⬅️ Book: Jesus and John Wayne - Kristin Kobes Du Mez · Previous: Chapter 16 · Return: Introduction · Source: PDF pp. 286–294 (file not included in this release)
Conclusion
Chapter Objective
Du Mez restates the book’s central argument and carries it beyond electoral politics. Militant masculinity became a comprehensive evangelical cultural identity shaping intimate life, consumer practice, theology, guns, immigration, race, nationalism, and foreign alliances. Because this development was historically constructed and repeatedly contested, however, it is neither universal to evangelicalism nor inevitable; what was made can be unmade.
Jesus Remade as John Wayne
- By 2008, the Gaither Vocal Band could sing nostalgically of “Jesus and John Wayne” because evangelical popular culture had compressed the distance between them. Jesus appeared as warrior, fighter, knight, Patton, William Wallace, rural laborer, and NRA man. PDF p. 286 (file not included in this release)
- Men’s ministries, parenting advice, marriage seminars, and women’s resources drew believers into a larger gendered order. The personal and political were linked: learning Christian manhood also taught positions on sexuality, guns, war, borders, Islam, immigration, and nation.
Guns, Borders, and Embattled Identity
- Guns carry symbolic and ritual power in evangelical masculinity, from childhood toys to initiation gifts. White evangelical gun ownership exceeded national rates, and the NRA’s elevation of Oliver North explicitly joined Christian warfare rhetoric to gun-rights activism. PDF p. 287 (file not included in this release)
- Evangelicals’ unusually negative views of refugees and strong support for a border wall cannot be explained simply by direct biblical teaching; few named the Bible as their main influence on immigration.
- A vulnerable, feminized nation requires tough men and hard borders. “Law and order” politics turned borders into defensive battle lines and nonwhite outsiders into threats rather than neighbors. PDF p. 288 (file not included in this release)
Culture, Theology, and Everyday Formation
- Du Mez treats evangelicalism as a cultural and political movement whose theology and culture continually shape one another—not as doctrine corrupted by an external culture.
- The 2016 dispute over the Son’s eternal subordination illustrates the interplay. Wayne Grudem and Bruce Ware used hierarchy within the Trinity to support women’s submission; critics, including complementarians, charged that they had altered historic orthodoxy to defend patriarchy. PDF p. 289 (file not included in this release)
- Gender ideology is also absorbed through children’s programs, Father’s and Mother’s Day rituals, weapons, sports, hunting, men’s “advances,” princess imagery, Bible products, and church entertainment. Repetition makes hierarchy feel natural rather than argued.
The Evangelical Marketplace
- Christian retail divides boys into warriors and girls into beautiful, relational consumers. Big-box and online markets replaced older bookstores while extending evangelical identity through décor, clothing, Bibles, and branded family culture.
- Hobby Lobby exemplifies sacred-secular fusion: women receive beauty, domesticity, and a “gentle and quiet spirit”; men receive guns, militaria, Reagan, cowboy conquest, flags, man caves, and John Wayne. PDF p. 291 (file not included in this release)
- These ordinary products help make non-theological figures—Wayne, Wallace, Reagan, Limbaugh, Peterson, and Trump—functional authorities for evangelical identity.
Race and Global Export
- The militant ideal is predominantly a white evangelical construction. Aggression celebrated in white men is often represented as dangerous when embodied by Black, Middle Eastern, or Hispanic men. PDF p. 292 (file not included in this release)
- American organizations exported patriarchal family politics abroad. Du Mez connects these networks to Bolsonaro’s Brazil, European right-wing groups, Putin, and conservative Russian Orthodoxy.
- The alliances reveal that cultural gender ideology can reorder foreign loyalties: a foreign strongman who defends “traditional Christianity” may appear more faithful than a domestic president who advances equality.
Resistance and the Possibility of Unmaking
- People rejected the system when aggressive athletic masculinity excluded disabled or nonconforming men, when women’s testimony exposed harms hidden in male-only spaces, when purity culture failed marriages, or when abuse made the costs undeniable. PDF p. 293 (file not included in this release)
- Josh Harris withdrew I Kissed Dating Goodbye after recognizing that excessive control harmed people. Publisher Don Jacobson found that reconsidering conquest and Native American history dissolved Christian nationalism and, with it, evangelical militarism.
- Trump drove some believers away and prompted others to appeal to neighbor love and the impossibility of serving two masters. Yet those appeals fail when the movement’s Jesus has already been remade as a militant protector.
- Du Mez closes with contingency: alternative evangelical masculinities have emphasized gentleness, self-control, peace, and relinquishing power. Because the dominant system emerged through choices, markets, institutions, and alliances, deliberate alternatives can dismantle it. PDF p. 294 (file not included in this release)
Key Concepts
- Cultural-political evangelicalism: Evangelical identity carried through symbols, habits, markets, alliances, and political intuitions as well as formal doctrine.
- Bunker mentality: A persecution narrative that intensifies in-group loyalty and militancy despite substantial political power.
- Gendered religious formation: The repeated rituals, products, activities, and expectations through which masculine command and feminine submission become ordinary.
- Hobby Lobby masculinity: Du Mez’s shorthand for guns, cowboy conquest, militarism, flags, nostalgia, and white Christian nationalism embedded in consumer goods.
- Racialized masculinity: A system that codes white male aggression as protective while treating similar aggression in nonwhite men as threatening.
- Globalized culture war: The export of American evangelical family and gender politics through organizations, finance, and strongman alliances.
- Historical contingency: The claim that militant masculinity was constructed, resisted, and therefore remains open to change.
Questions for Reflection
- Why does Du Mez treat guns and border policy as expressions of gendered religious identity rather than isolated political preferences?
- How can everyday church programs and consumer goods carry theology without making explicit doctrinal claims?
- What does the Trinity controversy reveal about the direction of influence between culture and theology?
- Why is white aggression coded as protection while nonwhite aggression is coded as danger?
- Which institutions and practices would need to change for alternative evangelical masculinities to become durable?
Citations and References
Author’s complete endnotes
Conclusion endnotes 1–17: PDF p. 327 (file not included in this release).
- Jesus, guns, and borders (notes 1–5): Gaither Vocal Band; gun-ownership and immigration surveys; NRA proceedings; evangelical commentary.
- Theology and formation (notes 6–9): Grudem and Ware’s Trinity teaching, complementarian critiques, church-program examples, and Christian retail observation.
- Race and global networks (notes 10–11): studies of racialized evangelical masculinity and reporting on American organizations’ international activity.
- Exclusion, purity culture, and resistance (notes 12–17): firsthand reflections, survivor and former-member accounts, Josh Harris, Don Jacobson, Michael Gerson, and Cal Thomas.