But then one afternoon, the persistent, distracted feeling I had while reading erupted into a series of memories: youth pastors, men’s Bible study leaders, conference speakers, all talking about what it means to be a Christian man, and my mind in a haze while I stare at the floor. So why did I spend so much of this book uninterested and struggling to pay attention?įor about half the book, this was a hard question for me to answer. The book is researched, written well, and should be right up this disaffected evangelical history major’s alley. In articulating that origin, Du Mez demystifies and undermines the authority of those norms. It explains the origin of the gender norms we grew up with, which were for many confusing or outright damaging. The widespread appeal of the book among white Christians is easy to identify. Du Mez describes leader after leader - movement after movement - preaching a militant manliness of hunting, fighting, protecting weak, witless women from danger, rescuing American freedom from liberals or foreigners, and earning the rewards of power as well as obedient and sexually submissive wives. It traces the development of conceptions of masculinity in the white evangelical world from just after World War II to the present. Like a seemingly large number of white people with conservative, Christian backgrounds, I recently read the book Jesus and John Wayne by Calvin University historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |