Jesus and John Wayne by Kristin Kobes Du Mez

Those lamenting evangelical's apparent betrayal of "family values" fail to recognize that evangelical family values have always entailed assumptions about sex and power. The evangelical cult of masculinity links patriarchal power to masculine aggression and sexual desire; its counterpoint is a submissive femininity. A man's sexual drive, like his testosterone, is God-given. He is the initiator, the piercer. His essential leadership capacity outside the home is bolstered by his leadership in the home, and in the bedroom. The responsibility of married women in this arrangement is clear, but implications for women extend beyond the marriage relationship. Women outside of the bonds of marriage must avoid tempting men through immodesty, or simply by being available to them, or perceived as such. Within this framework, men assign themselves the role of protector, but the protection of women and girls is contingent on their presumed purity and proper submission to masculine authority. This puts female victims in impossible situations. Caught up in authoritarian settings where a premium is placed on obeying men, women and children find themselves in situations ripe for abuses of power. Yet victims are often held culpable for acts perpetrated against them; in many cases, female victims, even young girls, are accused of "seducing" their abusers or inviting abuse by failing to exhibit proper femininity.

The evangelical church I grew up in prided itself on being "seeker friendly," which meant that, in practice, it avoided a lot of the topics that were otherwise important to the Southern Baptist Convention, of which it was a member, though it avoided having "Baptist" in its name--because that might scare away the seekers. We heard a lot about husbands and wives forgiving each other, and how to manage household finances, but sexual purity and the roles of men and women were not topics for the pulpit (which was really a Plexiglas lectern). But I got the message of complementarianism--that men and women are inherently different, and have different roles, usually with men at the "head" of the marriage--in other places, and at other times: at church camp, at retreats, in videos and books. It only took a couple of weeks of attending an evangelical church with me in college--a place I expected to be equally "seeker-friendly"--for my girlfriend at the time to hear that wives should submit to their husbands, and decide that she was done with this Christian stuff more or less for good. For my part, I didn't know what to do with these beliefs; they weren't important to me, nor did they make much sense, but I was never presented with any alternative.

Kristin Kobes Du Mez's Jesus and John Wayne is a history of the evangelical movement in the United States, and how its commitment to complementarianism, and a network of associated ideas about race and gender, were developed. One thing that Du Mez makes clear is that it might have been otherwise; even back in the heyday of arch-evangelical Billy Graham, a more liberal strain of evangelical Christianity--anti-war, pro-abortion, anti-segregation--competed for dominance. Individual evangelical leaders, including Graham himself, even mixed these strains, but with the election of Ronald Reagan, a more militant and sexist version of evangelicalism crowded out its ideological competitors.

In a way, I knew the broad strokes of this history, because I lived inside of it. But there are few things that Du Mez's book made me appreciate, which I'll list here in no particular order. For one, the title isn't just a catchy bit of alliteration; Du Mez persuades that the swaggering machoism of John Wayne really has served as a symbolic lodestar for the evangelical movement. (Every fucked-up Christian bestseller Du Mez describes and analyzes seems to name check him as an antidote to a "feminized" culture, or feminized Christianity, that they see as ascendant.) For Du Mez, Wayne, a misogynist and racist, thoroughly enmeshed with Hollywood and not particularly religious, becomes a kind of avatar for later evangelical icons like Reagan and Donald Trump. None of these men was Christian in any real sense, but through their appeal to aggressive masculine values, they captured evangelical hearts. It's a mistake, Du Mez writes, to think of evangelicalism as a specifically, or even particularly, theological movement; as these men show, its accompanying cultural values or as important, if not more.

Secondly, I was struck by how much much of a business the evangelical movement is. Ideologically, Du Mez traces evangelical roots back to Bruce Barton's The Man Nobody Knows, a 100-year old bestseller that imagines Jesus as an executive. Practically, the evangelical movement is driven by a handful of enormous corporate entities, some of which are non-profits, like James Dobson's Focus on the Family, but also mega-corporation Hobby Lobby and the Christian bookstore Lifeway, without which there is no evangelical movement, and which has immense power to push evangelicals in ideological directions by what it chooses to sell and promote.

