jesus and john wayne by kristin kobes du mez

After naming Jen Hatmaker, she mentions her nevermore. For Du Mez, it is only “conservatives” who fall prey to marketing and celebrity culture. This is readily apparent in the heroes they celebrate” (10). Here is her point: “Today, what it means to be a ‘conservative evangelical’ is as much about culture as it is about theology. Or course, if you have run across Jesus and John Wayne, you will see that I left off Du Mez’s punchline. If you want to know what to think about the American religious landscape, order in a FabFitFun box, sign up for the online book club, and if you are very lucky, your favorite Christian celebrity might be able to join you on Zoom.

And in it, she sets forth the new, progressive theological guardrails of moral and philosophical acceptability. In it she apprehends the contours of American religiosity. In it Du Mez aggressively articulates the ascendant theological assumptions of the day. It is why, I think, Jesus and John Wayne is so popular at this particular moment. “The products Christians consume shape the faith they inhabit,” writes Du Mez. After the unboxing video, I scrolled a little further and listened to Hatmaker - tired but cheerful - launch her latest book, Simple and Free, a treatise on how to deal with the material excesses of life. Was Kristin Kobes Du Mez, in her bestselling Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangeclicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation, going to make me unhappily relive the controversies of the last fifty years that rent not only my own denomination, but the whole country? Or, would she be able to effectively untangle the theological, political, and cultural mess that has made life in the church so complicated? I had high hopes, especially as I had just wasted fifteen precious minutes of my too busy day watching Jen Hatmaker unbox the Spring FabFitFun Box, that subscription cornucopia of wellness, beauty, and personal pampering products. I stopped and read the line aloud, those two names - Rachel Held Evans and Jen Hatmaker - leaping off the page.

“When Rachel Held Evans and Jen Hatmaker ran afoul of conservative orthodoxies related to sexuality and gender.” (9). Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation.

Editor’s note: The following review will appear in the Spring 2021 edition of Eikon.

Jesus and john wayne by kristin kobes du mez