Book Criticisms: Du Mez will entertain only those arguments that accept her framework and dismiss any theological appeals, because Evangelicalism is not defined by theology, no matter what Evangelicals themselves claim. Once the reader realizes that this is what Du Mez is up to, he can make sense of how it is that she arrives at many of her conclusions. She simply ignores the Evangelical’s own claims about what drives him, and decides to analyze Evangelicalism through the lens of cynicism she has constructed. Du Mez’s slanders are as casual as they are broad.

Evangelicalism has lost its way.
It’s a popular message on the Left in the post-Trump era. The Left never liked Evangelicals to begin with – too conservative, too anti-gay, too public in their objections to the prevailing secular creeds they would say – but Trump, whom Evangelicals supported in droves, gave their critics a new charge to level at them: hypocrisy. These high and mighty moralizers, the Left said, were willing to abandon any principle in pursuit of political power. They had no right to preach to others values they would not practice.
The Evangelical writer David French has been in the thick of this conversation writing on the intersection of evangelical faith, politics, and corruption with such essays as: “Why Christians Bond With Corrupt Leaders,” “A Nation of Christians Is Not Necessarily a Christian Nation,” and “Deconstructing White Evangelical Politics.”
“‘Deconstruction’ is a hot topic in elite Evangelicalism,” French says. “It’s a word with many meanings. At its best it can represent an honest, critical re-examination of not just your personal faith, but also the theology and behavior of your faith community. We should be in a constant process of interrogating our own beliefs and actions in light of the person and example of Jesus Christ. White Evangelical politics are due for deconstruction.”
History, or something else?
Enter Kristin Kobes Du Mez, whose book, Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation, is cited by French as “a compelling and challenging argument.” Du Mez provides a historic account of “[t]he path that ends with John Wayne” – contraposed to Christ – “as an icon of Christianity,” of “rugged, heroic masculinity embodied by cowboys, soldiers, and warriors to point the way forward.” It is the account of a church that has commodified Christianity, intertwined faith and right-wing politics, and “invoked a sense of peril in order to offer fearful followers their own brand of truth and protection” and stoke “[e]vangelical militancy.” It is a church that has forgotten Christ.
We could concede, for sake of argument, some aspects of her account. The various moral failures of major figures in Evangelicalism are well documented. We could also dispute other claims, as various reviewers have here, here, and here. However, so as not to be duplicative of the work of others, we will focus on the foundational problems of her theoretical framework.
The facts recounted in any historical work are important, but so are the uses to which those facts are put, the tools used to analyze those facts, and the conclusions that are drawn from those facts. Accurate details can be both cherry-picked and omitted, and either of those can allow for the creation of a false narrative or leave the reader with a false impression. In short, what we want to know is whether or not the tools and analysis Du Mez employs in the curation of her historical record are sound, and whether or not the conclusions that she draws from that curated record are justified. That is, we want to know whether or not the house of Jesus and John Wayne is built on a solid intellectual foundation, and my contention is that it is not.
Jesus and John Wayne is built on the shifting sand of postmodernism. No Christian interested in her thesis can ignore the implications of her methodology. To embrace her work is to embrace the postmodern deconstruction of Christianity.
To understand Jesus and John Wayne, it is best to see it as a sort of answer to the question: “Why did Evangelical Christians, with their very conservative Christian moral ethics, come to be the backbone of support behind Donald Trump, a man who is infamous for his rude language and known for his (admitted) marital infidelities?” This is the question that Du Mez seeks to answer in her work.
Du Mez attempts to determine what exactly it is that conservative Evangelicals believe about masculinity, and how that relates to their view of who in society should be in positions of power. She claims to uncover the deeper sociological and historical reasons Evangelicals came to hold these views about gender and power. As she does that, Du Mez documents scandal upon scandal among the leadership in Evangelical circles. She places special attention on scandals involving Evangelical leaders at the forefront of fighting “the culture war.” Du Mez pulls up many examples of people who were caught up in financial scandals, sex scandals, abuse scandals, and various cover ups meant to hide all these scandals from public view.
All this she thinks adds up to the conclusions that Evangelicalism is racist, sexist, homophobic, and that Evangelicalism as it stands needs to be “undone.”
