Jesus Is My Buddy John Wayne

This is very interesting (and don't worry about starting it in media res, it really doesn't lose anything by that):

How could such a frankly anodyne expression of regret and concern for others provoke such anger, especially within a Christian community? The answer, I learned in conversation with colleagues who had signed a petition demanding an apology from me, was that I had triggered the evangelical sense of embattlement. (That’s my gloss, not their words.) The fact that it was not perfectly OK to make the sorts of inflammatory statements about the LGBTQ community that this person had made left a lot of traditionally-minded Christian philosophers feeling persecuted. They felt unsafe in what they took to be a kind of refuge from an academic culture hostile to them and their views.

Yup.  You want to cause trouble, mess with someone's sense of identity.  I think of it as the boundary between "self" and "the world," and the more the latter impinges on the former, the more you poke the bear, so to speak.  You mess with identify at your peril.  Except that's exactly what Jesus does (I'll explain what I mean in a minute):

Never mind Jesus’ own declaration that we are blessed when persecuted for his name’s sake; the threat to unfettered freedom of expression that had been raised by my expression of concern for the LGBTQ people in our midst was, for many Christian philosophers, intolerable. This despite the fact that, demographically speaking, straight white males are overwhelmingly in the majority in the Society of Christian Philosophers, and traditional Christian beliefs are featured in and defended at just about every conference that it sponsors.

Well, being persecuted for Jesus' sake is nice, but that's not where I'd go, because it tends to let you off the hook for what you are doing (instead of making your look at yourself and reflect critically on what you're doing), so I'd prefer to go with "The first of all will be last and servant of all."  But nobody likes that one.  You can't let yourself off any hook with that one.

This sense of embattlement goes a long way toward explaining why evangelicals might want to cozy up to powerful political figures. But it still leaves us wondering: Why Trump? There is another, more important piece to the puzzle.

I wouldn't go so rapidly from that "sense of embattlement."  Where does that come from?  Is it appropriate, or is it your ego whispering sweet nothings to you?  It seems to me Christianity is about self-reflection, not self-satisfaction. “Religion is responsibility, or it is nothing at all.”  That’s your responsibility, not what others are responsible for.

In her recent book, “Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation,” Calvin University historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez argues compellingly for the conclusion that evangelical infatuation with Trump stems in large part from the “cult of masculinity” that American evangelicalism has both cultivated and succumbed to over the past century. What evangelicals wanted, and found, in Trump was not just a (potentially) powerful ally, but a man of a certain sort — a political strongman whose brash and swaggering demeanor made it clear not only that, but how he would wield power on their behalf.

Like I said, nobody likes that "last of all, servant of all" lesson.

He was a man who would “tell it like it is” — code for something like “confront people and issues aggressively, without concern for the usual norms of tact, diplomacy, respect, and concern for the feelings of others.” He would “turn over the tables” — code for something like “deliberately upset or circumvent the usual rules and protocols for getting things done in Washington in order to push his own agenda and the agenda of supporters.” In displaying this demeanor while at the same time embracing a socially conservative and superficially Christian-friendly political platform, he sent a clear message. He would deal with evangelicalism’s “oppressors” and cultural enemies in the manner of a political John Wayne, James Bond or Jack Bauer. He would be a hypermasculine tough guy, a modern day Goliath, who would fight on their side in the culture wars.

Even metaphorically comparing Trump to Jesus ("He would 'turn over the tables' ") is enough to make my skin crawl.  And is this where I point out that "John Wayne" was a fictional character portrayed by an actor in stories that had as much to do with reality and history as fairy tales and hallucinations?

Here, too, my experience with the Society of Christian Philosophers controversy is instructive. Predictably, in the wake of my unimpressively mild expression of support for LGBTQ persons in our society, many called me a “liberal.” (I’m quite sure that the day before I posted that message, most of my academic friends would have described me as quite conservative). Some Christian philosophers puzzlingly called me a Nazi. But the slur that was most striking, and now seems most interesting, was this: some called me a “cuck.”

Because, again, it's all about identity, and distinction.  If I can demonize you by defining you as something I'm sure I'm not, then you can't defile the purity of my essence (yeah, I know the reference).

A cuck, I discovered by consulting the Urban Dictionary online, is a “weak, effeminate, inadequate man.” (It is apparently derived from “cuckold” which, of course, means something else entirely.) What was wanted by my critics, although I didn’t fully understand this at the time, was someone who would lead the Society of Christian Philosophers in a certain, decidedly masculine way — an intellectual John Wayne who would put the academic persecutors of the Christian faith in their place. A leader who instead sought to look out for the feelings of vulnerable minorities and to ensure that the Society of Christian Philosophers would be seen as a welcoming and hospitable space for all of its members, and not just the straight white male conservative majority, was not just manifesting the wrong set of values; he was effete, insufficiently masculine, an inadequate man.

