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PBS-Picked Prof Warns of ‘Very Dangerous Rhetoric’ from Trumpian Evangelical Christians Americans must resist the impulse to stay quiet in the face of Donald Trump’s election promises to seek revenge against political opponents, dismantle civil rights and limit religious freedoms to Christian nationalists, Kristin Du Mez said. It’s tempting to preemptively hunker down knowing one possible outcome of the 2024 election includes the establishment of an authoritarian, theocratic form of government with retribution vowed against those who oppose it, she said during “The Convocation Unscripted” webinar. “If you muzzle yourself in advance because of what you think might happen, that creates the conditions for bad things to happen. But the more of us who are out there using our freedom to its fullest extent while we have it, the less danger there is to any one of us,” said Du Mez, professor of gender, religion and politics at Calvin University in Michigan and author of the bestselling book Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation. (NewsBusters 11/5/24) READ MORE>>>>> ‘Don’t muzzle yourself in advance,’ trio of religion experts advises Americans must resist the impulse to stay quiet in the face of Donald Trump’s election promises to seek revenge against political opponents, dismantle civil rights and limit religious freedoms to Christian nationalists, Kristin Du Mez said. It’s tempting to preemptively hunker down knowing one possible outcome of the 2024 election includes the establishment of an authoritarian, theocratic form of government with retribution vowed against those who oppose it, she said during “The Convocation Unscripted” webinar. “If you muzzle yourself in advance because of what you think might happen, that creates the conditions for bad things to happen. But the more of us who are out there using our freedom to its fullest extent while we have it, the less danger there is to any one of us,” said Du Mez, professor of gender, religion and politics at Calvin University in Michigan and author of the bestselling book Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation. (Baptist News Global 11/4/24) READ MORE>>>>> How a bucolic Tennessee suburb became a hotbed of ‘Christian Nashville-ism’ Calvin University history professor Kristin Kobes Du Mez, who studies conservative evangelicals, said the power of the moms in places like Williamson County should not be underestimated. These affluent suburbs are filled with talented and well-connected conservative women who see political activity — especially when it comes to issues that affect their children — as an outgrowth of their faith. “Conservative Christian women have long mobilized to protect their children and to protect their families,” she said. “This goes back generations.” They are also often heavy consumers of Christian radio and publishing — which have become more political. When the same trusted sources that provide the Christian music they love and the Bible studies they read also tell evangelical women their families and their faith are under attack, they will take action, said Du Mez. Du Mez also said being in a wealthy, insulated community filled with like-minded neighbors means these Christian women are less likely to run into people who challenge those messages. Instead, their circles include those who share their fears and reinforce them. “This is not primarily economic anxiety,” she said. “This is status anxiety.” (Bob Smietana/Religion News 11/8/23) READ MORE>>>>> |
November 3, 2024: Du Mez on PBD: It’s very popular in evangelical spaces to hear language of God’s anointed, God’s chosen one, when Donald Trump comes up. And this is very convenient language because, of course, on the surface, Donald Trump does not appear to be Christian. He does not appear to exemplify Christian virtue. But the idea that God has selected him nevertheless, has selected him, perhaps even because he doesn`t exemplify traditional Christian virtue, to do something special in this particularly perilous moment. And so they love using language like, Donald Trump is a King Cyrus, selected by God in order to protect God`s special people and restore Christian America.
November 5, 2024:The white evangelical Christian movement has been shown to be heavily supportive of Donald Trump. Calvin University's Kristin Kobes Du Mez is an expert in religion and politics. She says, while Trump doesn't fit the traditional mould of a Christian conservative man, his views on immigration and nationalism, as well as traditional gender roles fit well with evangelical Christians.
November 6, 2024: DuMez posted article at Du Mez Connections. This win wasn’t as stunning as 2016, but it feels far more serious. Last time there was chaos, incompetence, and occasionally staffers who obeyed laws and provided guardrails. This time around, Trump has plans for that. He and his inner circle have already told us what they plan to do. Mass deportations. Purge the federal government and install Trump loyalists. Weaponize the Department of Justice and go after his enemies. Dissolve the Department of Education. And this time around, he has the assurance of broad criminal immunity. But what makes this even worse is that the majority of Americans who voted for him know this. And they choose this. |
“How could conservatives with ‘family values’ support a man who contradicted every single principle they claimed to stand for?...............It was more the culmination of the evangelicalism adoption of a combative masculinity, an ideology that entrenches patriarchal authority and condones a ruthless display of power...........In reality, evangelicals did not cast their vote despite their beliefs, but because of them. John Wayne “did not live a moral life by the standards of traditional Christian virtue,” yet “for many evangelicals, he would come to symbolize a different set of virtues — a nostalgic yearning for a mythical ‘Christian America,’ a return to ‘traditional’ gender roles, and the reassertion of (white) patriarchal authority. Like Wayne, the heroes who best embodied militant Christian masculinity were those unencumbered by traditional Christian virtues.....For many evangelicals, these militant heroes would come to define not only Christian manhood but Christianity itself.”
--Kristin Kobes du Mez, author of Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation
--Kristin Kobes du Mez, author of Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation
Kristin Du Mez
"If you look at how many conservative evangelicals responded to abusive leaders, abusive pastors in their own churches and in their own organizations…. time and time again, you see evangelical communities ending up defending perpetrators of abuse — of sexual abuse, of abuse of power — and doing so in the name of protecting the witness of the church, (and) blaming women for leading men on or for seducing men. All sorts of excuses, really…. And that's exactly the rhetoric that we have heard and continue to hear around somebody like Donald Trump....I started noticing, more than 20 years ago, a growing embrace of a very kind of militant, rugged, even militaristic conception of what it meant to be a Christian man — a kind of warrior. And I traced that up to the present and heard so many echoes of that in evangelical support for Trump; he was their ultimate fighting champion, who would do what needed to be done to advance their aims…. You can see in the recent history of evangelicalism kind of an ebb and flow of perceptions of masculinity and what's wrong with masculinity." -Kristin Du Mez; The Bulwark; "Beg to Differ" 8-18.23
March 14, 2023: Reformed Journal: Kristin Du Mez’s Calvinism and My Own
The Christian Reformed theobros are laying in ammunition for their assault on heretics such as I at this June’s meeting of Synod, but I don’t want to talk about that right now. Maybe in a future post.
We need a broader, and calmer, take—not on the substantive issues at hand in this controversy, but on the role that issues, particularly professed beliefs, play in religious life and organizations. For that I want to share the analysis, at once winsome and penetrating, that Kristin Kobes Du Mez recently posted on her Substack site, Du Mez Connections.
The Christian Reformed theobros are laying in ammunition for their assault on heretics such as I at this June’s meeting of Synod, but I don’t want to talk about that right now. Maybe in a future post.
We need a broader, and calmer, take—not on the substantive issues at hand in this controversy, but on the role that issues, particularly professed beliefs, play in religious life and organizations. For that I want to share the analysis, at once winsome and penetrating, that Kristin Kobes Du Mez recently posted on her Substack site, Du Mez Connections.
Kristin Du Mez
“This whole complementrian ideology is a historical construction...All the packaging that comes with it — what it means to be a man, what it means to be a woman — that’s a historical and cultural creation, even as it’s packaged and sold as timeless, inerrant and biblical.” -Kristin Du Mez; Religion News Service: Beth Moore apologizes for her role in elevating ‘complementarian’ theology that limits women leaders 4.7.21