Du Mez readily admits that her work is a work of deconstruction, and that she is influenced by the work of postmodern philosopher Michael Foucault.[1] Much of Jesus and John Wayne is a Foucauldian Archeology of Evangelical discourse around masculinity, and a Foucauldian genealogy of how that discourse developed.
If we follow postmodern methods to their ultimate conclusions, they dissolve every belief system and every philosophical framework to which they are applied, including postmodernism itself. A philosophy or method that dissolves everything proves nothing, save for the fact that the philosophy or the method itself is flawed. So it is with postmodernism.
Evangelical Delusions
On her own account, Du Mez is attempting to show that “constructs like ‘Christian worldview’ might reflect the interests of those who fashion them, even at times distorting biblical teaching.” The problem is, she never does a proper analysis of whether or not the doctrines, ideas, and beliefs she criticizes in this way are true.
Rarely does Du Mez argue that the theology of Evangelicals is wrong on the merits. She does not show that they have made an interpretive mistake, nor does she argue, prove, demonstrate, or otherwise show that the tenets of American Evangelicalism are not warranted. Instead, she asserts that they are defined by cultural and political commitments and then draws negative inferences on that basis alone. Du Mez is attempting to tear down the edifice of Evangelical theology by appealing to elements in the sociological situation in which Evangelical theological claims and justifications were formed. On Du Mez’s telling, Evangelicals’ concerns about family were really about sex and power, their views of biblical innerancy were really a proxy for fights about gender, and their opposition to abortion was really about trying to push back against the gains made by feminism. Arguments of this type abound in Jesus and John Wayne.
The method relies on a fallacy that has been rebutted by John Searle, namely:
If we have justifications for our beliefs, and if the justifications meet rational criteria, then the fact that there are all sorts of elements in our social situation that incline us to believe one thing rather than another may be of historical or psychological interest but it is really quite beside the point of the justifications and of the truth or falsity of the original claim.[2]
This is the heart of the problem with Du Mez’s book. Her account of Evangelicals – they are animated by wrong motives, hidden agendas, unfair biases, and power-seeking;, they’re complicit in a litany of terrible things – is not an argument. Du Mez is attempting to tear down the edifice of Evangelical theology by casting elements of the sociological situation in which Evangelical theological claims and justifications were formed in the least charitable possible light. But, as Searle points out, whether or not our sociological situation inclines us toward one belief or another is not relevant to whether or not those beliefs are actually true.
The entire danger here is that we end up with a way of analyzing and understanding theology that is utterly unmoored from the truth. It doesn’t even matter whether Du Mez perceives herself to be operating in such a deconstructionist fashion: Her method sets aside the difficult work of determining truth and replaces it with the cheap substitute of speculating about people’s perceived interests and motives. Searle describes the danger of critique unmoored by the search for truth:
What are the results of deconstruction supposed to be? Characteristically the deconstructionist does not attempt to prove or refute, to establish or confirm, and he is certainly not seeking the truth. On the contrary, this whole family of concepts is part of the logocentrism he wants to overcome; rather he seeks to undermine, or call in question, or overcome, or breach, or disclose complicities.[3]
In this way Du Mez thinks that she can “see through” the theological claims of Evangelicals, and as such she can set them aside. In a passage in the concluding section of Jesus and John Wayne Du Mez makes this clear:
Despite evangelicals’ frequent claims that the Bible is the source of their social and political commitments, evangelicalism must be seen as a cultural and political movement rather than as a community defined chiefly by its theology. Evangelical views on any given issue are facets of this larger cultural identity, and no number of Bible verses will dislodge the greater truths at the heart of it.[4]
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Written by Mitchell L. Chase |
Monday, June 26, 2023
While God’s creation is good, the corruption of sin and death has wreaked havoc. We see the sorrowful things of the world around us and we know that injustice cries out for justice, that fractured lives long for wholeness, and that the moral guilt weighing upon the consciences of God’s image-bearers needs a remedy. Genesis 3 is a useful apologetic for Christians as we help others around us see why things are the way they are.

This article is part of the 10 Things You Should Know series.
