In this episode, we chat with Kristin Kobes Du Mez about her book that's been making waves and is brilliantly titled Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation. This book is probably our favorite of 2020 and is a must-read. During the course of this interview, we chat about everything from toxic masculinity and power hungry religious leaders to Amy Grant and Tiffany. Seriously.
The whiskey featured in this episode is Weller Special Reserve bourbon from the fantastic Buffalo Trace Distillery.
Content note: this episode contains some mild profanity.
=====
Want to support us?
The best way is to subscribe to our Patreon. Annual memberships are available for a 10% discount.
If you'd rather make a one-time donation, you can contribute through our PayPal.
Other important info:
Cheers!
In this episode, we chat with Kristin Kobes Du Mez about her book that's been making waves and is brilliantly titled Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation. This book is probably our favorite of 2020 and is a must-read. During the course of this interview, we chat about everything from toxic masculinity and power hungry religious leaders to Amy Grant and Tiffany. Seriously.
The whiskey featured in this episode is Weller Special Reserve bourbon from the fantastic Buffalo Trace Distillery.
Content note: this episode contains some mild profanity.
=====
Want to support us?
The best way is to subscribe to our Patreon. Annual memberships are available for a 10% discount.
If you'd rather make a one-time donation, you can contribute through our PayPal.
Other important info:
Cheers!
00:00
much of the opposition to
00:03
kind of civil rights post civil rights
00:05
act you know
00:06
1964 and 1965 so the majority of
00:08
evangelicals were okay with that and
00:10
then they thought okay
00:11
we're good that that's good uh anything
00:14
beyond
00:15
that could easily get dismantled as
00:18
and disrupting the social order the law
00:21
and order politics
00:23
really strong by the late 60s and
00:25
certainly by the 70s in evangelical
00:27
circles
00:28
and yes marxism target with marxism
00:31
also a slightly uh less extreme
00:35
socialism or marxism but it's big
00:36
government and we're anti-big government
00:39
and of course in that moment what is the
00:41
big government doing what is the federal
00:43
government
00:44
doing they are interfering with states
00:46
rights in order to enforce desegregation
00:52
[Music]
00:54
welcome to a pastor and a philosopher
00:56
walk into a bar the podcast where we mix
00:58
a sometimes weird but always delicious
01:01
cocktail of theology
01:02
philosophy and spirituality hey elliot
01:05
here and i just thought i would pop
01:06
in you know as i was editing i thought
01:08
it might be unclear
01:10
that this episode was recorded prior to
01:12
the insurrection that we saw play out
01:14
last week as trump supporters overtook
01:16
the capital
01:17
and so you're not going to hear that
01:18
reference specifically
01:21
that said it's amazing to see how the
01:23
topics that we covered
01:25
continue to play out as history in front
01:27
of our eyes
01:28
and so i found this to be a really
01:29
insightful conversation
01:31
one of my favorite episodes to date it
01:33
also started with one of my favorite
01:35
tastings to date
01:36
so we'll hop back in there
01:40
just in case there's some new listeners
01:41
hopefully there are so welcome
01:43
and um what we do on the show this is a
01:46
pastor and a philosopher walk into a bar
01:48
after all we do a tasting
01:50
of some spirits and i don't mean the
01:52
holy spirit um
01:54
of usually whiskey or beer and we talk
01:56
about it a little bit because we like to
01:58
have conversations that happen
02:00
in a bar that you might have in a bar so
02:02
kyle what are we drinking today
02:04
so today we are drinking one of my
02:06
favorite go-to
02:08
bourbons if i can find it which is not
02:11
that
02:11
likely anymore it used to be easy to
02:13
find but it's one of those that has
02:14
become popular and so now it's snatched
02:16
up immediately
02:18
this is weller special reserve bourbon
02:22
comes in at 45 alcohol by volume it's a
02:25
weeded bourbon in fact
02:26
they claim that it's the first weeded
02:28
bourbon i don't know the history of that
02:29
but
02:30
that means that wheat is the main
02:32
secondary grain
02:34
in the mash bill and this is distilled
02:36
by buffalo trace
02:37
distillery in frankfurt kentucky i mean
02:40
how many
02:41
amazing brands of bourbon come out of
02:43
buffalo trace distillery
02:44
all the all the most hyped ones pretty
02:46
much at this point are almost
02:47
all of them yep so this is weller
02:51
special reserve is there a weller
02:53
non-special reserve
02:54
uh there are a few different varieties
02:57
of weller this is probably the easiest
02:59
to find or
03:00
this one or maybe one called weller
03:02
antique i believe it's called antique
03:04
107 or something like that
03:06
there's a 12 year that's pretty
03:07
difficult to find that is
03:10
fantastic if you ever find a bottle
03:12
snatch it up immediately
03:13
and then they have some other
03:14
expressions that are exceedingly rare
03:16
there's a
03:17
william larue weller which is the full
03:19
name of the guy it's named after
03:20
it's part of the buffalo trace antique
03:22
collection and if you ever
03:24
find a bottle of that don't tell anyone
03:26
where you found it
03:29
and keep it and open it on a special
03:30
occasion that actually
03:32
is the the best bourbon i've ever had
03:36
maybe the best whiskey i've ever had the
03:38
william larryweller
03:40
wow yeah this doesn't quite approach
03:42
that but
03:43
but nonetheless it's in the same family
03:45
and i think it's delicious
03:46
now i feel like i'm getting cheated like
03:49
[Laughter]
03:50
there's something better than this well
03:53
here we go weller
03:55
the nose is hot i haven't tasted it yet
03:58
yeah i find this to be one of them
04:00
one of them this line of bourbons to be
04:02
one some of the best balance
04:04
they have that hit a sweetness on the
04:06
front because of the wheat
04:09
but they're they're just really well
04:11
balanced the spice
04:13
the caramel notes a little bit of black
04:17
pepper on the end
04:18
yeah the way that the spice layers on
04:20
top of the vanilla and the sweetness is
04:21
just
04:22
really delicious it's so much more mild
04:24
than an easy drinking than i thought it
04:26
was going to be when i heard that it was
04:27
45
04:28
when i smelled it even it smelled hot to
04:30
me it smelled sweet
04:32
but it's very luscious and it has a
04:34
great mouth feel
04:36
it's not hot on the tongue it's it's
04:39
rich it's got these low notes it doesn't
04:41
have the you can tell it's weeded that's
04:43
what i think
04:44
yeah is that that part that is weeded
04:46
the rye isn't very high in there so it's
04:48
not super spicy
04:49
it just brings a lot of caramely stuff
04:51
it brings a lot of oak it brings a lot
04:53
of that barrel but
04:54
without the heat and spice yeah now
04:57
imagine that this sat for
04:59
there there's no age statement on
05:00
william larue weller so i don't know
05:02
exactly how long but imagine this set
05:03
for several more years
05:06
imagine what that would do to it yeah
05:08
delicious yeah this is
05:10
incredible but it is also like you say
05:13
incredibly hard to find
05:15
yeah nowadays it kind of is you kind of
05:16
have to get lucky or trade for it or
05:18
something
05:19
if you can't find it though it's what 30
05:21
35 bucks
05:22
it's not that much if you're able to
05:24
find it on the shelf yeah it shouldn't
05:25
be
05:26
much more than that wow well if you do
05:29
find it
05:30
get it yeah buy it buy a couple of them
05:33
keep them to a pre impress people maybe
05:36
buy an extra well we wouldn't encourage
05:38
people
05:38
selling them on aftermarket right now
05:40
don't do that you're part of the price
05:42
[Music]
05:45
we have a fun episode for you today
05:48
really really fun actually
05:49
there's this book that came out in 2020
05:52
that's
05:53
really rocked a lot of boats
05:54
particularly within the church and
05:56
within evangelicalism called
05:58
jesus and john wayne and we get to talk
06:00
to the author dr
06:01
kristin kobus dumay thank you so much
06:03
for joining us
06:04
oh thank you it's great to be here i
06:07
read your book
06:07
jesus and john wayne for a sermon series
06:10
actually that
06:10
we did this fall and uh i was pretty
06:13
much living that entire time with my jaw
06:15
on the ground so i'm
06:16
super super excited to have you with us
06:19
uh today we've got a bunch of questions
06:21
for you
06:22
but so yeah sorry i'm sorry it was a
06:25
fascinating book and i couldn't hold
06:26
back so
06:28
and this outline is after i told kyle he
06:30
had to take several
06:31
several questions off it was just too
06:32
much can you
06:35
kristen is that okay if we call you
06:36
kristen yes please all right kristen
06:38
could you just tell us a little bit
06:39
about yourself your background and
06:41
what got you to where you are now sure i
06:44
i grew up in a small town in iowa sea
06:46
center iowa
06:48
is a very uh kind of conservative
06:51
enclave i grew up in a
06:52
dutch community a christian reformed
06:55
church and so
06:57
uh rather isolated in retrospect i can
07:00
see
07:01
i uh my family moved to florida for a
07:03
couple years while i was in high school
07:05
and then i ended up being an exchange
07:06
student in germany so i did see a bit of
07:08
the world
07:09
but then i came back to sioux center and
07:12
uh went to college at dort a christian
07:14
university
07:15
and from there i went off to study uh
07:18
religious and intellectual history at
07:20
the university of notre dame
07:22
in my very first semester there just a
07:24
few weeks in
07:25
i encountered my first book of women's
07:27
history gender studies
07:29
and it just rocked my world and i
07:31
completely
07:33
shifted my course of study i kept the
07:34
study of american religious history but
07:36
added a field in women's history and
07:38
gender
07:39
and i just was fascinated by how ideas
07:43
of masculinity and femininity changed
07:45
over time how they were linked to
07:47
all sorts of broader shifts economic
07:50
shifts foreign policy
07:52
and i think you can kind of see how one
07:54
thing led to another
07:56
my first book was actually a history of
07:57
christian feminism
07:59
and uh this book actually grew out of a
08:02
conversation that i had with some
08:04
students
08:04
about 15 years ago who
08:07
introduced me to john eldridge's wild at
08:10
heart
08:11
and conceptions of kind of militant
08:14
christian manhood and this was right
08:16
during the early years of the iraq war
08:18
and i started wondering what these
08:21
militant conceptions of masculinity
08:23
might have to do
08:24
with uh the survey data that was coming
08:26
out at the time that white evangelicals
08:28
were
08:29
far and away more likely to support the
08:31
wars to support preemptive war condone
08:33
the use of torture
08:34
and you know this militarism that was
08:36
very pronounced and so
08:38
that really set me on the path
08:39
eventually to write
08:41
jesus and john wayne so you've been
08:42
working on this for 15 years
08:44
no so i started i should fill in the
08:47
gaps there
08:48
i i i did start for about a year kind of
08:50
playing around this is before i'd
08:51
written my first book
08:53
which which had grown out of my
08:54
dissertation so i had a few other things
08:56
going on but
08:57
i was just dabbling in this project uh
09:00
and and then i ended up setting it aside
09:02
for a couple of reasons i had two kids
09:04
in quick succession and realized i
09:06
couldn't write two books at once and
09:08
um but also i was really disturbed by
09:11
what i was
09:12
discovering i i i found it revolting
09:15
frankly it was deeply misogynistic
09:17
i was going to say how do you write
09:18
about this for 15 years no
09:20
no that was part of the reason i set
09:22
aside but related to that
09:23
it wasn't clear to me how mainstream
09:26
this all was
09:27
right so i was wondering am i just
09:29
seeing this this fringe movement