The 70's are SO over!  Even Alan Alda doesn't want to be Alan Alda anymore, amirite?

In a 2012 address entitled “The Frank and Manly Mr. Ryle,” the influential evangelical pastor and writer John Piper commented that “God has given Christianity a masculine feel.” Piper drew this conclusion on the basis of the fact that the Bible tends to characterize God in terms usually reserved for males (masculine pronouns, stereotypically male gender roles and so on), and the leadership of the early Church was predominantly male. But, if we may mince words for a moment, none of this really implies that Christianity, at its origins or even for much of its history, has been given a masculine feel in any of the contemporary senses of that term.

Nor, I'd say, has it ever had it.  Julian of Norwich was not radically feminist when she referred to God as Mother as well as Father in 13th century England. Of course, she was Catholic, so that would explain why she's not on the radar of "evangelicals" (I still resent that they co-opted a perfectly good Christian vocabulary word).

As Notre Dame sociologist Gail Bederman has pointed out, the term “masculinity” and its cognates only came into common use in the late 19th century as changes in the economic conditions of middle-class males, together with anxieties and challenges posed by the burgeoning women’s movement, were beginning to erode and call into question previous ideals of “manliness.” The American version of the “Muscular Christianity” movement played an important role in cultivating ideals of Christian masculinity; and, as Du Mez explains, the history and development of this movement is deeply intertwined with the history and growth of evangelicalism. The 20th-century conception of masculinity which evangelicals embrace is both patriarchal and racialized (hence Du Mez’s focus on white evangelicalism). There is a strong case to be made for the conclusion that it is not God who has given Christianity a “masculine feel” in this sense, but instead evangelicals themselves, and their 19th-century predecessors, have given American Christianity that feel.

Now tie that in with the 19th century's establishment of the very concept of "race," which sprang from much the same forces of social change and imperial expansion.  Brutal as they were, the Romans didn't need "race" to impose their Empire.

“Jesus and John Wayne” is a tour-de-force indictment of the white evangelical cult of masculinity. But the indictment comes not so much at the level of analysis as at the level of mere description. Although Du Mez has done a brilliant job of weaving a narrative that brings into high relief the relevant tendencies and trends within American evangelicalism, analytical commentary was not her book’s main task. Nevertheless, as has often been the case with evangelicalism’s president-hero Donald Trump, description is all it takes to indict. The picture that emerges is one according to which, time and again (and increasingly over the years), the culture and visible leadership within American evangelicalism has persistently valorized a John Wayne-style conception of masculinity, sought to empower and emulate leaders who exemplify this conception, and embraced a political agenda that supports it.

So, rather like Jefferson, they just snipped Luke 22 and Matthew 25 right out of their Bibles?  Just wondering....

Under the banners of “biblical manhood and womanhood” and the promotion of “family values,” evangelical leaders like James Dobson, Mark Driscoll, John Piper and many others have decried or sought to prevent the “sissification” of American Christianity. They have advocated a conception of gender and gender roles that idealizes masculinity and links it with power, aggression, domination and strength in all spheres — not just in the home, but in business and military culture, in politics and in foreign policy. In doing so, they have sought shelter in the arms of powerful, paradigmatically masculine politicians even when (and to some extent because) the politicians have been known to behave in ways radically contrary to the Christian values they hope to promote. Indeed, time and again, even as they have denounced their cultural and political enemies for threatening Christian family values, male evangelical leaders themselves have behaved in ways that flagrantly disregard those same values. (The current scandal involving Jerry Falwell Jr. is only the most recent in this trend.) In their pursuit of power and the promotion of a patriarchal and heterocentric value system, they have worked to defend, protect and restore power to evangelical leaders guilty of a bewildering variety of misogynistic, predatory and abusive behaviors.

What's that line about those who fight dragons become dragons themselves?  I think the more modern understanding of that is, if you go looking for dragons, you will find them.  And what you will see is the sliver in your brother's eye, but never the log in your own.  You know, there really are a lot of times Jesus talks about humility in the gospels; I can't think of a one when he talks like John Wayne.  And only once did he "turn over the tables," and that was pretty clearly a rejection of commerce. Or as we call it today, "free market capitalism."

Oh, was I not supposed to point that out?