⬅️ Book: Jesus and John Wayne - Kristin Kobes Du Mez · Previous: Chapter 5 · Next: Chapter 7 · Source: PDF pp. 107–120 (file not included in this release)
Chapter 6: Going for the Jugular
Chapter Objective
Du Mez explains how Ronald Reagan consolidated white evangelical loyalty to the Republican Party by embodying cowboy masculinity, Christian-nationalist nostalgia, and peace through strength. The chapter pairs this partisan realignment with the conservative takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), then shows the shared moral logic in Reagan-era foreign policy and Oliver North’s Iran-Contra conduct: when defenders of God and country pursue a higher good, procedural limits can be treated as weakness and the ends can justify the means.
Reagan as the Religious Right’s Cowboy
- At the 1980 Religious Roundtable, James Robison declared nonvoting sinful and identified Republican activism as the means of national salvation. Reagan answered that he endorsed the Christian Right and its program. PDF p. 107 (file not included in this release)
- Reagan’s church attendance, divorce, and record on abortion, the ERA, and gay rights were imperfect. What mattered was his fluent embrace of school prayer, creationism, anticommunism, Christian America, military strength, and the mythic past.
- His ranch, film career, and confident style supplied the contrast with Carter. On election eve Reagan explicitly invoked John Wayne as a symbol of national heroism that could be revived rather than mourned. PDF p. 108 (file not included in this release)
- Reagan performed the stern father: uncompromising toward student protest and street crime, racially coded in his appeals to law and order, states’ rights, and busing. Sixty-seven percent of white evangelicals voted for him; thereafter no Democrat would win a white evangelical majority.
The Southern Baptist Conservative Resurgence
- Southern Baptists had historically included broad theological and political variation and defended church-state separation. Fundamentalists began a coordinated institutional takeover in the 1960s and achieved the SBC presidency in 1979 through strategic convention mobilization and appointments. Leaders described their win-at-all-costs method as “going for the jugular.” PDF p. 111 (file not included in this release)
- Biblical inerrancy was a real doctrinal issue but also a proxy for gender. Women’s ordination, feminist interpretation, abortion, and sexuality were easier for ordinary Baptists to recognize than technical arguments about scripture.
- Conservatives called their direct, “plain” reading masculine and contextual interpretation evasive. Women mobilized through Schlafly, Beverly LaHaye, and Elisabeth Elliot helped make female submission a denominational boundary.
- Seminaries were purged of moderates, and political positions became tests of biblical fidelity. Southern Baptists increasingly identified as “evangelical,” with patriarchy central to the new identity. PDF p. 113 (file not included in this release)
The Bargain with Reagan
- Evangelicals claimed credit for Reagan’s victory and expected abortion restrictions, school prayer, appointments, and moral revival. Reagan offered religious ceremony but little domestic policy return; leaders such as Falwell and Bob Jones III complained.
- Military policy kept the alliance intact. Reagan restored a post-Vietnam narrative of American strength, divided the world into good and evil, and treated threat or use of force as the basis of order. Bestsellers by Falwell, John Price, and Hal Lindsey turned rearmament into repentance and biblical obligation. PDF p. 114 (file not included in this release)
- Evangelicals were not unanimous: Billy Graham, Christianity Today, Mark Hatfield, and others supported arms limits or a nuclear freeze. Falwell instead helped Reagan attack “freezeniks” as weak and morally naive.
- Reagan’s “evil empire” address before the NAE translated geopolitics into cosmic conflict and warned that soothing language about peace concealed surrender. End-times confidence, belief in eternal life, and masculine disdain for fear made nuclear risk easier to accept. PDF p. 116 (file not included in this release)
Nicaragua and Iran-Contra
- In Nicaragua, Christians themselves were divided over the Sandinistas and the Contras. Some saw socialism as a response to poverty; others saw communist persecution. Reagan’s administration and US conservative groups selected the second frame and marketed the Contra war as religious liberty.
- When Congress restricted intervention, the White House fed evangelical leaders briefings, mailings, radio messages, and television spots. Evangelical media helped generate constituent pressure for $100 million in Contra aid. PDF p. 118 (file not included in this release)
- At the same time, officials secretly sold missiles to embargoed Iran to seek hostage releases and diverted funds to the Contras. Oliver North lied to Congress and destroyed records, explaining that covert action protected the country and that a lieutenant colonel obeys the commander in chief.
- North’s posture mirrored the hierarchical obedience taught in evangelical homes and churches. His convictions were later reversed on a technicality, and the SBC celebrated him as a hero. Institutional conservatives and North were fellow renegades: both broke norms to secure a Christian-nationalist good they considered higher than rules. PDF p. 120 (file not included in this release)
Key Concepts
- Cowboy presidency: Leadership performed as solitary toughness, moral certainty, nostalgia, and willingness to use force.
- Conservative resurgence: The organized fundamentalist takeover of SBC offices, committees, seminaries, and identity beginning in 1979.
- Populist hermeneutic: A “plain reading” of scripture treated as self-evident and morally courageous, especially on gender.
- Peace through strength: The claim that overwhelming military power and credible aggression are the reliable route to order.
- Crusade foreign policy: Geopolitical conflict narrated as a battle between divine good and satanic evil.
- Higher-good exception: Permission to evade ordinary legal or moral constraints when a protector claims to serve God, nation, or survival.
Questions for Reflection
- Why did Reagan’s performed values outweigh the parts of his record that conflicted with the Christian Right?
- How did gender make technical debates about inerrancy politically concrete?
- What did evangelicals receive from Reagan when the domestic family-values agenda stalled?
- When does religious framing illuminate persecution, and when does it conceal a political conflict’s complexity?
- How did teachings about obedience prepare audiences to admire Oliver North’s defiance of law?
Citations and References
Author’s complete endnotes
Chapter 6 endnotes 1–30: notes beginning on PDF p. 308 (file not included in this release) · notes ending on PDF p. 309 (file not included in this release).
- Reagan and partisan masculinity (notes 1–10, 17–20): Darren Dochuk; Reagan speeches; Seth Dowland; Daniel Williams; Andrew Bacevich; Jackson Katz; Robert Self; and Frances FitzGerald.
- The SBC takeover (notes 11–16): James Guth; Seth Dowland; Elizabeth Flowers; Barry Hankins; and scholarship on clergy activism, inerrancy, and women’s authority.
- Rearmament and the nuclear freeze (notes 21–25): Anne Loveland; Bacevich; Falwell; John Price; Hal Lindsey; Christianity Today; Mark Hatfield; Reagan’s “evil empire” address; and Neil Young.
- Nicaragua and Iran-Contra (notes 26–30): Lauren Turek’s research on Christian nationalism and the Contra war, Bacevich, and contemporary reporting on North’s testimony.