09:31
and do i need to be shining this bright
09:33
light on what might be the darkest
09:35
underbelly of american christianity
09:37
uh you know is this is this worth the
09:39
effort and does this need to be done
09:41
and i just wasn't really sure so i set
09:43
it aside took up other projects
09:45
uh you know life kind of happened and
09:48
then it was in the fall of 2016
09:50
actually in the weeks after the access
09:52
hollywood tape released that
09:54
i thought yeah i need to dust off that
09:56
old research i i'm seeing some things
09:59
come together and particularly that
10:01
question of
10:02
how much of this is really fringe and
10:03
how much of it is really close to the
10:05
mainstream
10:06
um was solved at that point that's
10:08
actually a great segue into
10:10
my first question about the book so my
10:12
area of research i'm an epistemologist
10:14
and i've
10:15
recently been thinking a lot about echo
10:16
chambers and public trust and that sort
10:18
of thing
10:19
which is highly relevant to many of the
10:21
aspects of the book and so
10:23
i'm curious just right off the bat where
10:26
you landed i guess on that question
10:27
of is it mainstream is it fringe is it
10:30
a cult because there are some stark
10:33
similarities between
10:35
the ways that evangelicals have
10:37
organized themselves socially
10:39
and the ways that that groups that
10:41
anyone would recognize as a cult
10:43
organize themselves and also
10:45
similarities in thought patterns
10:47
so one piece of the book that made me
10:49
think of this in particular is you were
10:51
talking about john wayne's movies the
10:53
alamo and the green berets and at one
10:55
point you said
10:56
the fact that those movies were
10:57
viciously panned and vilified was a
11:00
point in their favor
11:01
for a lot of evangelicals and that's
11:03
like a classic feature of cults
11:05
or echo chambers right the the you're
11:08
like immunized against critique
11:10
you encounter the critique but it
11:11
doesn't have an impact because
11:13
you're already you've already been told
11:14
what to think about it yeah that's like
11:16
classic cult move and that's exactly
11:18
what evangelicals do so
11:19
is it fair to call evangelicalism a cult
11:22
at this point
11:23
oh so i'm i'm not an expert on cults but
11:25
i do know enough to know to be careful
11:27
with that terminology
11:28
right there's a kind of popular usage
11:29
and then there's a more technical usage
11:31
i think it would be fair to call some of
11:34
these more extreme communities within
11:36
evangelicalism cult-like and i'm
11:38
thinking here particularly
11:40
some of the independent fundamental
11:41
baptist communities
11:44
and and then evangelicalism writ large
11:48
there are some tendencies as you suggest
11:50
this
11:51
kind of inoculation against external
11:54
critique
11:55
this persecution complex really the
11:58
sense of
11:59
us versus them and that we hold the
12:01
truth we hold
12:02
god's truth and anybody outside of these
12:05
walls outside of this community
12:08
they do not have the source of truth and
12:10
so why would we want to empower them and
12:11
so there are certainly some
12:13
tendencies that i think are run parallel
12:16
that said no i don't think most white
12:19
evangelicals are in a cult right now
12:22
what fascinated me though was the
12:24
relationship between
12:26
the more mainstream the more moderate if
12:28
you will
12:29
evangelicals and the more more fringe
12:32
parts of the movement and i think that's
12:33
a theme that you can see running through
12:35
this book is me trying to test out okay
12:37
you've got bill gothard here
12:39
and then you got james dobson gothard
12:41
definitely extreme james dobson pretty
12:43
mainstream as far as evangelicalism goes
12:46
at the end of the day they're saying
12:48
things that are really quite similar
12:50
and so that's what fascinated me what's
12:52
the connection and what are the
12:53
affinities
12:54
between the moderate quote-unquote
12:57
respectable
12:58
mainstream evangelicals even you know
13:00
institutions like christianity today
13:02
uh and and then these more fringe
13:05
movements and how are the
13:06
alliances forged and boundaries drawn
13:10
so who's who's inside who do we consider
13:13
my brother in christ
13:15
and then who gets excluded ultimately
13:17
who's going to be pushed out of the
13:18
communion who's going to be pushed out
13:20
of the community
13:21
and that's that's really where i ended
13:23
up and so what i see is that there are
13:24
some strong affinities between the
13:26
mainstream and more fringe movements
13:29
and then and that's probably as far as i
13:31
i could go
13:32
discussing whether whether or not this
13:33
is a cult although some of the behaviors
13:36
the practices
13:36
are certainly worth examining another
13:40
kind of somewhat related to this thing
13:41
that i've noticed being an evangelical
13:44
my whole life and only recently having
13:45
given up the label
13:47
and largely as a result of higher
13:48
education which is exactly what my
13:50
parents warned me about
13:51
i'm pretty sure my parents think i'm no
13:53
longer a christian because
13:55
i got educated but but interestingly in
13:58
that there seemed to be a double
13:59
standard and this is also something i
14:00
was reminded of in the book when you
14:02
were talking about james dobson
14:04
like people like my parents for example
14:06
or other strongly conservative
14:08
evangelicals that i know they buy
14:10
wholesale into
14:12
this there's a academic cultural elite
14:15
that is against the common person and
14:17
the common the average person would
14:18
include most white evangelicals
14:20
until one of their own gets credentialed
14:23
by the elite
14:24
and then they're like trumpeted as you
14:26
know look they're giving it to the man
14:27
and dobson's a good example of this
14:29
right because he
14:30
he got the credentials from the
14:31
respected university and then he used it
14:33
for evangelical purposes
14:34
so like how should we understand that
14:37
kind of seeming double standard there
14:39
oh i mean yeah i think you you got that
14:42
exactly right
14:42
there's a real suspicion of
14:46
again of outsiders of outside knowledge
14:49
of outside expertise that was something
14:51
that
14:52
uh it was very clear through my research
14:54
you know decades ago evangelicals were
14:57
saying you know we need our own media
14:59
don't consume mainstream media
15:01
mainstream news we need our own
15:03
you know news organizations we need our
15:05
own magazines we need our own you know
15:08
we have our own christian contemporary
15:09
music and all that this call this
15:11
evangelical subculture and that was
15:14
developed and it was so strong
15:15
because they were rejecting so much of
15:18
the mainstream
15:19
culture at the time and and continuing
15:22
to today and i think we see the same
15:24
thing with kind of academic expertise
15:26
that if it is one of our own
15:28
and if we can then hold that up as see
15:31
we can do it but we can do it even
15:33
better and
15:34
and that then they they gain this this
15:37
real status
15:38
within evangelicalism and you can see
15:40
that with with scholars with academics
15:43
i think somebody like eric mataxis is
15:44
kind of an interesting example here
15:46
where you know just even five years ago
15:49
or maybe we need to go six years ago
15:51
but certainly 10 years ago you know he
15:53
was known
15:54
as kind of the evangelical intellectual
15:57
and he could hold his
15:58
own socrates in the city and so on and
16:00
he was really
16:01
um you know uh admired for
16:05
that that he could kind of go to toe
16:07
with the brightest the best and the
16:08
brightest
16:09
and in new york city of all places and
16:11
you know it's been interesting to see
16:13
what he's become especially in recent
16:15
years and recent weeks
16:17
um and and to wonder what that was right
16:19
that was just an act that was
16:21
has evangelicalism changed so much you
16:23
know i think in some ways it has but now
16:25
there's a different appeal
16:27
and being the suave intellectual isn't
16:30
where it's at at all anymore uh
16:31
it's really i think given into this
16:34
populist movement
16:35
and mataxis four or five years ago saw
16:38
where it was going he was very astute
16:40
and kind of changed his tune and now
16:42
he's trying to do the populist thing
16:44
which may or may not work out well for
16:46
him
16:48
maybe he'll run for president in four
16:49
years oh god
16:53
my first thing in your book and again
16:55
that's jesus and john wayne
16:56
how white evangelicals corrupted a faith
16:59
and fractured a nation
17:00
but the first light bulb that went on
17:01
was when you talked about how
17:03
book stores of all places are kind of
17:05
like the key holders
17:07
and the stakeholders and who's in and
17:08
who's out really like you have
17:10
i grew up going to family christian
17:12
store you know i mean i say that
17:14
to my shame but family christian store
17:17
lifeway
17:18
what is it lifeway publishers yeah
17:21
funded by the
17:22
sbc basically this reality that
17:25
maybe three four guys who have power
17:28
within evangelicalism who's who are kind
17:30
of self-appointed and also just seen as
17:32
being the the end all be all the
17:34
authority
17:35
if and when they decide that rachel held
17:39
evans
17:39
is no longer in the camp or jen hatmaker
17:42
is no longer
17:43
christian she's now a hair taker rob
17:45
bell goodbye rob bell from john piper
17:48
the minute that they decide that these
17:49
bookstores take their stuff off the
17:51
shelves
17:51
and immediately they become irrelevant
17:53
heretics that nobody ever
17:54
talks about that blew me away yeah yeah
17:57
that is how that works and you know
17:59
the the christian bookstore i i'm i
18:00
really lament
18:02
as a researcher that christian bookstore
18:04
chains have gone out of business
18:06
because it it would i would just uh as
18:09
research practice every month or so walk
18:11
through a christian bookstore
18:13
long before i knew i'd be writing this
18:14
book just to kind of take the pulse
18:16
of evangelical consumer culture you know
18:19
which books are being
18:20
you know uh promoted which books are um
18:24
you know on the shelves uh what sorts of
18:26
uh home decor
18:28
those sorts of things and so uh it
18:31
always fascinated me and i think this is
18:32
uh autobiographical of it too because i
18:34
talked about growing up in a
18:36
uh kind of ethnic enclave i did not
18:39
identify as evangelical even though it
18:40
was very conservative christian
18:42
it was in the christian reform tradition
18:44
and
18:45
my tradition really long identified over
18:48
against american evangelicalism we were
18:50
distinctive
18:51
and so i never identified as an
18:53
evangelical that said when i met
18:56
real evangelicals when i went off to
18:57
notre dame which is not where you would
18:59
think you would go to meet evangelicals
19:01
turns out there are a lot of folks there
19:03
studying with my advisor at the time
19:05
george marston
19:06
who were coming from moody bible
19:08
institute coming from bob jones coming
19:09
from wheaton college
19:11
and so i met real evangelicals and the
19:13
the
19:14
points of connections that we had were
19:16
precisely the the popular culture
19:18
because in my hometown a town of 6000
19:20
people there was one bookstore it was a
19:22
christian bookstore right and so i was
19:25
exposed even though i never identified
19:26
as an evangelical i was always
19:28
calvinist christian reformed dutch but
19:31
my whole cultural formation in the faith
19:35
was the books that were sold there the
19:36
music that was sold there
19:38
you know every every kind of um
19:41
graduation
19:42
or major life event i would get a wall
19:44
plaque that had some bible verse or
19:45
saying on it
19:46
you know the latest chuck colson book
19:49
right was gifted to me and so i was very
19:52
much participating in that subculture in
19:53
the consumer culture
19:55
even though i didn't attend what i
19:57
considered an evangelical church or even
19:59
