Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation, Kristin Kobes Du Mez.

Wow. This is an important book.

I attended a boarding school in South America during my high school years. During the few years I was there, multiple missionaries were removed from the mission for sexual abuse of children. For close to twenty years I genuinely believed I had happened to be at the school during a weird time and that that kind of abuse couldn’t be the norm. Then a decade or so social media changed the conversation. Hundreds of former students came forward, revealing that in reality, the school had been the site of rampant abuse for decades. What I had thought was a blip was actually a systemic failure. It was a gut wrenching realization.

I had the same experience reading this book.

So many of the stories shared in this history of Christian nationalism in America were moments I remembered being uncomfortable with at the time, but then moving on and not considering their lasting impact. Having it all laid out reveals a far more serious picture of spiritual unhealth and spiraling patterns. Du Mez has done an incredible job of presenting history, walking the reader through the progression of dangerous trends in the American church.

This book is an important one. It would be easy to ignore or reject it because of the uncomfortable realities it reveals, but my hope is that it will spark conversations, trigger questions, and drive critical self evaluation. The church has reformed in the past, something we celebrate and honor. We can do so again.

All that to say, yes, I highly recommend this book.