Thirdly, I was really shocked by the enmeshment between the evangelical movement and the American military. I've always been aware of the way that the evangelical movement pushes "military values," though seeing all the seminars and bestselling books collected in on place, with their language about being a "warrior for Christ," is stomach-turning. More than that, though, I don't know that I had considered how the evangelical movement has captured the military. Du Mez presents a picture of the U.S. military and evangelical Christianity as mutually supportive entities: military values of violence, self-sacrifice, and authoritarianism are transformed by churches into a form of Christianity that the military then promotes among its members. Put this way, the culpability of evangelical Christianity in the worldwide violence wrought by the U.S. military after 9-11 is especially troubling.

Unsurprisingly, Du Mez's book has made her a popular target for evangelicals on Twitter, and elsewhere. But I had actually been expecting, and hoping for, something a little more polemical: though Du Mez's sympathies are not hidden, Jesus and John Wayne is mostly a straightforward history of an ideological movement. It does a great job of examining the way that patriarchal values came to be so defining of the evangelical worldview; on the topic of race--the book's subtitle is How white evangelicals corrupted a faith and fractured a nation--it actually has far less to say. (Which is fine, I think--perhaps a topic for another book.) But in the end, the facts speak for themselves: Du Mez devotes the book's final chapters to the recent spate of sexual abuse scandals that have rocked evangelical churches and their governing bodies, like the SBC. These victims, Du Mez shows, are not the victims of Christians who have "betrayed" their values, but Christians who have lived out the very patriarchal and violent values which the churches have embraced.

Our Endangered Values by Jimmy Carter

A couple of weeks ago I signed onto Facebook and saw that one of my friends had voted in some poll as to who was the worst president in recent history. My friend had cast his voted for George W. Bush. Now my friend grew up in the same conservative Christian circles that I did, but much like myself, finds himself somewhere outside these circles. The first comment came from an unbelievably opinionated and obnoxious person--who we both know: "Are you kidding me Josh? What about the peanut farmer from Georgia?" Josh unsuccessfully tried to brush this off with a bit of a joke. Twenty comments later people are referring to Carter as a "disaster," and some crazy man who inexplicably capitalizes the first letter of every word is ranting about Obama and the end of the United States as we know it. These are Christian people...I suppose. Carter is a Christian. How is it that these people could harbor such negative feelings toward arguably the most active ex-President? Well, as luck would have it, this book offers at least a partial answer to this question.

The first thing to note about this book is its overtly Christian perspective. As he has for most of his life, Carter speaks candidly about his religious beliefs in this book. He does not shy away from the fact that he is a Christian (a Baptist, to be more precise) or that Christian values inform much of his thinking. You would think this would appeal to Christians.

Our Endangered Values addresses the rise of fundamentalism and the threat that it poses to our values. That's right, Facebook wackjobs: you are the insidious threat to our nation! Ex-President Carter and I say so, so it has to be true. Carter is a good person to address this, since his personal life was directly affected by it. In the book he talks about how in 1979, fundamentalists essentially took control of the Southern Baptist Convention. Their "with us or against us" approach drove many thinking people away, while at the same time it bolstered their prominence on the political scene. Their intransigence no doubt informed the definition of fundamentalism that Carter uses in this book. "Fundamentalists tend to make their self-definition increasingly narrow and restricted, to isolate themselves, to demagogue emotional issues, and to view change, cooperation, negotiation, and other efforts to resolve differences as signs of weakness."

This book begins in the late 1970s, with the rise of such religious zealots as Pat Robertson, James Dobson, and Jerry Fallwell. But Carter levels criticism at those who were in positions of power at the time when this book was written (2006). He criticizes Bush II on issues such a "faith-based" initiatives, torture, his economic policies, and the war in Iraq. His criticisms rest on sound Christian and American principles, such as the Separation of Church and State (I can capitalize first letters too), Christ-like love, and the redistribution of wealth that runs like a current through the New Testament. However, Values does not devolve into some Olbermann-esque screed against Bush, or a listing of his blunders. Far from it, Carter is composed and cool in his criticisms. (But does he set them to a sweet Coldplay song?)