identify as an evangelical
20:02
so kristen just because you went there
20:03
what was in the playlist
20:05
of kristen kobe's uh growing up in high
20:08
school
20:09
all right let's talk so jars of clay
20:13
jars of clay that's gonna date me um
20:16
but before that even petra oh my gosh
20:19
don't let your hearts be hardened
20:21
um amy grant of course always
20:24
michael card um so a little better taste
20:27
um
20:28
right right uh let's see what else um
20:32
michael w smith michael w smith
20:34
absolutely michael w smith
20:36
and um and then i
20:39
um my one kind of secular
20:43
purchase which was really bad i didn't
20:46
listen to
20:46
secular radio at all i considered that
20:49
disobedient
20:50
but i i gave into temptation and bought
20:53
a tiffany cassette tiffany
20:58
so my parents when they actually heard
20:59
the lyrics we're not super thrilled we
21:01
had to have a talk about that but yeah
21:03
that's as much as i dabbled in actual
21:06
popular music
21:07
wow i mean judging by who you listen to
21:09
we must be really close in age because
21:11
those were
21:12
all mine yeah wow that's incredible we
21:14
could do it we could do a whole little
21:16
like mini episode on 80s and 90s
21:19
christian contemporary musical pop
21:21
culture oh
21:21
definitely definitely so i i do have
21:25
one question that it's about a topic
21:27
that doesn't have a
21:28
very prominent place in the book but you
21:30
say at one point as
21:32
a quote same-sex relationships challenge
21:35
the most basic assumptions
21:37
of the evangelical worldview so most of
21:39
the book is about gender
21:41
complementarianism and women's issues
21:42
and occasionally you touch on the lgbtq
21:45
stuff so
21:46
would would you mind fleshing out that
21:47
statement for us sure
21:49
yeah i could have written more on that
21:51
that was one of the topics
21:52
i kept thinking can i do more can i uh
21:55
do i have space i was really
21:57
really up against word count in this
21:58
book uh way over actually it had to turn
22:01
it back considerably
22:02
and then pulling together so many
22:04
different threads uh through the book
22:06
and so i was wondering could
22:08
could i add that really could have done
22:10
more on
22:11
same-sex relationships and more on
22:13
abortion both of those are part of this
22:15
narrative but not a major part
22:17
and what i meant by that is you know
22:20
when i really started to think about
22:22
you know the hot button issues that
22:24
emerged
22:25
in the religious right both abortion and
22:27
same-sex marriage
22:29
both of those really went against
22:32
this all important gender difference as
22:35
a fundamental kind of ordering of
22:37
creation
22:38
ordering of society that god made men
22:41
and women
22:42
utterly different and in that these
22:45
distinct
22:46
gender roles that you know men were
22:47
protectors and providers and women were
22:49
weak and submissive and
22:50
they needed to you know be very feminine
22:53
and protected and just
22:54
utterly distinct you know dobson makes
22:56
that very clear
22:58
that that was really the fundamental
23:00
difference and then and then marriage
23:02
was you know where you bring
23:03
difference together in a hierarchical
23:06
relationship which again orders society
23:08
and then the rest of societies
23:09
is built upon that relationship
23:13
and that was so fundamental so same-sex
23:16
relationships just completely blew that
23:18
out of the water right
23:20
gender difference this complementarian
23:22
relationship the the
23:24
building blocks of society which they
23:26
believed was you know god ordained
23:28
throughout all of time
23:29
the marker of faithful uh you know
23:32
obedient christianity
23:34
and so really for me it was trying to
23:36
understand why
23:37
why was that such a hot button issue
23:41
in ways that others other issues were
23:43
not and you could say well you know
23:44
christians have always been
23:46
you know against homosexuality until you
23:49
start looking at history and it's a lot
23:50
more complicated and yes there certainly
23:52
is this long tradition
23:54
of opposition but there's also a lot of
23:56
fluidity especially look at
23:58
the history of sexuality and then the
24:00
relationship between
24:01
christianity and the history of
24:03
sexuality and it's just much more
24:04
complicated
24:05
but it certainly became a flash point
24:08
and
24:09
in in the 1960s in the 1970s
24:12
as did abortion right an abortion i
24:14
think is in some ways a clearer sense of
24:17
it became a flashpoint not as
24:20
early as we would have thought it would
24:22
be right it was not at the
24:24
origins of the rise of the religious
24:26
right
24:27
it came along a little bit later when it
24:29
was really identified
24:31
with this idea of what is a woman's
24:33
proper role when it was identified with
24:35
feminism
24:36
threatening that appropriate role that's
24:38
when evangelicals
24:40
really coalesced as a kind of pro-life
24:43
movement whereas in the late 60s many
24:45
evangelicals including conservative
24:47
evangelicals
24:48
had very mixed views on abortion it
24:51
wasn't a great thing
24:52
it was sometimes necessary it was
24:53
sometimes needed it was
24:55
it was just not this this flash point
24:58
that it would become
24:59
just even a decade later in the context
25:02
of this
25:03
real kind of doubling down on gender
25:06
difference
25:06
and family values as as just the
25:09
foundation
25:10
of religious orthodoxy and
25:13
over against feminism over against these
25:16
disruptions of the 1960s and 1970s
25:20
so i really just wanted to historicize
25:22
it and
25:24
rather than start with abortion
25:26
homosexuality
25:27
always these these contentious issues
25:29
that they
25:30
they became that way as part of a
25:33
broader historical context and
25:36
and we should understand them in that in
25:38
that sense in the chapter god's gift to
25:40
man where you talk about these
25:43
major feminine voices within
25:45
evangelicalism
25:46
starting at mirabelle morgan phyllis
25:48
schlafly elizabeth elliott and
25:50
all sorts of them who basically actively
25:54
worked against feminism and against the
25:56
equal rights amendment
25:58
and equal rights for women equal pay the
26:00
whole thing
26:01
blew me away it reminds me to candace
26:04
owens and people like her these
26:06
african-american folks who
26:07
will just say really loudly that racism
26:10
is not a thing and it's just an imagined
26:11
thing and here's all the reasons and
26:13
then basically what that does
26:14
it seems to me is it gives a lot of
26:17
white
26:18
evangelical americans the right to say
26:21
hey see that african-american woman said
26:23
racism
26:24
isn't a thing so i'm right and it's okay
26:26
for me to be racist
26:28
what what's going on there you're you're
26:30
a woman yes
26:32
you've researched that you've researched
26:34
that i mean
26:36
were you equally as appalled i mean
26:37
what's what's that dynamic what
26:39
what's the reasoning and the rationale
26:41
behind that do you think
26:43
so let's see a difference between what
26:45
we see in the 60s and 70s and even to
26:47
today with conservative white
26:48
evangelical women and somebody like
26:50
candace owens
26:51
is that the evangelical women who
26:54
are leaders who are you know kind of
26:57
gain celebrity status
26:59
by promoting this conservative
27:01
femininity
27:02
represent far like more
27:05
women then candace owens would represent
27:08
you know
27:08
african-americans in this country so so
27:11
i think it is somewhat different
27:12
and and within evangelicalism women
27:16
like you know beverly lahay or you know
27:18
phyllis schlafly was a
27:20
was catholic but i kind of consider her
27:22
an honorary evangelical because
27:23
evangelicals embraced her and she was
27:25
extremely influential within evangelical
27:27
circles
27:28
but women like elizabeth elliot and so
27:30
they're they're not
27:31
just they don't just give cover they
27:34
really do
27:35
inspire they represent other
27:37
conservative evangelical women and they
27:39
inspire conservative women
27:41
to embrace this this understanding of
27:44
what it means to be a faithful christian
27:46
woman
27:47
and that just comes through over and
27:48
over again when i looked
27:50
at what was going on in the 60s and 70s
27:53
i actually
27:54
i mean i was horrified when i knew kind
27:56
of where it ended up but i
27:58
i really understood i think where many
28:00
of these women were coming
28:02
from because even though i identify as a
28:04
feminist and i'm very grateful for the
28:07
opportunities that feminism
28:08
has given to me when kind of feminism
28:12
is is just kind of you know announced it
28:16
comes on the scene in dramatic ways in
28:18
the 1970s
28:19
and many women had already kind of made
28:22
life choices
28:23
many women already didn't have the
28:25
education they would need to have much
28:26
of a career many women had opted out of
28:28
careers many women were at home with
28:30
three or four kids
28:32
right they had no real economic
28:33
prospects and so for women
28:36
in those situations being told hey guess
28:39
what you're equal
28:40
or being being told in a fear-mongering
28:43
kind of way
28:44
they're gonna take away your femininity
28:46
they're gonna force you to be like men
28:47
they're gonna force you to go fight wars
28:49
they're gonna force you to go
28:51
earn your keep good luck with that right
28:53
and that's the messaging that they were
28:54
getting you can see where for many women
28:56
this was not liberation
28:58
this was scary and they had already made
29:01
their choices and so it was it was kind
29:03
of you know playing with the hand that
29:05
you were dealt
29:06
but then again i don't want to detract
29:09
from the fact that
29:10
so many conservative christian women
29:13
truly believed
29:14
that the way to be a godly woman the way
29:18
to honor god and be faithful
29:20
to to to to christ really
29:24
was to live this this domesticity
29:28
this this uh conservative femininity and
29:31
i just don't think we can undersell that
29:33
and and that is still the case for so
29:35
many women that i meet today including
29:37
many of my students
29:38
right i teach at a christian university
29:40
and they the messaging is still
29:42
very powerful that as a christian woman
29:45
you have
29:45
certain duties and these have to come
29:48
first
29:48
and these other things are likely to
29:50
distract from those
29:51
and and you just you know you can you
29:53
can get an education great you can
29:55
start a career if you like but just make
29:57
sure that you have your priorities
29:58
straight in order to
29:59
really honor god with your life and so
30:02
there's a real
30:03
sincere faith that's also at play but
30:05
that faith of course has been
30:07
formed by generations of teachings of
30:10
preaching from the pulpit of books by
30:13
elizabeth elliott you know organizations
30:15
like beverly la hayes and so this is not
30:18
just an organic
30:19
kind of understanding this this is an
30:22
ideology that has been perpetuated for
30:25
generations in very
30:26
very powerful ways yeah as you're saying
30:30
that i'm thinking of like
30:31
really good friends of mine who
30:34
to this day would probably have a hard
30:36
time conceptualizing
30:38
a christian life without the influence
30:40
of somebody like elizabeth elliott i
30:41
think it's really
30:42
difficult to overstate the influence
30:45
that she had
30:47
and outside of the evangelical
30:48
subculture nobody seems to have heard of
30:50
her but within it like
30:51
the sort of fundamentalist campus
30:53
ministry that i was in in college
30:55
there were two books that were required
30:56
reading for everyone in that group
30:58
one was i think it was called passion
31:00
and purity every
31:02
every woman in the group had to read
31:04
that book and every man was expected to
31:05
read
31:06
the one that she wrote to her nephew
31:07
with a mark of a man or whatever
31:09
oh and as an impressionable 20 year old
31:11
i was kind of convinced about it because
31:14
she
31:15
maybe uniquely i'm not sure she is the
31:18