1. The fall refers to the rebellion of God’s image-bearers in the garden of Eden.
Genesis 3 is a threshold in the Bible’s storyline. While dwelling in a sacred space and surrounded by the blessings of God, Adam and Eve did what God had forbidden. God had made them in his image, but they defied his word and sought a kind of knowledge in an unsanctioned way. Made for communion with God, they experienced alienation. Made for trust and hope and life abundant, they descended into sin and shame. They fell.
2. The fall is a nonnegotiable piece of the Creation-Fall-Redemption-Consummation paradigm.
One of the most popular schemas for the Bible’s “big story” is the fourfold chain of words: creation, fall, redemption, consummation. Creation tells us what God made, the fall tells us what happened to it, redemption tells us what God has done to address what happened, and consummation tells us where everything is headed. If the notion of the fall were removed, the implications would be disastrous. Let’s engage in a thought experiment. If there is creation but no fall, then what explains all that has gone wrong in the world? If there is redemption but no fall, why would redemption be necessary? If there is consummation but no fall, why would the Christian’s hope be oriented toward a new heavens and new earth and resurrection life?
3. The serpent in Genesis 3 was Satan, the archnemesis of God and God’s people.
The tempter in Genesis 3 does not have the best interests of Adam and Eve in mind. The serpent counters and twists God’s words. But throughout the account, the tempter is never called by name. If interpreters suspect that this is Satan himself tempting Eve, they would be correct, because he is certainly the archenemy of God’s people and the purposes of God. The New Testament confirms this identification. God told the serpent that it would be crushed (Gen. 3:15), and Paul told the Romans that “The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet” (Rom. 16:20). John says in Revelation, “The great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world” (Rev. 12:9).
4. The fall is treated as a historical event by later Scripture.
Because the Holy Spirit has inspired the writings of Genesis through Revelation, and because God does not err, we can trust the biblical accounts in what they reveal about God and God’s dealings with the world he’s made. Later Scripture does not contradict earlier Scripture, but we continually see how earlier Scripture is clarified and confirmed by the progressive revelation across the writings of the biblical authors. In Romans 5:12–21, the obedience of Christ contrasts the disobedience of Adam. In 1 Corinthians 15:21, Paul says that “by a man came death.” And in 2 Corinthians 11:3 and 1 Timothy 2:14, he mentions the deception of Eve. The New Testament treats the Old Testament account of the fall as a historical rebellion of a real Adam and a real Eve.
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No captain would knowingly go near submerged reefs and no farmer would permit space to be taken up by a fruitless tree. Yet that is precisely what the theological academy has been doing for some time now. It has been pointing us to Barth, the impenitent adulterer; to Yoder, the abuser of women; to a bevy of Germans who seem to have never met an orthodox doctrine they did not see fit to change; and now to Aquinas, the idolater. On behalf of many of the sheep in the pews permit me to say to this idea of returning to scholasticism and Aquinas – ‘no thank you.’

Previously we considered Craig Carter’s recommended revival of scholasticism. Now we finish our consideration of his claims and offer a rejoinder. He says “I am convinced that we need to recover and revitalize scholastic realism if we are to recover and revitalize classical orthodoxy after the disasters of the last two centuries.” He says this because he believes that in order to return Nicene Trinitarian and Chalcedonian Christological orthodoxy to “the forefront of Christian dogmatics again” means “we are going to need to go back to the last period in history when Enlightenment rationalism and naturalism had not yet corrupted Christian theology.” On his view that is “the period of post-Reformation scholasticism.” He believes one of the strengths of this period was its “catholicity, that is, its deep roots in the best of medieval scholasticism and the early church fathers.” He believes that the reformers anti-scholastic rhetoric “should be understood as directed against” “late medieval voluntarism and nominalism” and asserts that “many of the best Protestant theologians” employed Thomistic theology “extensively and with profit,” and, after some further elaboration on this point, says that this is where “we find the metaphysical and dogmatic foundations of Reformed scholasticism, or as one could also put it, classic reformed theology.”
