Weber's The Warrior Soul was likewise…a lot: why, the Bible is full of blood and conflict, so a Christian's life should also be full of conflict—like fighting abortion by…donating heavily to the Family Research Council (yes, really); and just as ancient Israel failed to conquer when they refused to sacrifice sufficiently, so must modern Americans successfully eliminate the Islamic threat
• they even went the extra step of acknowledging the existence of “moderate” non-violent Muslims but called them “bad Muslims” (just like non-fundies were “bad Christians”)

• the Obama years redoubled the evangelicals' dedication to embattlement and prepared them for a true fight in 2016; they just needed the right guy (cliffhanger!)

• as bad as the evangelicals found Obama, they found Hillary Clinton much worse; she was openly supportive of abortion access, and she was a woman! gasp!
• Du Mez describes Trump as “morally challenged”, which is…a severe understatement

• evangelicals as a whole took time to warm to Trump, with their figureheads generally favoring more traditional Republican candidates, of which there were several in the race
• Mike Huckabee was the typical tone-deaf whitebread conservative
• Ben Carson played shield for closeted racists (and compared political correctness to the practices of Nazi Germany? WTF?)
• Marco Rubio drew the favor of establishment northern evangelicals
• Ted Cruz was essentially Trump Lite (TM) with his talk of “Restoring America” and fearmongering about attacks from without and drive-thru abortions or whatever
• eventually most evangelicals came to support Trump by election night
• that they would come to favor such a man was not as surprising as it may at first seem; the evangelical tradition had long involved stoking fears of threats to the nation: Communism, secular humanism, feminism, multilateralism, Islamic terrorism, the erosion of religious freedom
• in short, they had been priming their followers for decades to look for a strong daddy who would do anything to protect them from those threats; so when Donald Trump came along in a cloud of foul-mouthed bravado, it was a natural fit
• even prominent evangelical leaders, many of whom had endorsed other candidates, were surprised by how quickly and how tightly their followers latched onto him; some pastors feared losing their congregations if they didn't voice support for Trump
• last paragraph on p. 256: briefly mentions the alignment between war (spiritual or physical) and capitalism
• p. 259 photo: blegh

• a group of NeverTrumper evangelical leaders fumbled for any reason to deny Trump's popularity with their followers; surely the evangelical poll respondents weren't true evangelicals, or this was somehow an anomaly
• Du Mez puts it bluntly: “Perhaps [they] hadn't been paying attention. Trump was hardly the first man conservative evangelicals had embraced who checked off this list of qualifications.”
• one by one, they fell in line with those followers; Dobson argued that Trump was “a baby Christian” who should be cut slack for his shortcomings; Grudem went from calling him the lesser of two evils to “a morally good choice” for president who was “deeply patriotic”; Metaxas mocked Trump's tweets in the early days of his campaign but wholeheartedly endorsed him after he secured the election, going so far as to compare Clinton and Trump's critics to Hitler and the Nazis

• following the release of the Access Hollywood (“grab 'em by the pussy”) tape, some evangelicals wavered briefly, but most talked right past it

  • insert all of Innuendo Studios' “Never Play Defense” here
• “Once again, reports of the death of the Religious Right had been greatly exaggerated.”

  • that's a V for Vendetta reference, right? Not a bad bit of humor for this point

• economic arguments were popular early theories for evangelicals' support of Trump, but those theories were not borne out by research; nor was the claim that the label had been taken over by “fake” evangelicals
• those who claimed to have held their noses while voting for Trump were not motivated by fact-based assessments of his fitness for the post (he was demonstrably worse on all counts than Clinton) but rather by the belief that his policies (e.g., Supreme Court nominations) would benefit them
• indeed, once he addressed those initial concerns, they remained quiet about his ongoing indiscretions
• between 2011 and 2016, the proportion of white evangelicals who believed that “immoral” acts were not disqualifying of public office jumped from 30% to 72% according to the Public Religion Research Institute, a phenomenon they dubbed the “Trump effect”; PRRI's Robert P. Jones: “This dramatic abandonment of the whole idea of 'value voters' is one of the most stunning reversals in recent American political history.”

  • I wager that the actual effect at play was authoritarianism; this was neither a contradiction nor a reversal, but rather completely contiguous with their existing values (as Du Mez notes later)
• Trump was exactly the embodiment of the militantly masculine figure they had wanted for so long (or more accurately, had been trained to seek)
• “The election was not decided by those 'left behind' economically, political scientists discovered; it was decided by dominant groups anxious about their future status.”

