Inventing the Bad Ass Jesus

PEOPLE WHO PAY ATTENTION to recent trends in American culture, especially policical trends, can not help but notice that the white evangelical community has come to play an outsized role in American culture and politics. This, despite its relatively small numbers: less than twenty percent of the general population self identifies as "white evangelical Christian", and the number is decreasing. And yet this is precisely the demographic which is widely given credit for spearheading Donald Trump's political career,for electing him to the presidency. The accuarcy of this assessment is revealed by the fact that more than eighty percent of the white evangelical community supported Trump in 2016, and the same percentage still supports him, despite everything. A fascinating new study: "Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted A Faith and Fractured A Nation" provides a much needed, sweeping revisionist overview of the white evangelical movement over the last seventy five years, and explains much about the phenomenon, politically, culturally, religiously. Kristin Kobes Du Mez, the author, is a profesor of history at Calvin University, and a renowned scholar of modern American religious and cultural history, who has written mainly about women's issues for the Washingtion Post, as well as various Christian publications. She dispells the commonly held notion that white evangelicals support Trump out of any "practical" considerations, and instead posits the notion that their support is predicated primarily upon the reality that indeed Trump is the very embodiment of their most deeply held ideals and aspirations. The Jesus of the New Testament gospels has been cast to the side, and a new, more virulent, more masculine version has taken his place. Contemporary popular American culture is central in shaping the reformed image of Jesus. The new and improved all American Jesus Christ, tough guy bad ass conquering warrior for God,virtue,purity,and the bad ass American way. Christian movies, books, merchandise, and music play a vital part in the promulgation the new image as virule, masculine, featuring a patriarchal family framework, ardently opposed to the LGBTQ community, suspicious of movements such as "Me Too", and "Black Lives Matter", and strongly opposed to immigration into the United Stats by brown and black skinned people which, according to Donald Trump, are "poisoning the blood" of America from, as he put it, coming from "shit hole" countries. Conservative Christian icons such as Ronald Reagan, Mel Gibson, the "Duck Dynasty" clan, stand at the forefront of the conservative Christian culture, with the duke hiself, Marion Morris, aka John Wayne, taking center stage. The author ties all this together, clearly showing how the new born again bad ass Jesus has corrupted and divided the Christian faith in America along ideological lines, and has similarly fractured the entire nation, primarily politically,along similar lines. The Republican party has bought in, and has become the white conservative Christian party, epitomized by Trump, its icon con in chief. It is now an organization which would be utterly unrecognizable to Billy Graham and Barry Goldwater, and indeed to Ronald Reagan himself. Lord willing and the creek don't rise, there will come a time, not soon emough, when it and the movement it embodies are utterly unrecognizable, indeed unkown, to the American people.