Book recommendation: Jesus and John Wayne
“The progress that women ministers have made in the Southern Baptist Convention since 1980 has been encouraging, but many problems persist which prevent women from becoming accepted by the conservative-controlled Convention as church leaders called by God. The rift between conservatives and moderates is the primary barrier, and this division is the result of political and theological differences so intertwined that they are often indistinguishable. Conservatives have been phenomenally successful in their attempts to control the SBC hierarchy. They have a well-defined ideology based upon biblical inerrancy and pro-traditional family values (conservatives are able to play very effectively upon Baptists’ fears that the family is in decline), and they have productively utilized the pulpit, increasing exposure and influence in the national political forum, and a well-organized network of conservative leaders to communicate their views and mobilize support.”
I wrote these words in 1999 as part of my undergraduate thesis, in which I examined the obstacles and possibilities for Baptist women in ministry before leaping headfirst into seminary the following fall. After reading the excellent book by Kristin Kobes Du Mez on white evangelicals and the culture war, here’s what I’d go back and tell myself as a college senior:
1) It’s going to get more fraught, not less, within all of white Christian evangelicalism. Buckle up, because the culture wars will greatly impact your life long after you shed the evangelical label.
2) You don’t yet have the whole picture. The culture wars are about so much more than politics and biblical interpretation. (Spoiler alert: it really has little to do with the Bible.)
Jesus and John Wayne filled in many of the gaps for me. In the past few years I have become particularly fascinated by the geopolitics of World War II and, even more so, the Cold War. Evangelical leaders utilized Americans’ fear of the Soviet Union coming out of WWII, the military ramp-up around multiple wars in the mid to late 20th and early 21st century, a growing and well-utilized communications network (including publishing houses, radio stations, and mailing lists), increasing influence over elections and policy resulting from that communications empire, complementarian ideology that established a rigid chain of command in the home and in society, and white people’s fear of cultural erasure to divide the citizenry and claim power. Anytime it seemed that the white evangelical influence was on its way out, even sometimes due to its own financial and sex scandals, power brokers stoked that sense of embattlement to get out the vote and encourage evangelicals to make their opinions felt in other ways.
If you want to know why childcare is so expensive while women still make less money than men, why certain segments of Christianity are pro-gun and pro-war (while also often being pro-life when it comes to abortion), how white supremacy has continually been nurtured, why poor whites often vote against their economic interests, and how politicians who thumb their noses at “family values” ride waves of white evangelical support into office, read this book. It might not make you feel hopeful, but it did help me feel like I had a better grasp of this bizarro world.