the clearest that i found among the
31:20
amongst the complementarians on
31:22
rooting that kind of uh understanding of
31:25
gender
31:25
in an understanding of the trinity he's
31:27
very explicit about it
31:29
so it gives you this like unshakable
31:31
theological grounding
31:33
for why it is this way and why it
31:34
obviously must be this way
31:36
exactly exactly she she kind of led the
31:38
way with that
31:39
what some people would call heresy and
31:41
others would defend his biblical truth
31:43
today
31:44
uh right the the eternal subordination
31:46
of the sun
31:47
as uh a model of the eternal
31:50
subordination
31:51
of women woof i mean that's just
31:54
hilarious and ironic that that that was
31:57
that idea
31:58
it came from a woman right right right
32:01
that's the maddening thing to me though
32:03
is
32:03
i mean i've had conversations like this
32:05
i'm sure you guys have i'm sure
32:06
listeners have
32:07
where you're talking with a woman and
32:09
you're trying to convince her
32:11
of her it's not her value because she'd
32:13
say i'm valuable
32:14
but that like she's got more in her than
32:17
she thinks
32:17
and and she's arguing with you against
32:20
that that's a that's a crazy
32:23
crazy thing and it makes me
32:26
a little upset at some of you know the
32:28
elizabeth elliots of the world
32:30
because that is such a powerful thing
32:32
that tool that they have there
32:33
is you know that men that misogynistic
32:37
men
32:38
and leaders can continue suppressing
32:40
women
32:41
because of the females that say no this
32:44
is great this is the way we're created
32:46
this should be that is that's a powerful
32:48
argument
32:49
for and someone are wired to really you
32:51
know enjoy
32:52
you know some women really have no
32:54
desire to have a career some women
32:55
absolutely love being in the home being
32:58
a mom
32:59
and a wife and that is great um
33:03
and you know the problems obviously come
33:06
when that becomes the only way
33:08
to be a christian woman and for many
33:10
many women who are
33:11
not wired to really find their
33:13
fulfillment to to feel that they are
33:15
called in different directions or in
33:17
multiple directions and then to be told
33:19
that you are disobedient
33:21
and you cannot be a faithful christian
33:23
if you follow what you feel really
33:24
are you know or to use christian
33:26
language the vocation that god has given
33:29
you
33:30
and that's where where the tension
33:32
emerges but for some women they are
33:33
they are perfectly content and and kind
33:36
of wired to be that way and
33:38
i think that part of the the um the
33:41
power of these teachings this ideology
33:43
was to tell
33:44
those women that their life their way of
33:47
life was threatened
33:48
that they were going to be kind of
33:50
ripped out of their homes and forced
33:52
to do something that they didn't want to
33:54
do by feminism by the era
33:56
by big government by whatever whatever
33:58
that the threat of the day
34:00
might be yep yeah so we we've hit on
34:04
we've hit on lgbtq issues and now
34:07
feminism let's let's get the evangelical
34:09
hot
34:10
hot button issue trifecta here uh go for
34:12
the hat trick
34:13
uh let's talk about racism so
34:16
here's just a very direct way to put the
34:19
question is there
34:20
an evangelicalism without racism
34:24
yes there is uh and
34:27
to answer this more fully though we're
34:29
going to have to get into the tricky
34:31
definition
34:31
of you know what is evangelicalism what
34:33
are we talking about and
34:35
you'll notice in the subtitle i was very
34:37
explicit this is a story about white
34:39
evangelicalism
34:40
and uh you can evangelicalism itself is
34:43
a term that has really morphed in
34:45
meaning
34:46
over time you know from the 18th century
34:49
through the 19th century early 20th
34:51
century mid 20th century you can kind of
34:53
trace the
34:54
the shift the meaning that the term
34:57
connoted
34:58
at different moments in history and i
35:00
mean that's something i do a little bit
35:01
in the book and i've done more elsewhere
35:03
but what i push back against in this
35:06
book
35:07
are attempts to define evangelicalism
35:09
purely as
35:10
a set of theological beliefs so this
35:14
kind of rubric that okay you believe in
35:15
conversionism the centrality of the
35:17
cross
35:18
you know the authority of the bible and
35:19
boom boom there you are an evangelical
35:22
and then you just lump all these
35:23
evangelicals because if you do that
35:25
then the majority of black protestants
35:27
in the united states are
35:28
quote-unquote evangelical the majority
35:30
of global christians uh
35:31
if they're not catholic they're going to
35:33
be evangelical um and which is
35:35
fine if you're you know for some
35:37
questions to understand
35:39
american evangelicalism as a historical
35:43
and cultural movement
35:45
that's where i say that rubric isn't
35:47
going to get you very far because the
35:48
truth is most black protestants do not
35:50
identify as evangelical
35:52
not at all and there are very clear
35:54
reasons for that right they do not go to
35:55
the same churches
35:56
as white evangelicals for the most part
35:59
they do not
36:00
read the same books listen to the same
36:02
music
36:03
listen to the same radio stations for
36:05
the most part
36:06
so why are we insisting on counting them
36:09
as
36:09
the same thing when we do that we end up
36:12
you know
36:13
our scot some scholars or observers will
36:15
say see uh evangelicalism can't possibly
36:18
be racist
36:18
because we're going to include all black
36:20
protestants and global christians in
36:21
this
36:22
i'm saying no as a historian and as a
36:24
cultural historian i'm gonna look i'm
36:26
gonna describe what i'm seeing
36:27
and this is a a rather distinctive
36:30
movement with a little bit of overlap
36:32
interplay
36:32
with black protestantism with global
36:35
christianity
36:36
but we're really looking at a fairly
36:38
cohesive movement
36:40
networks series of networks uh
36:42
relationships i look at evangelicalism
36:45
again largely as a consumer culture
36:47
are you formed by these consumer
36:49
products
36:50
and when we're looking at that then
36:52
white evangelicalism
36:54
is its own thing and when we look at
36:57
white evangelicalism then we can ask
36:59
your question again
37:00
like can you can you be a white
37:01
evangelical and not be racist
37:04
you still can there is always the kind
37:07
of minority
37:08
movement has always been within white
37:10
evangelicalism over the last half
37:12
century
37:12
the evangelical left has been very
37:14
pro-civil rights anti-racist
37:18
you know this is like the sojourners
37:19
folks in the 1960s 1970s this is i mean
37:22
tom skinner is an african-american
37:23
evangelical like that still is a part of
37:25
the movement
37:26
it's not the dominant part of the
37:28
movement and this is where
37:30
understanding kind of relations of power
37:33
and
37:33
relative power across the movement is
37:35
important to understand white
37:37
evangelicalism you have to understand
37:39
the significance of southern
37:41
evangelicals
37:42
in shaping the broader white evangelical
37:44
movement you can see that through
37:45
migration patterns from the
37:47
the deep south into the sun belt into
37:50
southern california which then goes
37:52
national
37:52
right with the rise of the religious
37:54
right you can look at that in terms of
37:56
the
37:56
kind of celebrity culture the media
37:58
culture i mean john wayne works in the
38:00
title in all kinds of different ways
38:02
this kind of you know hollywood southern
38:05
california
38:06
celebrity evangelicalism that develops
38:09
and
38:09
with with evangelicalism that we see as
38:12
it takes shape
38:13
as a cultural and political movement by
38:15
the end of the 1970s and
38:18
afterwards you cannot separate
38:21
its whiteness from its religious
38:24
identity and its religious values
38:26
and you cannot fully extricate the
38:28
racism that is also a part of the
38:30
movement to greater or lesser degrees so
38:32
some
38:33
white evangelicals particularly i think
38:35
in the south
38:37
in the 1960s 1970s yes they are racist
38:40
they are segregationists they are
38:41
motivated
38:42
out of those values somebody like jerry
38:44
falwell senior right you have the
38:47
development of christian schools
38:48
christian academies that are
38:49
segregationist academies
38:51
and the religious right mobilizes in
38:53
part to defend
38:55
those academies on the right to exist
38:58
that is absolutely part of the story
39:01
of of white evangelicalism today it's
39:04
not the only part and so again the
39:06
interesting thing to me is
39:08
you've got that strand you still have
39:10
racist white evangelicals but you have
39:12
the majority of white evangelicals do
39:15
not think of themselves as racist
39:17
they do not hold personal animosity
39:20
towards people of color for the most
39:24
part
39:25
right if somebody walk into their church
39:26
whatever color they were they'd be
39:28
warmly welcomed
39:29
and so i wanted to understand what kind
39:31
of accommodations
39:33
have taken place what kind of unexamined
39:37
values that are deeply rooted in
39:40
whiteness
39:41
really gives shape to white
39:42
evangelicalism today and that's right
39:44
0.2
39:45
in particular christian nationalism
39:48
which if you think about
39:49
the idea that that america was a
39:50
christian nation founded as god's chosen
39:52
nation everything was really great until
39:54
somewhere around the 1960s
39:56
right that only makes sense if you're a
39:58
white person
40:00
only makes sense and that but it's never
40:02
presented as this is a kind of white
40:03
religious
40:04
identity or white religious value it's
40:06
just the way things
40:07
are within conservative evangelical
40:10
circles so those were the kinds of
40:11
things
40:11
i really tried to bring out in this book
40:13
how race
40:15
worked how whiteness worked to make
40:17
whiteness visible
40:19
when so many evangelicals don't make it
40:21
visible and therefore are not even able
40:23
to
40:24
see it themselves yeah and and some
40:26
evangelical leaders are skilled at
40:28
making it invisible yes
40:29
so one one thing i've noticed and i
40:31
don't know if you've done any specific
40:32
research on this but you mentioned
40:34
something in the book that brings it to
40:35
mind
40:36
is uh we can kind of mask our racism by
40:40
attaching racial activism or activism
40:42
for racial justice
40:43
to something else that we already know
40:45
beyond a shadow of a doubt is bad and
40:47
something we should be against right so
40:49
you mention in the book that um i think
40:52
it was jerry falwell senior
40:54
equated the civil rights movement with
40:56
marxism and everybody knows you're
40:57
supposed to be against the communists
40:59
nobody could define what marxism is and
41:00
nobody's read marx but we all know
41:02
communism is bad
41:03
very bad and today black lives matter
41:05
same thing that's it all over it
41:07
right critical race theory it's uh it's
41:10
either because they're
41:11
in favor of lgbtq stuff or because
41:14
somehow critical race theory is marxist
41:16
again nobody can define marxism
41:18
but but we know that's bad and very few
41:20
people can define critical race theory
41:22
that has been true fascinating even
41:23
including critical race theories
41:25
fascinating to see in the last two years
41:27
yeah for me as a cultural historian as
41:30
somebody who studies this to suddenly
41:32
start hearing all about critical race
41:34
theory
41:35
more than i've ever heard about it
41:36
before so here to hear tim keller
41:38
talk about critical race theory i never
41:41
thought i'd say
41:42
exactly exactly it's it's it's and yes
41:44
and when you know the history you know
41:45
uh we've seen this before
41:47
yep yep so call it marxist call it you
41:50
know
41:50
uh or much of the opposition to
41:53
kind of civil rights post civil rights
41:56
act you know
41:57
1964 and 1965's voting rights act as
42:00
well you know once that was
42:01
many many moderate evangelicals
42:04
