⬅️ Book: Jesus and John Wayne - Kristin Kobes Du Mez · Previous: Chapter 13 · Next: Chapter 15 · Source: Attachment (file not included in this release)
Chapter 14: Spiritual Badasses
Chapter Objective
Du Mez traces how Barack Obama’s presidency restored the evangelical posture of embattlement that had weakened late in George W. Bush’s tenure. Sarah Palin, Eric Metaxas, the Duck Dynasty family, and soldier-authors repackaged the same ideal for different audiences: heroic Christian masculinity, cultural grievance, and militant protection. The chapter prepares the 2016 turn by showing a movement primed to accept drastic means if the right warrior appeared.
Obama, Race, and Competing Christianities
- John McCain remained suspect because he had once denounced Falwell and Robertson as “agents of intolerance.” Barack Obama posed a deeper challenge: his Black church tradition criticized national sin, whereas white evangelical Christian nationalism treated such criticism as disloyalty. Attachment (file not included in this release)
- Jeremiah Wright’s sermons condemned racism, militarization, preemptive war, and American claims to innocence. Obama rejected Wright’s incendiary language while situating it within Black historical experience and professing love for the country.
- Dobson rejected Obama’s approach to scripture and public reason, especially Obama’s observation that Christians disagree about which biblical rules should become public policy. Attachment (file not included in this release)
Sarah Palin and Gendered Culture War
- McCain’s choice of Palin revived enthusiasm among Dobson and Christian Right organizations. Leaders reconciled a woman’s executive candidacy with male headship because the opposing ticket was deemed more threatening.
- Palin combined motherhood, beauty, guns, anti-abortion politics, Pentecostal-inflected faith, resentment of elites, and attacks on liberal masculinity. Du Mez interprets her not as an exception to patriarchal culture but as its ideal female culture warrior. Attachment (file not included in this release)
- Obama won more young white evangelical support than prior Democrats, prompting predictions that the culture wars were ending. His presidency instead strengthened the Religious Right by restoring a clear enemy and a sense of being against the tide.
Otherness and the Politics of Religious Freedom
- Birtherism, Franklin Graham’s claim that Obama carried a Muslim “seed,” and widespread uncertainty about his Christian identity fused citizenship, religion, race, and belonging. By 2010, more white evangelicals surveyed called Obama Muslim than Christian. Attachment (file not included in this release)
- Wayne Grudem’s systematic politics joined complementarianism to closed borders, military strength, preemptive war, and opposition to abortion and LGBT rights. Theological manhood extended from the household into national policy.
- Conflicts over contraception, same-sex marriage, wedding services, and transgender access were framed as religious-liberty emergencies. The operative liberty was not religious neutrality but protection of a Christian social and gender order.
- Dobson and Boykin turned bathroom policy into imagined sexual assault and armed protection, explicitly invoking violence and asking where American manhood had gone. Attachment (file not included in this release)
Eric Metaxas and the Recovery of Heroes
- Metaxas’s media career and bestselling biographies gave militant evangelical politics a witty, Yale-educated spokesman. His portrayals of Wilberforce and Bonhoeffer made conservative evangelicals history’s reliable heroes, despite objections from specialists.
- 7 Men began with John Wayne and blamed Vietnam, Watergate, and revisionist history for destroying heroic manhood. Criticism of Washington’s slavery or Columbus’s violence became an attack on the authority young men needed. Attachment (file not included in this release)
- Hero recovery served both patriarchy and Christian nationalism: fathers, founders, soldiers, and religious leaders were to be admired, while structural critique appeared corrosive.
Duck Dynasty and Commercialized Authenticity
- The Robertsons offered a populist version of the same ideal: bearded hunters, polished wives, guns, food, veterans, explicit family hierarchy, and contempt for liberal respectability.
- Phil Robertson’s blunt statements on abortion and sexuality made him a hero precisely because he would say what “the establishment” would not. Christian publishers and Walmart turned the family into a broad merchandise ecosystem. Attachment (file not included in this release)
- The phenomenon blurs “cultural” and doctrinal Christianity. In practice, evangelical identity could mean a God-and-country culture organized around white rural values, outsiders, militarism, and patriarchal masculinity.
Warrior Christ and the Authority of Soldiers
- Army chaplain John McDougall’s Jesus Was an Airborne Ranger replaced the gentle Jesus with a forceful “badass” who channels anger and advances his kingdom.
- Stu Weber and Jerry Boykin’s The Warrior Soul applied war to abortion, same-sex marriage, political donations, and Islam. Sacrifice meant funding organizations and joining culture-war campaigns. Attachment (file not included in this release)
- They also challenged civilian control by arguing that warriors, not philosophers, should decide what makes war just. Du Mez presents this as the culmination of elevating soldiers from servants of a democracy into uniquely privileged moral authorities.
The Chapter’s Synthesis
- Obama’s popularity did not moderate the movement. Perceived demographic decline, young-adult defection, racialized otherness, and changing gender and sexuality law restored evangelical grievance.
- By 2016, white evangelicals had been taught that ordinary leadership and ordinary political restraint were inadequate. “Drastic times” had created demand for an aggressive protector. Attachment (file not included in this release)
Key Concepts
- Embattlement: Identity formed through the conviction that hostile cultural forces threaten the community’s existence or rightful authority.
- Prophetic theology vs. Christian nationalism: A contrast between judging the nation by moral standards and treating criticism of the nation as impiety.
- Patriarchal female culture warrior: A woman who gains authority by defending male headship, conventional beauty, and conservative family power.
- Christian religious liberty: In this chapter, a movement frame protecting evangelical institutions and gender norms from equalizing public rules.
- Heroic history: Narration that preserves authority through exemplary great men and treats attention to their injustice as destructive cynicism.
- Commercialized authenticity: Mass-market religious identity presented as plainspoken, anti-elite, rural, and unfiltered.
- Warrior moral authority: The claim that soldiers’ experience grants them privileged competence to judge violence, justice, and public policy.
Questions for Reflection
- Why did criticism of American history or policy register as religious betrayal for many white evangelicals?
- How could Palin’s candidacy reinforce rather than overturn complementarian gender ideals?
- What did “religious freedom” protect in the controversies Du Mez selects, and whose freedom remained outside the frame?
- How did Metaxas and the Robertsons market the same politics to different cultural audiences?
- Why does assigning warriors special moral authority create a problem for civilian democratic control?
Citations and References
Author’s complete endnotes
Chapter 14 endnotes 1–31: Attachment (file not included in this release) · Attachment (file not included in this release).
- McCain, Obama, Wright, and Palin (notes 1–10): campaign speeches, polling, contemporary reporting, and religious-political analysis.
- Obama’s religion, Islam, and religious liberty (notes 11–17): Pew data; Graham, Bauer, Grudem, Dobson, and Boykin statements; legal controversies and administration policy.
- Metaxas and evangelical heroes (notes 18–22): Metaxas’s speeches and books, publisher materials, and historical-theological reviews.
- The Robertsons and Christian retail (notes 23–26): Duck Dynasty, interviews, Christian publishing, and retail-industry reporting.
- Warrior literature and 2016 embattlement (notes 27–31): John McDougall; Stu Weber and Jerry Boykin; and comparative public-opinion data.