In 2006 I gave my first talk on the subject, “Onward Christian Warriors.” The talk was sponsored by Calvin University’s Paul Henry Institute, and it didn’t draw a huge crowd. It was to explore connections between evangelical gender ideals and foreign policy that I first began my research into the book that became Jesus and John Wayne. Evangelicals not only supported the war in Iraq at rates far higher than other demographics, but they also supported preemptive war generally, condoned the use of torture, fueled a virulent islamophobia, and provided crucial support for a president pursuing “shock and awe” tactics on the global stage. (The book went on to sell more than four million copies in the US alone.) This was the era of the Iraq War, a time when evangelical militarism was in full throttle. Trained to see the connection between gender and nation, my students sensed that there was something significant going on in a book most critics brushed off as trivial or even laughable. (Roosevelt wasn’t Eldredge’s only hero other favorites included mythical cowboys and American soldiers, Indiana Jones, James Bond, and of course Mel Gibson’s William Wallace.) My students wanted me to read the book because Roosevelt was one of Eldredge’s heroes, for the very reasons that Bederman had deconstructed in Manliness and Civilization. It wasn’t long before my own church was hosting a men’s Bible study on it, and soon after a women’s Bible study on the book’s feminine counterpart, Captivated. I can’t remember now if they had a book in hand, or only told me I needed to read it: John Eldredge’s Wild at Heart.Įldredge’s book was all the rage at that time on Christian college campuses and in evangelical churches. One day after class, some of my (white, male) students approached me.

Like me, my students were shocked by how attention to race, gender, and power challenged their received narratives, how the old stories about Teddy Roosevelt suddenly seemed insufficient.

Book jesus and john wayne