  • an excellent, well-stated point
• a year into his presidency, Scott Lamb and David Brody published The Faith of Donald Trump: A Spiritual Biography, in which they laundered his apparent flaws into forms more palatable to evangelical followers
• he was (or presented as) a believer in a black-and-white morality with clear lines between good guys and bad guys; he validated his followers' most outlandish fears and promised to protect them, with violence if necessary; he promised to provide them with order

  • that is, he was catnip to authoritarian followers

Much of my reading, particularly that with a political bent, has been in the service of an admittedly vague goal: to understand how we got here. I want to know why people still argue about the teaching of evolution in public schools nearly two centuries after On the Origin of Species; why some elements continue to fearmonger about Marxist plots to destroy the US; why we still cling to antiquated systems that are demonstrably broken; why authoritarian sentiment is increasingly common. In short, I want to understand why the loudest discourse today is mired in the same decades-old conflicts and what we can do to escape that pattern.

It's an ambitious and likely unattainable goal, I know, but that won't ever stop me from trying.

Countless people throughout America's history have dedicated their lives to keeping yesterday's boogeymen alive enough to haunt us perpetually. A staggering number of them have employed religion—or more precisely, American evangelical Christianity—in that pursuit. Jesus and John Wayne chronicles many such people and the complex networks they formed. More than that, however, it is an in-depth examination of evangelicalism's longstanding project to infuse Christianity with an aggressively militant masculine edge.

About halfway through the book, the Religious Right's emphasis on culture war nonsense finally clicked for me: they simply cannot exist without it. Its members are not united by a shared vision for the future but rather by a collective distaste for the marginalized voices who are increasingly granted seats at the table. American evangelical Christianity is notoriously fractured, but the common struggle of a culture war provides a layer of abstraction to cover otherwise unbridgeable sectarian divides.

Consider the following quote from Al Mohler in the wake of the SBC takeover:

Mr. and Mrs. Baptist may not be able to understand or adjudicate the issue of biblical inerrancy when it comes down to nuances, and language, and terminology…But if you believe abortion should be legal, that's all they need to know.

With that in mind, what would happen if they were granted the “Christian nation” they claim to crave? Deep discussions of theology have never been particularly popular in American churches (as Hofstadter demonstrates), but those churches still hold a great diversity of beliefs. Could they remain as cohesive as they are today without the culture wars? The closest we've come to such a scenario was the vindication of the anticommunist evangelicals with the end of the Cold War. The defeat of a major military rival did not sate their militarism. How could it have when their identity had so long been built on a false sense of marginalization? Their only option was to find a new enemy, no matter the logical or moral leaps required to justify it.

It's easy to see how well Christian nationalism aligns with fascism: “Our nation was once great, prosperous, and (most importantly) Christian, but then the secularists and the humanists and the communists came along. And once they stripped the God out of America, they took the prosperity, too. Only by purging the nation of their influence can we catalyze a national rebirth and reclaim our rightful place atop the world stage.”

It is immediately clear from the early pages that this book was written largely in response to the Trump presidency. Untold quantities of ink, paper, and bytes have been consumed trying to make sense of it all. It's all too easy to open such a piece with one's jaw firmly on the floor and close without ever picking it up, let alone making a coherent point beyond the self-evident “Trump bad”. Perhaps that failure stems from clinging too tightly to the belief that his presidency was somehow an anomaly or that it was without precedent. “Why does two plus two equal four? Because it does, of course—now let's discuss something else.”

Du Mez, however, demonstrates that not only was such a presidency very much precedented, it was in fact the culmination of decades worth of cultural crusades. Evangelical leaders have long stoked fears of existential threats to the nation and their religion—which they view as one and the same—in order to mobilize their followers into political action. Their surprise was realizing how little control they had over the shape of that mobilization in the end. It would almost be amusing if not for the cruelty that ensued.

Having read Altemeyer's The Authoritarians, I felt a gap of sorts in Du Mez's analysis. While she frequently points out that apparent ideological contradictions are often not, she never directly invokes authoritarianism as a key factor. That understanding is a missing piece; trained by their leaders to fear attacks from evil actors in an unambiguous binary spiritual struggle, it is no surprise that evangelicals lined up behind a strong man who confirmed those vaporous fears and offered protection. Indeed, I now wonder how much of the correlation between authoritarianism and religion noted by Altemeyer is coincidental and how much was cultivated by the groups outlined in this book. Are the two meaningfully separable?

Given that the most powerful players in the text are from the same generation or two, it is tempting to believe that the Religious Right's power will wane as its figureheads and loudest followers die off. But that hope has proven false before.

• Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, particularly Part 2
• The Authoritarians
• The Civil War as a Theological Crisis