She argues that this lack of willingness among white evangelicals to continue standing by civil rights activists coupled with their silence about the demand for continued segregationist policies among their fellow white evangelicals had devastating effects.
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However, she also points out that he distanced himself from backing activists when they began to engage in civil disobedience, and that many white evangelicals responded similarly, finding it “hard to accept that the sin of racism ran deep through the nation’s history.” to pray at his 1957 New York City Crusade. She does point out that “evangelicals’ response to civil rights varied, particularly in the early stages of the movement.” Kobes du Mez uses Billy Graham as a prime example of one such evangelical leader who even personally removed ropes between white people and black people at his crusades and invited Martin Luther King, Jr. Perhaps one of the most devastating moments in her book is when she outlines how white evangelicalism was used to perpetrate segregation through church polity, Christian private education, and through both its constituents’ silence about and active railing against the Civil Rights movement. In so doing, she highlights more effectively than any theology textbook I’ve ever read just how contextual white masculine theology is. Kobes du Mez’s primary argument in Jesus and John Wayne is that this “militant white masculinity” has been the guiding force behind evangelicalism for decades.
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Christianity as White, Militant, and Masculine Beginning her history as far back as the 1890s, when the Victorian “model of manly restraint had begun to falter” and the new economy of the early twentieth century demanded a different type of “softer” work than toiling in fields or factories (and as women began to attend college with more regularity), Kobes du Mez records that a call for a new type of more aggressive masculinity emerged. Kobes Du Mez takes her readers on a dizzying journey through historical periods of evangelicalism that, despite its comprehensive nature, can only really scratch the surface of white evangelical subculture and all its manifestations. In a fascinating study that follows, Kobes du Mez traces the history of how “militant white masculinity” has always been the guiding force behind American evangelicalism and how it was shaped by and utilized symbols such as John Wayne, William Wallace, and other “rugged, masculine figures,” the Republican party, consumerism, and even the American military as an ideal force for good in the world. Kobes du Mez argues that the guiding force behind white evangelicalism for the last 50-some years has been a “militant white masculinity.” In the book, Kobes du Mez draws back the curtain on the assumption that American evangelicalism has developed its theological emphases and ecclesial ethics in some sort of vacuum outside of cultural influence - that it is not just as “adjectival” as any other sort of contextual theology. What Kristin Kobes du Mez accomplished in Jesus and John Wayne is tracing a history of American white, masculine, evangelical theology and to identify the historical, cultural, and political forces that influenced, guided, and focused its theological emphases for decades. As if these white, masculine voices are not equally subjective and focused on particular issues. “Those'' voices, it is argued, are too influenced by their own subjective viewpoints and focus too much on one or two aspects of theology to be taken as seriously as the other (white and masculine) voices that have dominated for centuries. Since white, masculine voices have been privileged in the field of theology for centuries (or since voices were assumed to be white and male, regardless of the truth of that assumption), any attempt to equally privilege latinx, black, female, LGBTQ+, Asian, Indigenous, or any other perspective alongside those voices is often resisted.
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The reason is that these are assumed - the “mythical norm” of theologies, as it were. You may notice (as I did) a couple of categories that are missing from these “adjectival” theologies: white theology and masculine theology. While reading the assignment, I realized that contextual theologies are essentially theologies with an adjective placed in front: feminist theology, womanist theology, latinx theology, LGBTQ+ theology, liberation theology, black liberation theology, etc. It was in graduate school that I first heard the phrase “contextual theologies.” I was intrigued since context - both cultural and historical - is crucial to understanding theology.