supported that uh those measures um so
42:06
this is a billy graham
42:07
type of you know moderate evangelicalism
42:10
whereas fundamentalists and
42:11
in some southern evangelicals still
42:13
opposed even those measures
42:15
but by and large the majority of
42:17
evangelicals were okay with that and
42:18
then they thought okay
42:19
we're good that that's good uh anything
42:22
beyond
42:23
that could easily get dismantled as
42:26
and disrupting the social order so law
42:30
and order politics
42:31
really strong by the late 60s and
42:33
certainly by the 70s in evangelical
42:35
circles
42:36
and yes marxism target with marxism
42:40
also a slightly less extreme
42:43
socialism or marxism but it's big
42:45
government and we're anti-big
42:46
government and of course in that moment
42:49
what is the big government doing what is
42:51
the federal government doing
42:52
they are interfering with states rights
42:55
in order to
42:56
enforce desegregation so again
42:58
historical context is just
43:00
really critical because there are so
43:01
many of these words that really are
43:03
racially coded words and evangelicals
43:07
can use those so fluently and have been
43:10
for generations
43:12
that if you don't know the history it's
43:14
hard to understand
43:15
just how racialized those those values
43:18
actually are so in chapter 11 otherwise
43:22
known as
43:22
the best chapter name in the book holy
43:24
balls in
43:26
in the chapter holy balls kristin you
43:28
write pretty extensively about the black
43:30
hole that is
43:31
it was and really is the
43:33
testosterone-fueled
43:34
new calvinist movement the neo-reformed
43:37
guys and you talk a lot about mark
43:39
driscoll in particular
43:40
but there's all these superstar mega
43:42
church pastors who and many of them
43:45
have fallen from grace i mean it was
43:46
there was it felt like a year and a half
43:48
where it was just like domino's falling
43:50
whether it's driscoll or mcdonald or c.j
43:52
mahany all of them
43:54
do you think these guys had major doc
43:57
you know they had doctrinal differences
43:59
that we're talking about in a little bit
44:00
but they really their theology is very
44:02
ironclad and it's really
44:03
in many ways i would say
44:04
testosterone-fueled masculine-driven
44:06
theology
44:07
these neo-reformed guys do you think
44:08
that theology had anything to do with
44:10
the way they found them
44:11
that their end in for driscoll i'm just
44:14
going to say
44:14
ministry-wise unfortunately it wasn't
44:16
the end but um
44:18
they're fall from grace do you think
44:19
that had to do anything to do with their
44:21
theology
44:22
actually i think it did you know there's
44:24
there's never a direct
44:26
route and and then it's like well what
44:27
came first were these men
44:29
drawn to this theology because of how
44:32
they were wired because of who they were
44:34
and because of their own maybe excessive
44:36
testosterone or or perception thereof
44:39
and were they then drawn to this
44:40
theology then this theology reinforced
44:43
those behaviors justified or condoned
44:46
those behaviors it's really hard for me
44:48
to see because i think it it
44:50
it works both ways all the time um and
44:53
then and then watching
44:54
how in that group in particular it
44:57
became really apparent to me just
44:58
how these networks functioned and how
45:02
how so many men were drawn to the power
45:05
of other men
45:07
in wanting to participate in those
45:09
networks want to participate
45:11
in you know to share a stage to emulate
45:15
to pattern their own preaching after
45:18
somebody
45:18
like mark driscoll he was enormously
45:20
popular and he was one of the guys that
45:22
early on
45:23
back you know 15 some years ago i was
45:25
looking at and saying
45:26
who is this guy is he mainstream of
45:29
course he was hugely popular
45:32
the celebrity but was he popular i
45:34
wondered because the media likes to
45:35
cover him because he's so egregious
45:38
but no when you look inside
45:39
evangelicalism he was so
45:41
influential for more than a decade
45:44
really as this model of
45:46
a successful ministry in so
45:49
many evangelical the men that i've
45:51
talked to uh
45:52
listened to him for hours on end his
45:55
his sermons um and so many evangelical
45:59
pastors wanted to be just like him and
46:01
so so that's where
46:02
no his influence was was profound i
46:04
think
46:05
and and so yeah i'm not sure what what
46:08
ultimately came first but the theology
46:10
and the behavior were mutually
46:12
reinforcing and that's part of how we
46:14
got to
46:15
where we ended up yep and i mean
46:18
we could we could do a whole another
46:20
whole episode on
46:21
driscoll and his comrades and what they
46:24
did to the faith and
46:26
both in fashion and in theology let's be
46:29
honest i mean they're
46:30
they're ripped bedazzled jeans mark
46:33
driscoll sold
46:34
many of those fat bracelets and watches
46:37
yes
46:38
yes so in that vein
46:41
you talk about this reality that again
46:43
it's one of those things that it felt
46:44
feels like it's been hiding in plain
46:46
sight when you said it i was like oh my
46:47
gosh yep that's absolutely right
46:48
there's there's all these reformed
46:51
leaders within the church
46:52
and particularly with 10 years ago or so
46:55
who really
46:56
are quite different both in the way they
46:57
carry themselves and the way they preach
46:59
their theology is quite different even
47:01
but they kind of banded together whether
47:03
it's john piper
47:05
mark driscoll john mcarthur you know i
47:08
mean these guys are
47:08
very different doug wilson let's throw
47:10
him in there wilson yeah
47:12
oh my god um and
47:15
you wouldn't expect to see them on the
47:17
same stage in a million years but they
47:18
did and they celebrated one another and
47:20
they looked past they looked overlooked
47:23
one another's
47:24
real nasty stuff because they got a few
47:27
things right and you you make the point
47:28
that
47:29
there's these hands small handful of
47:31
things doctrinal things
47:33
that if you got them right you could be
47:34
part of the brotherhood which were
47:35
mostly
47:36
a doctrine of hell yeah that like was
47:38
dark and scary
47:40
believing that homosexuality is a sin
47:42
believing in penal substitutionary
47:43
theory of atonement that's really
47:45
important right
47:46
there's a couple of others but really
47:48
and then complementarianism you have to
47:50
be complementarian those four things
47:52
were really like if you if you're good
47:54
with all those
47:55
you're in our club that's wild to me
47:58
yeah
47:58
how do you think that came to be how do
48:00
those things rise to the surface
48:03
oh and that's there's no simple answer
48:06
there
48:07
there really isn't going back to the
48:10
1960s is really
48:12
where i'd want to go back to that's when
48:14
you that's when you start to see
48:15
the the battle lines really drawn and
48:17
who is orthodox and who is not and
48:20
and yes gender is very much at the heart
48:23
of that and even things like
48:25
you know penal atonement and the
48:27
existence of hell are also
48:29
cast in gendered terms as the proper
48:32
masculine faith and as the you know
48:35
father
48:36
punishing the son and this kind of you
48:38
know
48:39
harsh discipline which is just you know
48:41
like suck it up this is christianity and
48:43
kind of thing and so
48:44
gender really pervades this for a long
48:47
time
48:48
and still it it puzzled me
48:51
i think to see it to see it take shape
48:54
and i
48:54
i i i watched it take shape because
48:57
in the 1990s so i was born in 1976 so i
49:00
graduated from college in
49:02
in 97 and went off to graduate school
49:05
and up until that time i had
49:07
i had been pretty isolated again in this
49:09
in this ethnic subculture this christian
49:11
reform tradition i went to christian
49:12
reformed
49:13
college very separate from the rest of
49:16
american christianity
49:18
and then i headed off to study american
49:20
religious history and so again i'm
49:22
meeting all these evangelicals and i'm
49:24
kind of getting the lay of the land
49:26
and that's right around the time that
49:27
you see the the burgeoning of this
49:30
young restless and reformed movement and
49:32
i'm hearing about them
49:33
and at first i'm thinking yes finally
49:37
right you know i've been in this little
49:38
enclave and these are my people
49:41
like good for us right you know we're
49:44
john piper reformed i'm reform this is
49:46
awesome and i was in a bible study and
49:47
of course we were reading john piper
49:49
because what else would you read if
49:50
you're in an intervarsity bible study
49:52
right
49:52
in the 90s and and then increasingly i
49:56
came to see
49:57
well gradually i don't think i don't
50:00
think i
50:00
i am this right and they certainly don't
50:04
think that i would be one of them
50:07
uh right i'm not complementarian i i
50:10
took an entire course in in
50:12
the institutes of the christian religion
50:13
at calvin's institutes
50:15
i um i know my reformed theology
50:18
i i've been immersed in it i'm a scholar
50:20
right all that stuff would count for
50:22
nothing i would never share a stage with
50:24
with
50:24
piper unless i'm gonna be you know on
50:27
the side talking to the wives telling
50:28
them to be complementarian kind of thing
50:30
right and that's when i understood
50:32
how boundaries are drawn right and so
50:34
what is what is uniting people
50:36
and is it the historic christian faith
50:38
is it apostolic faith is that you know
50:40
what is no it's not that's not enough
50:43
it's absolutely not enough
50:44
it's this set of issues and it's a very
50:47
gendered
50:48
set of issues and i was de facto
50:50
excluded from
50:51
that and that's kind of this personal um
50:54
realization that came only very
50:56
gradually
50:57
which i think is is then i was trying to
50:59
make sense of in this book
51:01
as well so you kristen you've kind of
51:04
left yourself
51:05
off the hook for my next question then
51:07
which is
51:09
another jaw-dropping moment when i saw
51:10
on twitter that you're
51:12
you you consider yourself reformed like
51:15
that you're just
51:16
you're just not trying to make your
51:17
parents angry right you're not really
51:19
reformed are you
51:21
that's so funny that that moment where i
51:23
where i came out on twitter as
51:25
reformed right i mean i teach at calvin
51:28
university what do you expect
51:31
yes i'm very deeply reformed but the
51:33
reformed christianity that i was
51:35
introduced to
51:37
was filtered through some of my
51:39
undergraduate professors
51:40
none of whom were american they were all
51:43
dutch or dutch canadian
51:45
and so the reformed theology that i
51:49
embraced was not in any way tainted by
51:52
you know christian nationalism by
51:55
american
51:56
politics more generally in fact it was
51:59
often said against that it was more
52:00
influenced by
52:01
you know kind of dutch thinking going
52:04
back to even
52:04
world war ii kind of anti-authoritarian
52:08
and very much a an interpretation of
52:12
calvin that was not scholastic
52:16
not about the rules and enforcing it was
52:20
one that was life-giving that was a
52:24
much warmer and fuzzier version of
52:27
of calvin and that's how i read the
52:29
institutes with that framework in mind
52:31
and and had those parts of the tradition
52:34
really just held out for me and that has
52:37
always been my calvinism
52:39
and that's very much the calvinism of
52:41
calvin university as well where i teach
52:43
so i'm not alone i'm not an outlier i
52:45
mean
52:46
in the broader landscape absolutely but
52:48
i've always been in that tradition and
52:50
not the
52:50
the john piper mark driscoll and
52:53
certainly not the doug wilson sort
52:55
praise the lord yep so kristen last
52:58
chance this is not a
52:59
this video won't make it public so could
53:01
you just wink twice if you're not really
53:03
reformed
53:06
she winked she winked i don't know
53:09
per word against mine now so on so
53:12
while we're on this theme of theology
53:15
how
53:16
important do you think that theology
53:17
