Christianity today jesus and john wayne9/12/2023 And yet I am not sure that identifying all of the actors involved as “evangelicals”, nor identifying “evangelicalism” as what binds them together, is either helpful or accurate. What we saw that day was certainly more than “a few bad apples.” We must attend to systems as we think about those events. And yet some of my concerns about Kobes du Mez’s method apply also to my concerns with some treatments of the events at the Capitol on January 6. When X is militarism, nationalism, and misogyny, and when we deeply desire to root out such things, this kind of sweeping treatment is appealing (as the book has proven to be). Because we see X in evangelicalism, therefore evangelicalism caused X, and also evangelicalism is X. I am concerned that Kobes du Mez’s use of evidence collapses into an easy theory of causation. But I have not edited my remarks on Kristin Kobes du Mez’s Jesus and John Wayne in any way, and I stand behind my critique of the book. It is a difficult and a painful time to identify in any way with evangelicals, or to offer pushback on a sustained critique of the movement, as I have below. Since then there has been a deluge of think-pieces and journalistic treatments of the events and the role “evangelicals” had in them. I wrote and submitted this essay in advance of the January 6th events at the Capitol.
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