While not its intent or purpose, this book provides a two-fold answer for why fundamentalist Christians dislike President Carter so much. Firstly, they are as he describes them: openly hostile toward negotiation, alternative ideas, and entire groups of people (I am paraphrasing). Secondly, he calls them out on it. Why would a Christian support the invasion of Iraqi? How could a Christian possibly be okay with torture? Should not Christians be good stewards of the planet? But fundamentalist are not about self-reflection. They are not about loving others. They are about attacking those who do not believe exactly like they do. So it doesn't matter that Jimmy Carter worked to reduce the need for abortions, what mattered was that he did not attack the judiciary for the decision in Roe v. Wade. The religious right loves attacking the Judiciary. Separation of church and state be damned! And while were at it, let's get rid of the separation of the powers of government as well. It doesn't matter that he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. To these religious ideologues, Carter is a total sellout, a lukewarm Christian that will ultimately be spewed out of God's mouth.

It is comforting to know that amongst all the Christian wackos out there, Christians like President Carter exist. Principled people who use their lives to effect positive change on the world are much preferred to people who wake up every morning, pull on their waxy costume of Christianity, plaster a televangelist smile over their cesspool of hatred, and start shouting.
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The Private Faith of Jimmy on American Public Media
"Just War -- or a Just War?" by Jimmy Carter
Interview about this book with Mother Jones

The Abstinence Teacher by Tom Perrotta

Some people enjoy it. That was all Ruth had said. Even now, when she'd had months to come to terms with the fallout from this remark, she still marveled at the power of those four words, which she'd uttered without premeditation and without any sense of treading on forbidden ground.

...

"Oral sex is disgusting," Theresa declared, apropos of nothing. "You might as well French-kiss a toilet seat. You can get all sorts of nasty diseases right?"
Theresa stared straight at Ruth, as if daring her to challenge this incontrovertible fact. In retrospect, Ruth thought she should have been able to discern the hostile intent in the girl's unwavering gaze...but Ruth wasn't in the habit of thinking of her students as potential adversaries. If anything, she was grateful to the girl for creating what her grad school professors used to call a "teachable moment."
"Well," Ruth began, "from what I hear about oral sex, some people enjoy it."

This was the first Tom Perrotta novel I'd ever read. I've seen Election, but before I really ever cared about the books behind the popular films. So I can't tell you if this is true Perrotta, if all of his books are similar, or if this one was an aberration. So if you are a die-hard Perrott fan, don't hate when when I say I wasn't overly impressed by this book.

In "The Abstinence Teacher," Ruth Ramsay is a popular and well-informed sex ed teacher whose curriculum and professional career are threatened by parents from the new evangelical church in town who object to her frank honesty. After one family threatens suit over the incident above, Ruth finds herself both the target and unwilling ally in the school board's new plan, which includes a revamped abstinence-only curriculum and the hiring of JoAnn, the school's new Virginity Consultant.

Ruth's struggle with her feelings about denying her students the truth about contraception and safe sex, and her stagnant divorced-parent dating life, only make up one half of the book. At the beginning of part two, readers are introduced to Tim Mason, a former addict and born-again Christian who appreciates his new found home in the church while still having doubts about some of its tenets. The two meet on adversarial ground when Tim, who coaches Ruth's daughter's soccer team, initiates a team-wide prayer after one of the games.

Ruth and Tim's lives continue to cross in the book, and Perrotta uses an interesting narrative structure to do it. At first, their stories are completely separate, each getting an entire unit of introduction. As Ruth and Tim meet, talk about the prayer issue, and gradually forge the kind of friendship that is constantly fraught with sexual tension, the space allotted to each alone shrinks. By the end of the book, Perrotta is switching perspectives every paragraph, going back and forth to show Ruth and Tim's feelings about each other and the situation they find themselves in.

I read this book pretty fast. Actually I'm reading most books faster now that I am blogging. A few years ago, if I read a book really fast, it meant I really liked it. Now, I can efficiently get through a yawner book almost as fast as a one that's terrific. While I haven't found a great book that I haven't buzzed through, it doesn't go both ways. (If it did, I'd have to rank all of those Left Behind books pretty high on my list.) So even though this was a quick read, it wasn't a great read.