really is or has been
53:19
to evangelicals if a lot of these things
53:21
that are supposedly denominational
53:23
distinctives can be given up so easily
53:26
as long as you know you're a
53:28
complimentarian or whatever how
53:29
important do you think theology really
53:31
is to
53:31
conservative white evangelicals so for
53:34
example
53:35
uh when you're talking in the book about
53:36
the sbc takeover
53:38
in 1979 you say that inerrancy which we
53:42
think of as
53:42
my god there's if there's a defining
53:44
thing for evangelicals it's that
53:46
inerrancy mattered because of its
53:49
connection to cultural and political
53:50
issues and then the implication is of
53:52
course not the other way around
53:53
um so this suggests that maybe theology
53:56
hasn't been of essential
53:58
importance but at another place in the
53:59
book you talk about this quip that was
54:02
used you know jesus can save your soul
54:03
but john wayne will save your ass
54:05
right it's amazing it's another one of
54:06
the great great chapter titles
54:08
so this implies a kind of theological
54:10
bifurcation
54:12
of the spiritual and the material and
54:15
that still seems i mean that's like
54:16
deeply within protestantism it still
54:18
seems to be with a lot of american
54:20
evangelicals and it might explain a good
54:21
chunk of trump's christian support at
54:23
this point because
54:24
you hear all the time people saying well
54:26
you know yeah
54:27
uh he might not be the best christian
54:29
ever but that's not why i'm voting for
54:31
him i'm not voting for a savior i'm
54:32
voting for somebody to kick the asses of
54:34
the people whose asses need to be kicked
54:36
so help us understand this trade-off
54:38
between theological commitment
54:40
and political expediency
54:44
yeah so you know evangelicals
54:47
will self-identify first and foremost as
54:51
bible-believing christians and will
54:54
particularly evangelical elites who are
54:57
the ones generally defining
54:58
evangelicalism are going to absolutely
55:00
again point to these
55:02
this theological rubric right if you you
55:04
you check these theological boxes you
55:06
are an evangelical
55:08
however when you look at survey data
55:11
you can quickly see that and this is
55:14
surveys that
55:14
are are you know set up by evangelical
55:17
organizations
55:19
you can see that there is an alarming
55:22
level
55:22
of theological illiteracy within
55:24
evangelicalism
55:25
in fact an astonishing number of
55:27
evangelicals hold
55:29
views traditionally considered heretical
55:31
right and so
55:32
um i absolutely saw this in my own
55:35
encounters with my own students many of
55:37
whom are coming from evangelical
55:39
backgrounds that this there is
55:42
little theological knowledge
55:45
which made me wonder all right so if
55:48
if if they don't know their theology why
55:51
is the theology
55:53
considered fundamental here
55:56
but the first thing that tipped me off
55:57
honestly was
55:59
back at the very beginning when my
56:01
students brought me the book wild at
56:03
heart
56:03
and i was like okay let me read this and
56:06
i was
56:07
shocked at how little of the bible there
56:10
was in it
56:11
right again self-identifying
56:12
bible-believing christians and there
56:14
there's going to be a sprinkling of
56:15
bible verses
56:16
completely decontextualized right but
56:20
really there it was uh hollywood heroes
56:23
that eldridge turned to particularly mel
56:26
gibson's william wallace
56:27
right as this heroic model of
56:29
masculinity therefore model of christian
56:31
masculinity and then cowboys and
56:33
soldiers and you know later
56:34
folks like john wayne and so on so again
56:37
i i was early on
56:39
very suspicious about the centrality of
56:41
theology
56:42
now that does not mean that theology
56:44
does not matter
56:46
it just doesn't matter in the way that
56:48
many evangelicals claim it does
56:50
that the the interaction between
56:53
cultural
56:54
uh values cultural commitments and yes
56:56
political commitments
56:58
and theology is very much a two-way
57:00
street whereas evangelicals will say i
57:02
believe
57:03
and therefore i do this or i have this
57:05
theological view or i mean political
57:07
view right
57:08
the theology always precedes social and
57:10
cultural and political values
57:12
and that is just not historically
57:14
supportable and and
57:16
and so you you see much more of a of a
57:18
two-way street there
57:20
and the the example of uh
57:23
sbc and inerrancy is an example of that
57:26
where certain theological commitments
57:28
become
57:29
the be all end all and and then others
57:32
are are cast aside and so for me it
57:35
became
57:36
really interesting to see which which
57:39
bible verses
57:40
were really upheld as you know
57:43
gospel truth and the guide to living a
57:46
christian life
57:47
and especially which ones were not so
57:50
you know
57:50
turn the other cheek no we're gonna
57:53
dispense with that like they will
57:54
literally say
57:55
no we're we're not we're not doing that
57:57
doesn't apply to us
57:58
um you know love your neighbor as
58:00
yourself love your enemies these sorts
58:02
of things explained away
58:03
welcome the stranger right all of these
58:06
things um
58:06
no i mean the fruits of the spirit
58:08
essentially the fruit of the spirit for
58:10
the male sex
58:11
nope doesn't apply um so
58:14
so we just need to be much more curious
58:18
about this relationship between theology
58:22
and cultural and political values
58:25
and not take evangelicals at their word
58:29
and as soon as you kind of present these
58:31
these case studies i think it becomes
58:33
really clear and evangelicals themselves
58:37
in fact who have read this book
58:38
often come away convinced that you're
58:40
right you're right right the stories
58:42
we've been telling ourselves
58:44
do not hold up under scrutiny oh my gosh
58:47
i mean
58:47
that chapter was i think probably the
58:51
one that hurt
58:52
personally a little bit for me in a in a
58:54
really healthy way right because
58:56
for the most part i mean even though i
58:57
grew up evangelical i always thought
58:59
james dobson was kind of out there and i
59:01
mean all the characters in your book
59:03
and by characters i don't mean fake
59:04
people i mean real
59:06
huge hugely followed evangelical leaders
59:09
but i read
59:10
wild at heart when i was in college in
59:11
that like saying to my cute little manly
59:14
hearts you know it made me feel
59:16
like such a man and when you talked
59:20
about william wallace and how
59:22
basically yeah i had this moment where
59:24
yeah where i had
59:26
this moment where i was like holy cow i
59:27
think i grew into college and into my
59:30
young adulthood thinking that jesus is
59:31
like william wallace
59:33
and and i think probably there's a lot
59:36
of listeners who are like uh duh jesus
59:38
is like william wallace he's a freedom
59:39
fighter you know like
59:41
read the book of revelation and that one
59:43
i had to unpack a little bit about how
59:45
much of my theology in my young
59:46
adulthood which is very formative by the
59:48
way
59:49
was formed by braveheart william wallace
59:52
wild at heart that whole deal
59:54
whoa that's that's intense i've
59:56
literally received
59:57
hundreds of messages from
60:00
evangelicals and especially evangelical
60:02
men since this book has come out
60:03
and you know some version of that of
60:06
just realizing
60:07
how much this has shaped their
60:10
faith and the movie braveheart was 96
60:13
and that's really when you
60:15
very soon after start to see uh this
60:17
kind of backlash against the
60:19
the soft patriarchy of the promise
60:21
keepers
60:22
and and then by 2001 that's when
60:25
eldridge eldridge's book comes out just
60:27
months before 9 11
60:28
and kind of we know the rest of the
60:30
story i'm feeling like i'm sitting under
60:32
analysis at the moment
60:34
remembering all this stuff i would have
60:36
been 10 years old when braveheart came
60:38
out which
60:38
just strikes me like i've been a
60:41
pacifist and a feminist for years and i
60:44
still cannot watch that movie without
60:45
balling like a child
60:47
and a lot of it i'm realizing it's like
60:49
subcognitive right
60:50
a lot of a lot of race philosophers of
60:52
race for example have talked about
60:54
how racism is embodied it's not changing
60:57
your mind about it doesn't seem to
60:58
actually change your interactions with
61:00
people of color
61:01
and i'm thinking [ __ ] the same thing's
61:02
happening here when i when i watch
61:04
braveheart right i don't believe that
61:06
stuff anymore but man i feel it
61:08
part of i think what i've observed in
61:10
your book as well that
61:12
possibly maybe maybe even the main
61:14
reason why evangelical
61:15
ism is what it is today is this constant
61:19
obsession with power
61:20
this constant obsession with being
61:23
having a relevant
61:24
and meaningful voice in the culture in
61:26
the world around us
61:28
having political influence having you
61:30
know and if if the scientists don't
61:31
agree with us we're going to have our
61:33
own scientists
61:34
and this lust for power is this
61:37
real if you start pulling that thread
61:39
almost all of evangelicalism seems like
61:41
it just
61:41
totally unravels yeah i mean that that
61:43
is the thread of the book that
61:45
when i have to really simplify this is a
61:47
book about power it's a book about
61:48
grasping for power and so to get back to
61:51
that kind of juxtaposition of the
61:53
you know jesus will save your soul john
61:54
wayne will save your ass ultimately that
61:57
needing a john wayne to save your ass or
62:00
donald trump to
62:01
you know bust up all your enemies that
62:03
is at its heart a theological
62:05
claim right so so there is a theology
62:07
there and that really is what i'm
62:08
getting at in the subtitle the
62:10
the corrupted of faith part the fact
62:12
that you know the jesus of the gospels
62:14
does get transformed into this ruthless
62:16
warrior christ uh who's going to slay
62:19
his enemies
62:20
and and let me just note too that that's
62:22
not a historical claim that corrupted a
62:25
faith part that's that's my
62:26
my part is okay i'm going to speak right
62:28
now to evangelicals themselves because
62:30
this book is largely a history
62:32
but it is framed with this this kind of
62:35
critical framing right
62:36
and and in a religious critique as a
62:38
person of faith myself i'm bringing that
62:40
in and i just wanted to speak to
62:42
evangelicals very clearly again you
62:44
self-identifies this this is what you
62:46
claim
62:47
to to hold as as as truth here's what we
62:50
see in front of us and so the corrupted
62:52
of faith part
62:53
is exactly that that i think
62:55
fundamentally as i understand the story
62:57
of the gospels and really the the story
62:59
of christianity
63:00
and who christ is is is this
63:03
counter-cultural narrative
63:05
of you know christ divesting himself
63:08
of power and offering himself for
63:12
the redemption of the world and and so
63:14
to then transform that
63:16
faith into one that is ever grasping for
63:19
power
63:20
and maintaining that power and then
63:22
using that power
63:23
coercively to me that is ultimately the
63:26
corruption of the faith that
63:27
as as i understand it so yeah there's a
63:29
theological claim there
63:34
friends before we continue we want to
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yourself for visiting story hill bkc
64:03
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64:05
local one more time that's
64:08
storyhillbkc.com
64:10
so on this connection and let me preface
64:12
this by saying
64:13
that i have no actual critiques of the
64:15
book i loved every part of it except for
64:17
the parts that made me hate my childhood
64:19
so so this is not a critique whatsoever
64:22
it's an honest question
64:23
this connection between people like john
64:25
wayne or oliver north or
64:27
the other heroes of militant masculinity
64:30
teddy roosevelt whatever
64:32
those guys on the one hand and donald
64:34
trump
64:35
on the other okay so a large part of the
