Jesus and John Wayne - 16 - Evangelical Mulligans - A History

⬅️ Book: Jesus and John Wayne - Kristin Kobes Du Mez · Previous: Chapter 15 · Next: Conclusion · Source: PDF pp. 265–285 (file not included in this release)

Chapter 16: Evangelical Mulligans—A History

Chapter Objective

Du Mez argues that evangelical willingness to excuse Trump and other politically useful men has a long institutional history. The same system that celebrates patriarchal command, male sexual drive, submission, and protection can normalize abuse, blame victims, resist outside accountability, and rehabilitate powerful perpetrators. The chapter tests the book’s thesis against a broad record of leadership collapses and abuse scandals.

Alpha Leadership and Institutional Protection

• Mark Driscoll’s Mars Hill collapsed after plagiarism, bestseller manipulation, and former pastors’ allegations of arrogance, domination, volatility, and verbal violence. Yet Doug Wilson defended the “alpha male,” while John Piper and Tim Keller emphasized Driscoll’s gospel usefulness despite harms they acknowledged. PDF p. 266 (file not included in this release)
• C. J. Mahaney, Darrin Patrick, John MacArthur, and James MacDonald faced allegations or findings involving bullying, intimidation, manipulation, financial misconduct, or cultures of fear. These were not deviations from their public brands; aggressive patriarchal leadership had helped make them influential.
• This history makes Trump less anomalous: evangelical networks had repeatedly elevated domineering men and treated their power as evidence of divine effectiveness.

Political Mulligans: Roy Moore, Trump, and Kavanaugh

• Eighty percent of Alabama’s white evangelicals voted for Roy Moore even after allegations that he pursued teenage girls. Defenders disbelieved accusers, normalized the conduct, or invoked biblical marriage narratives. PDF p. 268 (file not included in this release)
• Tony Perkins described evangelicals’ response to Trump’s Stormy Daniels scandal as a “mulligan”: they wanted a playground fighter after feeling bullied by Obama and the Left.
• During Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation, many white evangelicals doubted Christine Blasey Ford; nearly half supported confirmation even if her allegations were true. The repeated pattern was not simply inconsistency about “family values,” but a hierarchy of whose testimony, purity, and power mattered.

Sex, Power, and Conditional Protection

• Evangelical family values join masculine initiation, leadership, sexual appetite, and protection to feminine submission and sexual availability. Women outside protected roles can be treated as temptations or accomplices.
• Protection is therefore conditional on a woman’s perceived purity and submission. Authoritarian settings make reporting dangerous, assign victims responsibility for male conduct, pressure them to forgive, and prefer internal church processes to law enforcement. PDF p. 270 (file not included in this release)
• Du Mez’s mechanism is structural: a theology that concentrates authority and distrusts external scrutiny can make sincere believers participants in concealment, even without a shared plan to protect abuse.

Haggard, Kanakuk, and Sovereign Grace

• Ted Haggard’s male-escort scandal exposed hypocrisy at the center of anti-gay politics. Dobson first blamed media motives; Driscoll blamed pastors’ wives who failed to remain attractive and sexually available.
• At Kanakuk Kamps, director Pete Newman used the mantle of purity mentorship and private “Bible studies” to abuse boys. Despite signs and allegations, president Joe White remained a respected speaker after Newman received two life sentences. PDF p. 271 (file not included in this release)
• A class action alleged that Sovereign Grace Ministries fostered child and domestic abuse, compelled reconciliation, discouraged legal action, and restored abusive men to household leadership. Its combination of patriarchy, purity, punishment, and clerical authority made women and children especially vulnerable.
• Piper, Mohler, Together for the Gospel, CBMW, and The Gospel Coalition publicly supported Mahaney. Friendship, shared theology, institutional reputation, financial relationships, and fear of attacks on “the gospel” displaced unresolved victims’ claims. PDF p. 273 (file not included in this release)

Gothard, Phillips, Wilson, and the Duggars

• More than thirty women accused Bill Gothard of harassment or molestation. His own teaching made victims “equally guilty” if they failed to cry out, embedding victim blame in the authority system.
• A lawsuit accused Doug Phillips of grooming Lourdes Torres-Manteufel from age fifteen while controlling her through spiritual-father authority. Vision Forum’s cosmic-war worldview, male church courts, and ban on “gossip” reduced access to outside remedies. PDF p. 275 (file not included in this release)
• Doug Wilson denied victim status when women did not flee, taught that rejecting male protection implied accepting rape, defended internal adjudication, and supported leniency or rehabilitation in cases involving Steven Sitler and Jamin Wight.
• When Josh Duggar’s abuse of his sisters and a babysitter became public, family members minimized it as a mistake covered by Jesus’s forgiveness—even though Duggar’s political organization portrayed LGBT people as threats to children. PDF p. 277 (file not included in this release)