One, “Reformed scholasticism” is not a synonym for “classic reformed theology.” There is much that is Reformed that is not scholastic: indeed, criticism of scholasticism was strong among some theologians of the period. Hence John Owen could say:
Some learn their Divinity out of the late, and Modern Schools, both in the Reformed and Papall Church; in both which a Science is proposed under that name, consisting in a farrago of Credible Propositions, asserted in termes suited unto that Philosophy that is variously predominant in them. What a kind of Theology this hath produced in the Papacy, Agricola, Erasmus, Vives, Jansenius, with innumerable other Learned men of your own, have sufficiently declared. And that it hath any better success in the Reformed Churches, many things which I shall not now instance in, give me cause to doubt.[1] 
Two, as for Protestant scholasticism’s catholicity consisting of its “deep roots” in the medieval scholastics and the early church fathers, consider what Owen says as he continues the section above:
Some boast they learn their divinity from the Fathers, and say they do not depart from their sense and idiom of expression in what they believe and profess . . . While men are thus pre-engaged, it will be very hard to prevail with them to think that the greatest part of their divinity is such that Christian religion, either as to the matter, or at least as to that mode wherein they have imbibed it, is little or not at all concerned in it; nor will it be easy to persuade them that it is a mystery laid up in the Scripture; and all true divinity a wisdom in the knowledge of that mystery.[2]
Modern paraphrase: ‘Some people are so enamored by their study of the early church fathers, some of whom made serious errors, that it is nearly impossible to get them to realize that a true knowledge and service of Christ has little if anything to do with their vain studies; true knowledge of Christ that is pleasing to him is found in understanding scripture’s testimony about him correctly (comp. Eph. 3:1-6).’ Such remarks, including as they do the ‘Reformed scholastics,’ do not seem limited to “late medieval voluntarism and nominalism.”
Three, on the Protestant view theology has been ruined by many others besides Enlightenment philosophers: Rome, various early heretics, and many of the scholastics have done so too. Hence Owen elsewhere says:
I could wish he [Fiat Lux’s author] would take a course to stop the mouths of some of his own Church, and those no small ones neither, who have declared them to the world, to be a pack of egregious Sophisters, neither good Philosophers, nor any Divines at all; men who seem not to have had the least reverence of God, nor much regard to the Truth in any of their Disputations, but were wholly influenced by a vain Re­putation of Subtility [cunning], desire of Conquest, of leading and denominating Parties, and that in a Barbarous Science, barbarously expressed, untill they had driven all Learning and Divinity almost out of the World.[3]
If that is a fair appraisal of scholasticism, then it seems Prof. Carter would have us discard Enlightenment rationalism by going back to something equally bad.
Four, why not return to non-scholastic Reformed theology, or better yet, to scripture? We confess that it is sufficient and perspicuous, “profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16-17). It will not suffice to combat aberrant theology on its own terms, for our own thought does not carry with it that power which scripture has. Consider its testimony of itself – “the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Heb. 4:12) – or what God says of it: “Is not my word like fire, declares the Lord, and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces?” (Jer. 23:29) and “it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose” (Isa. 55:11).
If we are serious about reforming theology we must recognize that such an undertaking cannot be performed by merely human learning, no matter how polished or extensive: God himself must work reformation in the study of the knowledge about him, and if he does so it will only be because we humbly submit ourselves to his word and look rather to it and to his mercy than to our own learning. In the words of Isaiah, “to the teaching and to the testimony!” (8:20) – naught else will suffice to impart a true knowledge of God, and any who attempts to renovate theological studies will find he is building upon a house of sand if he does not ground his efforts on God’s own revelation of himself.
Five, it is not scholasticism that we fear, but God, who will judge us if we yield to the excesses of any merely human school of thought. We do not wish to be like those people whom Paul would say “have wandered away into vain discussion, desiring to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions (1 Tim. 1:6-7). If a given school leads us into sin – as scholasticism does at sundry points, not least in Aquinas’ teaching that it is proper to worship the cross – then we ought to keep aloof from it.