I was disappointed in the lack of drama. Call me crazy, but in fourth grade we learned that stories should go like this. I think I still judge books by that standard. I couldn't find any one plot point that made this book stand out. It was a creative and prescient premise, having been published at the tail-end of the Bush administration, whose abstinence-only policy was panned by a lot of teachers. But I didn't particularly like either character: Ruth was whiny and Tim was kind of a moron.

[On a side note, do you guys remember sex ed in high school? Ours consisted of our male assistant principal cross-dressing like a grandma and talking in a funny voice about the dangers of premarital sex. Oh, and the pages in our AP Environmental Science book that showed pictures of contraceptive devices were blacked out or removed. Thanks Wake County.]

Perrotta definitely wrote this book from a liberal/blue state position, which I think is fine (but then, I'm a liberal.) I wasn't expecting a balanced view of evangelical Christianity in a novel by an author who wears emo glasses. The Virginity Consultant's steely-but-fake-nice demeanor (which reminded me of Sarah Palin), Tim's homophobic pastor, Tim's own doubts about his new religion all serve as a damning indictment of the highjacking of the public sphere by the Bible Belt crew.

Bottom line: read this if you're already a Perrotta fan. Otherwise, I'd say go read "Election" or "Little Children" first. I haven't read those, but from what I hear, Perrotta does a good job of making adulterers, a pedophile, and Tracy Flick seem human and sympathetic. If he can do that, he should have been able to breathe more life into Ruth and Tim in this book.

The Jesus Machine by Dan Gilgoff

The full title of this books is The Jesus Machine: How James Dobson, Focus on the Family, and Evangelical America Are Winning the Culture War. The title sums up the book quite nicely. I had this professor who referred to titles as contracts with the reader. Well, Dan Gilgoff's book would pass this stupid little test.

Gilgoff is not concerned with what can be done to combat the increase of the political power of Evangelicals, as I thought he would be. Instead, he just describes how the Evangelical movement has changed in the last forty years. While the book is ostensibly about James Dobson and Focus on the Family, Gilgoff is careful to place both Dobson and Focus in the proper context. He charts the rise of the Christian Right, beginning with Moral Majority, and then Christian Coalition, and then what is commonly referred to as the New Right, of which he sees Dobson as the unofficial leader.

Gilgoff asserts that Dobson filled the void left as the political influence of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson declined, and that what makes Dobson's rise to political prominence so interesting is that Focus on the Family was intended to be apolitical. But, in 2004 Dobson actively campaigned for Republican candidates whose values aligned with his. According to Gilgoff, Dobson's increased involvement in politics is what sealed the 2004 election for Bush.

I was surprised at the understanding that Gilgoff had of conservative Christians. Later I found out that he minored in religion at George Washington University, and regularly writes about the intersection of politics and religion for US News & World Report. He writes well, and had a clear understanding of his subject matter. More importantly, Gilgoff was able to show how influential the Christian Right has become in the political arena.

Perfect Enemies by John Gallagher and Chris Bull

I came across this book while doing research for a paper I was writing about the gay rights movement in Cincinnati. One of the chapters, entitled "Brushfires: Antigay outbreaks in Cincinnati, Georgia, and Texas," was particularly helpful. I hung onto the book, planning on reading the rest of it, lost it, and began accruing late fees from the UC library. Sweet. I found the book last night and figured I might as well finish it before returning it.

Written by two newspaper journalist, Perfect Enemies details the political battle over gay rights in the 1990s. While it is clear that the authors know more about those advocating for gay rights than they do about their conservative Christian opponents, both sides are presented and treated rather even-handedly.

The book is comprised of eight chapters, each of which started out as a newspaper article. Each chapter highlights a specific battle over gay rights: Colorado's Amendment 2, gays in the military, the 1992 presidential campaign, Cincinnati's anti-discrimination ordinance, etc. I found the book incredibly interesting.

What's that you say? This book's not pretentious enough for you? Well did I mention that the main character's name is Self, that it is really just one long poem, or that it was translated from the original Mandarin Chinese by a blind monk?