Schools, Independent Fundamental Baptists, and the SBC

• Investigations found victim blaming and resistance to police reporting at Bob Jones University and Patrick Henry College, where rhetoric about “witch hunts,” seductresses, and “fake rape” shifted burdens toward women.
• The authoritarian system founded by Jack Hyles produced allegations involving Hyles, his son, his successor Jack Schaap, and a wider church network. Schaap’s sexualized preaching normalized conduct outsiders found alarming before his conviction for sex with a minor. PDF p. 279 (file not included in this release)
• A 2018 investigation counted at least 412 allegations across 187 Independent Fundamental Baptist institutions; accused leaders were transferred, victims shamed, and pastors insulated as “men of God.”
• The Houston Chronicle documented about 380 perpetrators and more than 700 victims in Southern Baptist contexts since 1998. Local autonomy was invoked to deny collective responsibility, though the denomination could exclude churches with female pastors. PDF p. 282 (file not included in this release)

metoo, Justice, and the Refusal to Reconsider Patriarchy

• Andy Savage and Bill Hybels initially received standing ovations after disclosures of sexual misconduct, demonstrating a congregational script of quick redemption. The Hybels case also showed that egalitarian branding alone does not eliminate top-down power.
• Paige Patterson’s record included advising abused women to remain, discouraging police reporting, and protecting accused pastors; allegations also reached Paul Pressler and the SBC conservative-takeover network. PDF p. 281 (file not included in this release)
• Rachael Denhollander distinguished forgiveness from repentance and justice. Protecting the gospel’s reputation, she argued, cannot justify concealment; truth and solidarity with victims are themselves Christian obligations.
• Mohler, Russell Moore, and Piper acknowledged abuse but defended complementarianism. Piper even argued male leadership offered the solution, despite prior advice that wives might endure verbal abuse or “being smacked one night” before seeking church help. PDF p. 284 (file not included in this release)

Center, Margin, and the Book’s Institutional Verdict

• Moderate complementarians tried to distinguish themselves from “hypercomplementarian” patriarchs. Du Mez accepts differences of degree but asks why mainstream networks so rarely drew and enforced boundaries against the extremes.
• Shared conferences, endorsements, publishers, money, media, and a consumer market joined center and margin. Gothard, Phillips, Wilson, Piper, Driscoll, Dobson, and Eldredge offered different styles but mutually reinforced patriarchy, submission, sex, and power.
• The promised protection failed at its central claim: it left women and children without reliable defense, privileged authority over justice, and made the movement’s Jesus in the image of militant men. PDF p. 285 (file not included in this release)

Key Concepts

• Evangelical mulligan: Moral exemption or rapid restoration granted to a useful male leader for the sake of political, institutional, or theological goals.
• Alpha leadership: Domineering behavior interpreted as courageous masculine authority until institutional failure makes its harms undeniable.
• Conditional protection: Protection offered to women only when they meet patriarchal standards of purity, submission, and credibility.
• Submission theology: A framework concentrating divine and social authority in husbands, fathers, pastors, and male elders.
• Institutional forgiveness: Appeals to grace and reconciliation that bypass investigation, repentance, restitution, and legal accountability.
• Victim-perpetrator reversal: Recasting victims as temptresses, liars, gossips, or enemies while presenting accused leaders as targets of persecution.
• Center-margin network: The relationships through which mainstream institutions normalize, distribute, and defend more extreme patriarchal teachings.

Questions for Reflection

1. Which recurring mechanisms allowed different evangelical institutions to protect abusive leaders?
2. How does conditional protection undermine the movement’s claim that male headship makes women safer?
3. What is the proper relationship among forgiveness, repentance, justice, and legal accountability?
4. Does abuse in egalitarian settings weaken Du Mez’s critique of complementarianism, or clarify that concentrated power is the deeper variable?
5. What boundaries would mainstream institutions have needed to enforce to keep extreme patriarchy at the margins?

Citations and References

Author’s complete endnotes

Chapter 16 endnotes 1–40: notes beginning on PDF p. 323 (file not included in this release) · PDF p. 324 (file not included in this release) · PDF p. 325 (file not included in this release) · notes ending on PDF p. 326 (file not included in this release).

• Leadership collapses and political mulligans (notes 1–9): polling; church and network statements; investigative reporting on Driscoll, Mahaney, MacArthur, MacDonald, Roy Moore, Trump, and Kavanaugh.
• Patriarchy and abuse mechanisms (notes 10–18): evangelical marriage and sexuality texts; Kanakuk and Sovereign Grace reporting and litigation; leaders’ public defenses and financial relationships.
• Gothard, Phillips, Wilson, and the Duggars (notes 19–25): lawsuits, court records, organizational materials, leaders’ writings, and investigative reporting.
• Schools and fundamentalist networks (notes 26–34): independent investigations and major newspaper reporting on Bob Jones, Patrick Henry, First Baptist Hammond, IFB churches, and the SBC.
• metoo, Denhollander, and complementarian responses (notes 35–40): survivor testimony; evangelical leaders’ essays and podcasts; Nathan Finn and CBMW.