Six, if scholasticism is the method of the schools, i.e., academic theological study, then it must be admitted that there already is a modern strain of it that predominates theology at present. This contemporary scholasticism operates by the same methods as secular research: it will study anything to find formative influences, not merely for cautionary or polemic purposes; it requires its proponents to participate in its system and receive doctorates by researching internal technical matters related to theology itself (e.g., “God’s Being-in-Reconciliation: The Theo-Ontological Basis of the Unity and Diversity of the Doctrine of the Atonement in the Theology of Karl Barth”[4]) rather than “rightly handling the word of truth” (2 Tim. 2:15); it discusses its materials in a detached, unemotional spirit utterly unlike the urgency and emotional fervor one finds in the prophets and our Lord; it makes inquiry its guiding principle rather than faith; it studies its own number with greater zeal than scripture, thus elevating secondary sources above primary; and by its love of esoteric terminology it has made theology a pursuit of an initiated few rather than a service to the church and her people.
The consequences of such an approach are apparent. Compare the following two passages.
[N]ot a few of the advocates of philosophic studies, when turning their minds recently to the practical reform of philosophy, aimed and aim at restoring the renowned teaching of Thomas Aquinas and winning it back to its ancient beauty.
And
Since they thought Thomas was one of the most brilliant theologians the church has produced, they did not hesitate to benefit from him in innumerable ways—from his epistemology to metaphysic, from his Christology to ethics.
One passage is from Credo’s Aquinas issue, the other from Aeterni Patris, the encyclical commending Thomism. If your ideas about whom it is appropriate to study put you in the same position as the pope – whose office Protestants have historically confessed to be antichrist (2 Thess. 2:3-4) – then you have adopted the wrong practical position. There are grounds of agreement between us and Rome, especially regarding Christology and theology proper; but the question of adopting one of her own number as a positive source of our own thinking is not one of them.
If it be objected that Rome advises studying sources that we also use let it be rejoined that though she uses them they are not properly her own as are those things that have arisen within her midst during the time of her corruption. Some things in the early fathers have parallels in Rome’s thought, such as Augustine’s ecclesiological ideas, but it is hard to see where any of the early fathers is Roman after the fashion of the medieval scholastics: their position before a long process of corruption, even one they in some cases inadvertently started, means that they are fundamentally different from those who arose later after that process had advanced very far.
In summary, we should not return to scholasticism. To do so would entail exposing ourselves to the bad as well as the good in it; and while theologians like Prof. Carter may be able to take an eclectic approach in which they keep certain teachings while discarding others, it must be remembered that most of the church’s members are not theologians. Members sometimes have much difficulty distinguishing between false and true doctrine. It is a predicament best avoided where possible.
Also, we already have a contemporary scholasticism by which we have been ill-served, not least since it has spread this idea among us, that there is something useful to be learned in practically everyone. That is contrary to scripture. It does not deal with false teaching in a detached manner as do our contemporary theologians. On its view false teaching arises because of the bad character of those that teach it. It does not take a nuanced approach to them, trying to retain the good while shedding the bad; rather it says that people who teach false doctrine constitute a class that is to be avoided. Jude 12-13 says that:
These are hidden reefs at your love feasts, as they feast with you without fear, shepherds feeding themselves; waterless clouds, swept along by winds; fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead, uprooted; wild waves of the sea, casting up the foam of their own shame; wandering stars, for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever.
No captain would knowingly go near submerged reefs and no farmer would permit space to be taken up by a fruitless tree. Yet that is precisely what the theological academy has been doing for some time now. It has been pointing us to Barth, the impenitent adulterer; to Yoder, the abuser of women; to a bevy of Germans who seem to have never met an orthodox doctrine they did not see fit to change; and now to Aquinas, the idolater. On behalf of many of the sheep in the pews permit me to say to this idea of returning to scholasticism and Aquinas – ‘no thank you.’
Tom Hervey is a member of Woodruff Road Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Simpsonville, S.C.

[1] Vindication of Animadversions Upon Fiat Lux, 212-13
[2] Ibid., 213. Spelling, punctuation, and diction somewhat modernized. Original available here: https://ota.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/repository/xmlui/handle/20.500.12024/A53737
[3] Animadversions Upon Fiat Lux, 122-23
[4] The Ph. D. thesis of Adam Johnson, professor at Biola.
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