Jesus and John Wayne - 11 - Holy Balls

⬅️ Book: Jesus and John Wayne - Kristin Kobes Du Mez · Previous: Chapter 10 · Next: Chapter 12 · Source: Attachment (file not included in this release)

Chapter 11: Holy Balls

Chapter Objective

Du Mez maps the post-9/11 radicalization of militant masculinity across apparently different evangelical worlds: fight-club ministries, homeschool patriarchy, Quiverfull families, Mars Hill’s hip church culture, and New Calvinist networks. The chapter’s central claim is institutional: fringe and mainstream became hard to distinguish because leaders, publishers, conferences, church-planting networks, and digital media treated patriarchal authority as a watershed doctrine and extended legitimacy to increasingly authoritarian men.

Fight-Club Christianity

• GodMen rallies used profanity, combat videos, testosterone anthems, and attacks on a gentle “Bearded Lady” Jesus to call men from niceness to sword-bearing leadership. Christian mixed martial arts sought to inject machismo into churches; by 2010 roughly 700 predominantly white evangelical churches used MMA outreach. Attachment (file not included in this release)
• These were extreme performances, but they amplified a widely circulating claim: church and country had become feminized, and bodily aggression could restore both men and Christ’s image.

Homeschool Patriarchy and Culture-War Formation

• Dobson’s collaboration with Michael Farris and the Home School Legal Defense Association demonstrated political capacity: one radio appeal generated roughly one million congressional calls and expanded legal protection for homeschooling. Attachment (file not included in this release)
• Bill Gothard’s curriculum continued to teach male command, female submission, and Christian-nationalist restoration. Doug Phillips’s Vision Forum translated Reconstructionist patriarchy into books, toys, historical tours, films, and gendered consumer worlds.
• Phillips celebrated pro-Confederate theologian Robert Lewis Dabney, Roosevelt, Stonewall Jackson, painful discipline, women’s absorption into their husbands, and patriotism as a divine duty. Boys received weapons and adventure; girls received purity, domesticity, and “Southern lady” ideals. Attachment (file not included in this release)
• Quiverfull women became domestic warriors producing an army of children to outvote cultural opponents. Patrick Henry College and Generation Joshua turned homeschooled youth into interns and Republican campaign workers, moving the subculture toward state power.
• Jeff Sharlet found the same warrior literature and Reconstructionist authority inside the politically influential Fellowship, showing that homeschool ideology did not remain in isolated families. Attachment (file not included in this release)

Mark Driscoll’s Hip Militancy

• Mars Hill combined nightclub aesthetics, digital fluency, and verse-by-verse conservatism. Driscoll’s culturally current style obscured a theology more belligerent than the old Religious Right.
• His Jesus was a muscular working man, offensive force, and tattooed warrior king. Driscoll emphasized wrath over mercy, used explicit sexual instruction to command wives’ service, and described women in dehumanizing terms. Attachment (file not included in this release)
• Theological sparring, security guards, fear of Islam and sexualized women, public humiliation, and absolute submission turned threat into pastoral control. His military missions distributed sermons on bases in Afghanistan and Iraq.
• Young men found the message compelling because it gave otherwise unremarkable white men an immediate vocation to lead. Male-only media consumption and peer groups reinforced the ideology without sustained challenge. Attachment (file not included in this release)

New Calvinist Networks

• Driscoll helped build Acts 29 and The Gospel Coalition within the “young, restless, and Reformed” revival. John Piper, Al Mohler, C. J. Mahaney, Mark Dever, R. C. Sproul, and others expanded influence through conferences, websites, endorsements, and church planting.
• New Calvinism emphasized hell, wrath, substitutionary atonement, certainty, and strict complementarianism. Piper described Christianity as having a “masculine feel.” Attachment (file not included in this release)
• Serious doctrinal differences—including spiritual gifts—could be bracketed because gender hierarchy and church discipline were treated as urgent common ground. Networks rewarded boldness and gave controversial figures respected stages.

Doug Wilson and the Collapse of the Fringe-Mainstream Boundary

• Wilson advocated male correction of wives, painful child discipline, biblical hatred, suppression of homosexuality, and romanticized slavery and Confederate Christianity. In the 1990s these views placed him at the fringe.
• Piper invited Wilson to major conferences, defended him against criticism of his racial views, and emphasized shared gospel commitment. Christianity Today covered and honored his work. Attachment (file not included in this release)
• The key mechanism is mutual legitimation: leaders shared stages, blurbed books, promoted conferences, and defended one another. Alternative views on gender, sexuality, or hell lost access to bookstores and associations.
• The network did not simply tolerate isolated extremists; its common commitment to patriarchal power changed the center itself, providing cover for harsher versions and narrowing what counted as evangelical. Attachment (file not included in this release)

Key Concepts

• Fight-club Christianity: Religious formation through combat, profanity, humiliation, and bodily aggression as antidotes to feminized church culture.
• Biblical patriarchy: A stronger form of complementarianism extending male rule through family, church, education, politics, and social order.
• Quiverfull: Pronatalist patriarchy in which large families supply demographic soldiers for Christian cultural conquest.
• Hip militancy: Authoritarian theology packaged through contemporary style, technology, sexual candor, and anti-establishment branding.
• New Calvinism: A cross-denominational Reformed revival emphasizing wrath, certainty, mission, discipline, and complementarian gender order.
• Mutual legitimation network: Institutions and leaders that increase one another’s authority through stages, endorsements, publishing, and defenses.
• Fringe-mainstream collapse: The movement of extreme teachings toward the center because shared patriarchal commitments outweigh other objections.

Questions for Reflection

1. What made fight-club ministries structurally similar to more respectable evangelical men’s networks?
2. How did homeschooling move from family withdrawal to deliberate training for political power?
3. Why was Driscoll’s cultural hipness compatible with unusually rigid authority?
4. Which network incentives encouraged leaders to excuse misogyny or proslavery historical claims?
5. How should a movement define doctrinal partnership when one shared belief gives cover to serious abuses of power?

Citations and References

Author’s complete endnotes

Chapter 11 endnotes 1–33: Attachment (file not included in this release) · Attachment (file not included in this release) · Attachment (file not included in this release).

• GodMen, MMA, and homeschooling (notes 1–9): contemporary reporting; Dan Gilgoff; federal education data; Julie Ingersoll; Doug Phillips; Kathryn Joyce, Quiverfull; and Jeff Sharlet, The Family.
• Mars Hill and Driscoll (notes 10–21): Jessica Johnson, Biblical Porn; Driscoll sermons and blog archives; Matthew Paul Turner; reporting, interviews, and firsthand testimony.
• New Calvinist institutions (notes 22–28, 33): Colin Hansen; Piper and New Calvinist publications; Acts 29; The Gospel Coalition; Together for the Gospel; Christianity Today.
• Doug Wilson and slavery (notes 29–32): Wilson’s Future Men, Southern Slavery as It Was, and Black & Tan; Piper’s public defenses; and evangelical reviews and awards.