64:38
end of the book
64:38
is making that connection between how
64:41
how we can understand
64:43
the almost wholesale embrace of donald
64:46
trump by white
64:47
evangelicals because of this militant
64:50
masculinity thing that they had long
64:51
since imbibed
64:53
for my part it doesn't make sense to me
64:56
because when i look at donald like the
64:58
argument makes sense and i
65:00
totally grant all of the historical
65:02
details that you provide
65:04
but when i look at donald trump i do not
65:06
see masculinity
65:07
i do not see john wayne i do not see
65:10
oliver north
65:11
i mean the guy wouldn't know a bench
65:13
press from a french president
65:16
like he's literally an overweight draft
65:19
dodging
65:20
wishy-washy believes the last thing that
65:22
was told to him
65:23
amoral inheritance billionaire
65:26
yes he's not teddy roosevelt so i guess
65:30
my question then is
65:31
do you think white evangelicals who have
65:33
embraced him really believe their own
65:35
propaganda
65:36
about his masculinity so i mean there
65:39
are always multiple masculinities
65:42
and i think that what what's key to
65:44
under is a lot of people say like
65:46
again donald trump isn't masculine but
65:47
he is performing masculinity in a
65:50
certain type of masculinity and he's
65:52
performing masculinity
65:54
in a in a throwback way a very
65:56
retrograde
65:57
way throwing back to the 1950s
66:00
masculinity and that comes through
66:01
clearly in the end at the end of the
66:03
book too towards the end of the book
66:04
that
66:05
you know people campaigning keep saying
66:07
this is john wayne america he's a symbol
66:09
of john wayne america he's a symbol of
66:11
that he's a 1950s man he's you know like
66:14
it's very clear what they're doing john
66:16
wayne was a symbol of throwback
66:18
masculinity right to the the cowboy the
66:21
this this you know and the cowboys
66:22
themselves were always kind of nostalgic
66:24
for a time when you know white men
66:26
wielded power
66:27
and so really what the thread is i think
66:30
that that i would pull through there is
66:33
the
66:34
the masculine right and duty
66:37
to wield power this is a very racialized
66:41
conception of masculinity so it's the
66:43
white man's
66:44
obligation to use violence to bring
66:48
order
66:49
and and that's where you see the cowboys
66:51
of the wild west
66:52
john wayne in all of his movies and in
66:55
all these movies a distinctively
66:56
white man using violence to subdue
67:00
in most cases non-white populations
67:02
right uh sans of iwo jima
67:04
green berets the alamo this is just kind
67:07
of
67:07
this this cultural ideal of of
67:10
of american masculinity that's what
67:13
we're talking about
67:15
so donald trump that's kind of the
67:17
strand that he is going to pull through
67:19
and it becomes in some cases more
67:22
extreme
67:23
because of this culture wars context
67:27
because of this battle against
67:30
feminism against liberalism against
67:32
political correctness
67:34
and that's important to understand like
67:35
by the 2000s you know
67:37
political correctness becomes you know
67:40
this this great threat
67:42
and what is it what does it actually
67:44
threaten
67:45
you shouldn't be rude anymore you
67:47
shouldn't be racist you shouldn't you
67:49
know
67:49
what is it really threatening it it's
67:51
threatening this
67:53
this ability to particularly for men
67:56
for white men to say what needs to be
67:59
said to do what needs to be done
68:00
to wield their power that they you know
68:03
perceive themselves to have a right to
68:05
wield and
68:05
that's the the masculinity
68:09
that trump is so unapologetically
68:13
embodying in a way that is astounding
68:16
right it is still astounding to all of
68:18
us on a daily basis
68:20
what even is this every tweet
68:23
every every statement he makes
68:26
practically it's just
68:27
it's completely like we are in a new era
68:30
and so he has really taken that you know
68:32
thumbing his nose at political
68:33
correctness
68:34
at civility uh you know following
68:38
any rules at all and and so he's just
68:41
like
68:42
on steroids taking that fearlessness
68:45
that ruthlessness do what needs to be
68:47
done
68:48
for the sake of righteousness
68:51
now who's going to define the
68:52
righteousness and that's where we see
68:53
this the symbiotic relationship between
68:55
trump and his evangelical supporters
68:58
and they have embraced him he has
69:00
embraced them and
69:01
he is on their side and then he is if he
69:03
is on their side he is on god's side
69:05
so that is really the strand that i
69:07
would pull through he's certainly not
69:09
my ideal of masculinity but the power
69:13
that he wields the way that he wields
69:14
that power is playing
69:16
on a long history of of white masculine
69:19
power
69:21
and i mean you you spoke to that in the
69:23
introduction which was fantastic
69:25
but basically making saying i'm going to
69:27
be making the case in this book that
69:29
this this reality that we hear about
69:31
that 81
69:32
of evangelicals voted for donald trump
69:34
but they did it while holding their nose
69:35
and really were kind of ashamed of it
69:37
you said that's really not the case
69:39
and i'm gonna make this make the case
69:41
and sure
69:42
sure enough you made the case i mean it
69:44
didn't take very far in the book for me
69:46
to be like yeah
69:47
i mean this whole thing's been built on
69:49
uh like having a guy like donald trump
69:51
be
69:51
the end-all be-all and that's where i
69:53
would say i fully agree with you that
69:56
donald trump's version of masculinity is
69:57
a masculinity a version of masculinity
70:00
that we find in many many fundamentalist
70:03
and evangelical
70:05
white churches it's our idea of
70:07
masculinity this broken masculinity
70:09
where strength looks like bullying
70:11
and it looks like me look getting the
70:13
upper hand in every conversation i mean
70:15
you just look at the first debate uh
70:17
this this last election season
70:19
and that's what masculinity looks like
70:21
to many many
70:23
white evangelicals especially males and
70:26
that's where i think
70:26
that's the perfect picture of um why
70:30
he resonated so deeply with so many
70:31
evangelicals even though they tried
70:34
i'm getting a little bit us versus them
70:35
here a little bit
70:37
that's where i think he's the perfect
70:40
representation in many ways
70:41
of of that movement unfortunately
70:45
so i have one more question i just have
70:47
to ask and then i'll let randy
70:48
finish it up however he wants so my wife
70:50
and i are huge fans of fred rogers and
70:52
we just recently
70:53
read his biography um it's called the
70:56
good neighbor by maxwell king
70:58
one of the things i don't think this is
70:59
an exaggeration one of the things that
71:00
saved me i think from this
71:02
militant masculinity of evangelicalism
71:05
was that i had his influence
71:07
which was kind of historically
71:09
accidental he just happened to be on
71:10
television when i was a kid
71:12
and so now looking back at that learning
71:15
more about him i'm seeing
71:16
wow i didn't realize there were these
71:18
two competing conceptions of masculinity
71:20
at war socially and even within my own
71:23
head
71:23
and i'm really grateful that for that
71:25
there were
71:26
so in some ways it seems to me like
71:30
many of the major political
71:31
disagreements we're dealing with right
71:33
now
71:33
almost this is reductionist to say but
71:35
it almost boils down to
71:37
those who followed spock and rogers and
71:39
those who followed dobson
71:41
and john wayne you know and recently at
71:44
biden's town hall one of one of uh
71:47
trump's
71:48
political advisors tweeted it's like
71:50
watching mr rogers yes
71:52
and she thought it was an insult exactly
71:55
exactly you can see the divide on
71:56
twitter right like
71:57
yeah that's awesome right yeah exactly
72:01
yeah um fred fred rogers was it was
72:03
interesting
72:04
but first of all spock yes the spot
72:07
connection so dobson
72:08
so anti-spock you know and he's trying
72:10
to redeem
72:12
american children from the damage that
72:14
spock had done and of course
72:15
spock after he retired ended up becoming
72:18
an anti-war activist so you know
72:20
that was just against all these deeply
72:23
held values
72:24
um including militarism we haven't
72:26
talked much about militarism but
72:28
militarism being you know kind of
72:29
fundamental value of conservative
72:31
evangelicalism
72:32
um really uh i mean you could go to the
72:35
1940s but certainly by the 1960s
72:37
as a distinctive value that set them
72:39
apart from many other americans who were
72:41
becoming a lot more ambivalent towards
72:43
the war and war in general
72:45
so so spock was seen as very dangerous
72:48
and
72:48
what was fascinating to me in this
72:50
research was to see
72:51
just how often family values like really
72:54
fail you know
72:55
raising your kids husband wife having
72:58
sex
72:58
these kinds of very intimate
73:00
relationships were
73:01
always connected to bigger issues they
73:05
were always connected to foreign policy
73:07
they were always connected to the youth
73:10
rebellion to
73:11
authority and hierarchy in society at
73:14
large
73:16
and so family values were inherently
73:19
political not just in the in the sense
73:21
that we understand them but in this very
73:22
broad sense
73:24
and so dobson was really against spock
73:26
and all that he stood for
73:28
and then yeah even john wayne is coming
73:30
out against benjamin spock right and
73:32
blaming benjamin spock for
73:33
uh the hippies and the uh throwing off
73:36
of the authority
73:37
of their parents by which they meant
73:39
patriarchal authority right because who
73:41
which of the parents really has the
73:42
authority there and then yes
73:44
uh fred rogers conservative evangelicals
73:48
not a fan and all this literature on
73:51
militant masculinity i mean they're
73:53
making that very clear like
73:54
you know jesus was much more like
73:56
william wallace than like
73:58
you know mr rogers uh or mother teresa
74:01
uh and and so they're very clear and yes
74:03
he is an emasculated man he has exactly
74:06
what is wrong with america
74:08
and if america raises their children
74:10
especially their boys according to the
74:12
values of fred rogers
74:14
right the end is near uh because we will
74:16
not be able to defend ourselves against
74:18
the very real enemies
74:19
that await i'm i'm guessing since it was
74:22
published this year you probably
74:23
finished it last year or
74:24
thereabouts would it be any different
74:28
if it had been published now is there
74:30
anything that happened in 2020
74:31
the 10 years of 2020 that would have
74:34
made it into the book
74:35
when i finished this book uh i mean it's
74:37
been described
74:40
by reviewers as urgent and sharp elbowed
74:43
uh and i really like that description uh
74:46
had
74:47
i absorbed 2020 i think the elbows would
74:50
have been even sharper right i think i
74:53
a constant struggle as i wrote this book
74:55
just kind of internal as a writer
74:56
was you know what again was mainstream
74:59
what is fringe what how does this all
75:00
fit together
75:01
how bad is this and what i was looking
75:04
at i thought this is
75:05
really bad i've been living with this
75:07
for years
75:08
and then those last three years really
75:10
was deeply researching and writing the
75:12
book right from 2016 on i just thought
75:14
this is really bad
75:15
this is looking really bad so much so
75:18
when i got to the end of the manuscript
75:20
and my editor read it the first time
75:21
through at the end
75:22
he just he just said could you give us a
75:25
little hope
75:26
in the conclusion and i i wrote back to
75:28
saying i thought about it i really i was
75:30
like what can i do with this and i was
75:31
like i don't think i can
75:33
i i'm i'm feeling as heavy as you are
75:35
right now this is this is the history i
75:37
uncovered i've got nothing
75:38
else and then he he's like okay i
75:41
respect that
75:42
and then a couple days later i get
75:43
another email could you just give us
