⬅️ Book: Jesus and John Wayne - Kristin Kobes Du Mez · Previous: Chapter 9 · Next: Chapter 11 · Source: Attachment (file not included in this release)
Chapter 10: No More Christian Nice Guy
Chapter Objective
Du Mez shows the evangelical men’s movement abandoning the 1990s balance of tenderness and authority for a post-9/11 warrior ideal. John Eldredge, James Dobson, Douglas Wilson, and related writers taught that aggression is created masculine nature, women exist to be rescued and guided, and boys must be protected from feminization. The War on Terror transformed this literature from domestic advice into national-security theology and helped white evangelicals justify preemptive war in Iraq.
Wild at Heart
- John Eldredge’s four-million-copy bestseller defined every man by a battle, adventure, and beauty to rescue. Boys’ fascination with weapons and bloodshed revealed that God made men dangerous; properly directed danger created heroes and safe communities. Attachment (file not included in this release)
- Feminism, schools, mothers, and churches had made men safe and manageable. Eldredge replaced the gentle Jesus with William Wallace, the cowboy, Teddy Roosevelt, Bond, Indiana Jones, and the warrior Christ.
- Women’s deepest nature was seductive rather than fierce. Their attempt to control life was sin; fulfillment meant vulnerability, pursuit, and participation in a man’s adventure. Popular culture supplied the gender psychology and scripture sacralized it.
- Reformed critics Mark Mulder and James K. A. Smith argued that Eldredge mistook effects of the Fall—war and enmity—for created goodness. Their peace-centered theological critique was overwhelmed in the market. Attachment (file not included in this release)
Boys, Dominion, and the Rejection of Niceness
- Dobson’s Bringing Up Boys described testosterone as the source of competition, aggression, guns, and a masculine will to power. Mothers and female teachers could nurture boys but not confer manhood; masculine initiation required fathers.
- Douglas Wilson’s Future Men made boys future warriors and “lords in the earth.” Toy weapons, real firearms, fist-fighting, painful discipline, dominion, frequent marital sex, female homemaking, and opposition to women in combat belonged to one created order. Attachment (file not included in this release)
- Wilson rejected Promise Keepers as feminist discipleship for weak men. A Christian husband was a lord, not merely a sweet servant. His more explicit language clarified the authority latent in softer formulations.
9/11 and Resurgent Militancy
- The books appeared before September 11, but the attacks supplied the battle they had promised. George W. Bush’s compassionate conservatism turned toward crusading certainty, and firefighters, soldiers, and a cowboy president became proof that masculine force saves. Attachment (file not included in this release)
- Schlafly used the all-male firefighter death toll to argue that terrorism disproved feminism; Farrar called masculine men those who enter burning buildings. Earlier cautions about fighter-plane spirituality disappeared from revised men’s literature.
- Coughlin, David Murrow, BattleCry rallies, boot camps, weapons ceremonies, and Promise Keepers’ own rebranding all displaced crying and male affection with swords, mud, combat, and “storming the gates.” Domestic and foreign enemies were “culture terrorists.” Attachment (file not included in this release)
Iraq and the Warrior God
- The Iraq War lacked the broad legitimacy of Afghanistan. Mainline churches and the Vatican challenged preemption, but Richard Land, Charles Colson, Bill Bright, D. James Kennedy, and Carl Herbster assured Bush that invasion met just-war criteria.
- The “Land letter” analogized Saddam Hussein to Hitler, vested legitimate authority in the US rather than the UN, and praised Bush’s boldness. Romans 13 made the state God’s punisher of evil. Attachment (file not included in this release)
- In 2003, 87 percent of white evangelicals supported the war, more than mainline Protestants or secular Americans. Revelation’s conquering Messiah and decades of warrior-God literature made invasion spiritually recognizable.
- Evangelicals embraced Bush’s cowboy and Lone Ranger style because aggression had been defined as the protector’s sacred design. At the Republican convention, the American flag itself became the feminine beauty for whom men fight. Attachment (file not included in this release)
Key Concepts
- Essential warrior masculinity: The claim that aggression, danger, conquest, and battle belong to created male nature rather than fallen human violence.
- Beauty to rescue: A gender script in which feminine vulnerability exists to call forth male heroism.
- Masculine initiation: The idea that fathers or male communities must separate boys from female influence and awaken their warrior identity.
- Dominion manhood: Wilson’s account of male authority as a mandate to conquer, rule, discipline, and reproduce.
- Culture terrorist: A domestic opponent framed through War on Terror language, collapsing disagreement into existential attack.
- Warrior-God just war: A reading of divine and civil authority that makes preventive national force appear biblically mandated.
Questions for Reflection
- What changes when violence is located in God’s good creation rather than in human fallenness?
- How does the “beauty to rescue” narrative shape women’s agency and men’s need for danger?
- Why did 9/11 make preexisting evangelical masculinity books newly persuasive?
- Did the Land letter apply traditional just-war limits, or reinterpret them to fit a desired policy?
- How does calling cultural opponents terrorists affect the possibility of democratic disagreement?
Citations and References
Author’s complete endnotes
Chapter 10 endnotes 1–28: Attachment (file not included in this release) · Attachment (file not included in this release) · Attachment (file not included in this release).
- Eldredge and theological criticism (notes 1–7): John Eldredge, Wild at Heart; reporting on its influence; Randy Stinson; and Mark Mulder with James K. A. Smith.
- Dobson and Wilson (notes 8–15): Dobson, Bringing Up Boys; Douglas Wilson, Future Men, Federal Husband, Reforming Marriage, and related works.
- Post-9/11 masculinity (notes 16–23): Schlafly; Steve Farrar; Gordon Dalbey; Paul Coughlin; David Murrow; BattleCry and Promise Keepers reporting.
- Iraq and Christian nationalism (notes 24–28): the National Council of Churches and Vatican response; Richard Land’s letter; public-opinion reporting; Falwell; and Michael W. Smith’s Republican convention performance.