75:45
something kristin like we need something
75:47
or we can't end with this and that's
75:49
when i gave him the last
75:50
sentence of the book and what was once
75:52
done can also be undone
75:55
and and honestly at the time it felt so
75:57
flaky
75:58
it felt like you know this is all i've
75:59
got he's like fine we'll take it
76:01
uh but but i do i do really believe that
76:04
like there is
76:06
knowing history knowing how he got to
76:08
this point can give us a chance
76:10
to undo it that said it is
76:13
what we are what we are seeing now is so
76:15
deeply embedded that it's
76:17
hard not to be pessimistic
76:20
once you know this history right you
76:22
know just how how deep this is this is
76:23
not a little misunderstanding this is
76:25
not uh
76:26
let's open our bibles together kind of
76:28
thing and we'll clear this up
76:29
right that's not going to work here um
76:32
and so
76:33
no i um 2020 has not changed the book
76:37
or the conclusions at all um if anything
76:40
it has hardened those conclusions i
76:43
think we saw with the
76:44
uh response the coronavirus um
76:48
saw the extent of this ideology taken to
76:51
extremes that even i
76:53
could not have anticipated uh when
76:55
people's own lives and the lives of
76:57
their
76:57
loved ones are very clearly at stake i
76:59
mean they've been talking for
77:00
for decades about you know threats to
77:03
the family threats to
77:04
america you know communism radical islam
77:08
secular humanism you know now we really
77:11
have something that is literally killing
77:13
hundreds of thousands of us
77:15
and i just it didn't really touch this
77:18
because the the ideology was such that
77:21
the enemy was not the virus the enemy
77:24
was masks or mask mandates or
77:27
liberals or china or you know it was
77:29
defined otherwise
77:31
survey data just continues to to
77:34
demonstrate this kind of loyalty to the
77:36
ideology
77:37
into the trump administration among
77:39
white evangelicals the black lives
77:40
matter movement revealed
77:42
once again the extent of white
77:45
evangelical
77:46
racism and resistance to
77:49
anti-racist efforts and so
77:53
and again the the loyalty of white
77:56
evangelical leaders
77:57
to the trump administration so so no
78:00
more of the same
78:01
2020 is absolutely more of the same and
78:03
more profoundly
78:04
so the question is what happens next
78:06
right what happens
78:07
post-inauguration what happens to this
78:10
movement
78:11
historically we've seen that it's it's
78:14
usually
78:14
when conservative evangelicals are out
78:17
of power
78:19
that they become most powerful that they
78:21
really you know become more radicalized
78:24
and they they give a lot more money to
78:27
their organizations they become
78:29
they they really renew their power under
78:31
the presidency of donald trump was the
78:32
first time that they kind of had one of
78:34
their own in the white house
78:35
where their power was not diminished
78:38
they didn't kind of fall apart as they
78:39
did during the end of the reagan years
78:41
or the bush years and you know
78:42
kind of need to regroup and then you
78:44
know barack obama was this godsend
78:45
because he was
78:46
you know this enemy and so they they
78:48
could they could coalesce again
78:50
donald trump had this uncanny ability to
78:53
both give them access and privilege and
78:55
power
78:56
and continue to daily hourly kind of
78:59
incite
79:00
resentment and fear and continue to
79:02
stoke that
79:03
so what happens once he leaves office is
79:06
is a huge question to me what what are
79:08
the dynamics going to look like are we
79:10
going to see
79:10
a further radicalization or without him
79:14
kind of tweeting from the oval office
79:15
every day is is
79:17
and when he looks like a loser is is his
79:20
power going to actually be diminished i
79:22
have no idea
79:23
[Music]
79:24
yeah and i would completely agree with
79:27
your
79:28
take on white evangelicalism in the
79:31
future of it i mean it's why
79:32
art the church that i pastor we decided
79:34
to drop the evangelical label because
79:36
we've for years have been like
79:38
we can do this we can change
79:39
evangelicalism we can be the ones you
79:41
know and
79:42
it's just no we can't i mean it's it's
79:46
that is it's left the building and
79:49
we actually said we dropped the label
79:51
evangelical for the sake of the gospel
79:53
yeah um because the gospel is too
79:55
valuable it's been diminished by this
79:57
movement
79:58
so you said it's been described as your
80:00
book as having sharp elbows and i will
80:02
affirm
80:02
affirm and confirm that but the
80:04
beautiful part about it kristin is you
80:06
really didn't slam you it what there was
80:08
no opinion in here
80:09
it's just a history book you're just
80:11
quoting people you're just
80:13
literally going through the history and
80:14
saying this is what it is this is what
80:16
it is just so you know
80:17
and letting everybody draw their own
80:18
conclusions the best way to have sharp
80:20
elbows is just data and statistics right
80:24
however doing something that is very
80:26
challenging to
80:28
a huge movement that's seen as very much
80:31
at the center of the gospel or
80:33
at the center of jesus that's
80:37
that comes at a cost you know like i
80:38
know from being a church leader
80:40
that saying things that might be true
80:42
and real that might hurt
80:44
comes to the cost i'm sure i have no
80:46
idea how much hate mail or
80:48
tweets you've gotten as a result of this
80:50
but i want to
80:51
know what is writing this book done to
80:53
your soul kristin i mean
80:54
maybe both in good and bad ways like is
80:56
it is your family okay with everything
80:59
have your relationships been affected by
81:02
it like what is it done to
81:04
not dr kristin kobas dumay but kristin
81:07
oh this is getting personal um
81:11
let's see first i will say that um
81:15
i anticipated that this would come with
81:18
a cost
81:19
publishing this book the cost has been
81:22
much less than i
81:23
feared i have gotten almost no hate mail
81:26
i know it's it's shocking
81:28
my publisher's lawyer had warned me to
81:31
you know prepare myself for vicious
81:33
trolling and kind of i locked things
81:35
down a bit
81:36
as the book came out i've had just a
81:38
little bit of that
81:39
not much at all thus far
81:42
and i've received fewer than a handful
81:46
of negative letters of any sort like not
81:49
even
81:50
mean-spirited i think there's maybe one
81:52
that got
81:54
kind of unpleasant and i cut off that
81:56
communication
81:57
that's it but then there's there's still
81:59
the personal right there's the
82:01
the fact that i personally am deeply
82:03
embedded
82:04
in these communities and my own
82:08
relationships
82:09
often cross over this
82:12
political chasm and that has been really
82:15
hard
82:16
that was hard before i started writing
82:19
this book it became harder as i was
82:21
writing this book
82:22
and there have been some really hard
82:23
moments i really
82:25
think that in this historical moment
82:28
i think we're all called to be faithful
82:31
as
82:31
as faithful as we can be and we're
82:33
called and that will require courage
82:36
and that there are so many forces within
82:37
evangelicalism i think
82:39
that that work against that you know be
82:42
nice
82:43
don't disrupt don't don't disrupt your
82:46
church don't disrupt relationships
82:48
don't rock the boat don't tarnish the
82:51
church's witness
82:52
don't um you know even that original
82:54
impulse of mine
82:56
that sounded kind of noble and it felt
82:58
noble at the time you know do i really
82:59
want to shine this dark
83:01
this bright light and the dark underside
83:03
of american evangelicalism right that
83:06
was was that a good impulse or was that
83:08
just brand protection and is that
83:10
exactly what has gotten us
83:12
where we are now i wasn't wasn't going
83:14
to follow the truth that i saw
83:17
in front of me and so i set it aside and
83:19
so i think this is a moment that
83:21
each of us has to ask you know what is
83:23
required of us how are we positioned
83:26
and and there are going to be costs
83:28
sometimes those costs aren't going to be
83:30
as
83:30
as dire as we fear sometimes they will
83:33
be i know many people who have lost
83:35
their jobs
83:36
over speaking out and speaking into this
83:38
moment
83:39
i know many families that have been
83:41
deeply divided
83:43
and i know lots of churches that have
83:45
really
83:46
struggled and relationships that have
83:48
been broken
83:49
and so i think that there's a cost for
83:51
all of us i will also say that
83:53
when you make that choice and if you can
83:55
do so with as much grace and truth
83:58
as you can muster you also find others
84:01
who are doing
84:02
that and the support that i've received
84:04
has been
84:05
just phenomenal it comes with costs but
84:08
also
84:09
to use a very evangelical word with
84:11
great blessing too
84:13
well i mean kristen thank you for having
84:16
the bravery to write this book
84:17
and can i just say none of your chapters
84:20
thanks for having the balls to write
84:21
this book
84:21
i mean it was amazing um but i really
84:25
i really do i really do there's an
84:27
ironic ending to it
84:32
but i really do think that this could be
84:35
the work the book that
84:36
10 years from now we look back on and
84:38
say this was the book
84:39
that gave a bunch of people permission
84:42
to say
84:42
that's not me anymore i can't do it
84:45
anymore i side with jesus more than i
84:46
side with the evangelical movement
84:48
with white evangelical movement i side
84:50
with the gospel more than i
84:52
identify as an evangelical and i can't
84:54
do it anymore
84:55
and so it's just a very very important
84:58
book
84:59
last question you have another book
85:01
coming out called live
85:02
laugh love i believe right i saw a
85:04
little teaser on twitter can you tell us
85:05
a little bit about it because it sounds
85:06
incredible
85:07
oh i just can't wait yeah i'm ready to
85:09
leave this testosterone field
85:11
masculinity behind
85:13
but you never really can i've learned
85:15
but um
85:16
yes my next book is kind of the flip
85:18
side it is a cultural history of white
85:20
christian womanhood
85:22
it's been on my radar for so so long and
85:25
even as i was writing jesus and john
85:27
wayne and i was writing about phyllis
85:28
schlafly and maribel morgan elizabeth
85:30
elliott i knew that there was
85:32
there was the rest of that story that i
85:34
didn't have time to get into
85:35
because because elizabeth elliot is
85:37
still influential
85:39
but right now it's it's uh you know
85:42
we've moved on we have
85:43
janet oak and we have uh uh beverly
85:46
lewis and we have
85:48
mommy vloggers and we have a multi-level
85:50
marketing
85:51
and hallmark movies and hgtv and that's
85:54
really this
85:55
this purveyor of of white christian
85:58
womanhood is a cultural ideal and so i
86:00
really want to
86:01
investigate that and what does that do
86:03
if culture
86:04
really does shape theology what does
86:07
that do
86:07
what does that do to christianity what
86:09
does that do to theology what does that
86:11
do to politics
86:12
and and so it's it's a super fun project
86:16
i've i'm now watching hallmark movies in
86:19
my spare
86:19
time reading a lot of really bad novels
86:23
and uh you know inspirational fiction
86:25
and it is
86:26
absolutely a blast so yes live laugh
86:28
love uh
86:29
we'll be out in i think 2023
86:33
2023 reading inspirational fiction
86:37
as fun whoa
86:38
[Laughter]
86:40
it's gotta be better than listening to
86:42
mark driscoll germans on repeat
86:45
the book is jesus and john wayne again
86:48
dr kristen kobas du may thank you so
86:50
much for joining us thanks for the time
86:51
oh thank you this is absolutely great
86:55
thanks for spending this time with us we
86:56
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86:58
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87:00
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87:32
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walk into a bar