Book Review: Jesus and John Wayne, by Kristin Kobes Du Mez

The week of the 2016 election, I noticed an alarming statistic. Exit polling indicated that over 80% of white Evangelicals voted for Trump. How could the vast majority of white Evangelicals turn out for a candidate with a documented history of marital infidelity, divorce, and misogyny?

As Kristin Kobes Du Mez explains in her book, Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation (Liveright, 2020), the results of the 2016 election were readily predictable. Du Mez argues convincingly that America's Christian Right has long compromised its values and integrity in seeking to achieve and consolidate power. Trump's electoral win was simply the latest milestone in the Christian Right's decades-long quest for cultural power.

But this is not a book about the 2016 election, or Donald Trump. To Du Mez, these are symptoms, not causes. Du Mez's narrative traces the origins of the Christian Right all the way back to Theodore Roosevelt. But the book largely deals with Vietnam and the Cold War, and how they gave rise to a patriarchal, militant, and hardline conservative American Christian movement. The resentment that captured the White House for Trump largely emerged in response to the military defeats and cultural compromises of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s.

The scope of the narrative is impressive. Du Mez addresses over 100 years of American political and religious history, tracing compromises and clashes that formed the political juggernaut that the Christian Right has become. At the core of the narrative are detailed profiles of key figures who may be unfamiliar to those who have not explicitly studied this history: Phyllis Schlafly, Tim LaHaye, and Pat Robertson, among many others.

Stylistically, the book is likely to appeal to progressive Christians, while repelling white Evangelicals who most need to understand this history. Du Mez's frequent use of quotation marks, though perhaps grammatically accurate, implies a tone of condescension towards evangelical "leaders," "churches," and "movements." While the author's critiques are directed towards the leaders of the conservative Christian movement, the book at times reads like a polemic, with little empathy towards individuals and families compelled or coerced by political opportunists like Jerry Fallwell Jr.

The book makes clear that America's Christian history could have traveled a different path. The 1990s saw the emergence of movements like Promise Keepers, organizations that countered the Right's militant political tendencies with a call to approach relationships with compassion and even tenderness. Pivoting away from militarism, Promise Keepers adopted athletics as the prime metaphor for faithful Christian living. In the 1990s, then, white Evangelicals could have chosen for its values family, faith, and football instead of militant masculinity. Regrettably, hardline conservative pastors like Mark Driscoll emerged to push the objectives of the movement back towards growth, power, and cultural influence.

Nevertheless, these examples remind us that there is nothing inevitable about the trajectory of Christianity in America. While 2016 and 2020 represent a nadir in our nation's religious history, we have the choice to travel a different way. The expansion of Trumpism and Christian Nationalism may be predictable, but its victory is hardly inevitable.

If we are to choose a different way, we need to know our history. Progressives and conservatives alike would do well to carefully read "Jesus and John Wayne," to know the facts and to study the ideas of the movement's leaders. It is only by doing so that we might become more capable at differentiating the call of God from the unvarnished pursuit of relevance.

Book Review: "The Innovative Church" by Scott Cormode

We need innovation in the church. Everyone knows it. Increasingly, everyone says it.

But what does "innovation" actually mean in the church? Is it just solving old problems with new methods? Is it solving new problems with processes from the worlds of business and technology? Or might it be something else?

Scott Cormode addresses these questions in more his highly practical, accessible guide to innovation, "The Innovative Church: How Leaders and their Congregations Can Adapt in an Ever-Changing World."

Check out the video review from our YouTube channel, or read below for more on this book!

"Christian innovation cannot be exactly like secular innovation, yet Christians can learn from secular innovators."

I would describe Cormode's work as a must-read for churches who know they need to change. It features practical models that align with innovation best practices of the corporate world, yet are skillfully adapted for church contexts. For example, Cormode pays specific attention to "Human-Centered Design," a process similar to Design Thinking. In his descriptions of the process, Cormode instructs the church leader on how to brainstorm, prune, prototype, and test with an emphasis on the Spirit's work in a context.

I was particularly drawn to the book's emphasis on practices and narrative. The objective of Christian innovation is not the pursuit of relevance, nor is it an attempt to attract young people. In order to reach "the smartphone generation," we don't need to invent something from scratch. With innovation, we're not trying to create new things, launch new programs, or start a new marketing campaign.

Instead, we're trying to reintroduce a timeless identity, to reshare an ancient narrative. With innovation, we reimagine the traditions of the faith for a contemporary context. Christian innovation is fundamentally connected to the historical practices of the faith: prayer, lament, hospitality, generosity, and others. For Cormode, the Christian innovator skilfully initiates the processes of discernment and human-centered design in the context of traditional practices. The result of this process is a set of new approaches to ancient practices that "make spiritual sense" of the "longings and losses" in our world.

Cormode's work is theologically grounded in the action of God. It is ultimately God who acts, God who creates. As innovators, we are here to water, to nurture, to give thanks for the ways in which God is always speaking a renewing word of life into this world. As leaders, it is not our task to come up with brilliant ideas. It is our calling to discern what God is up to, to listen to the longings and losses of our community, and to empathize. Joined together with the ceaseless creative work of the triune God, our innovative work may yet resonate with an ailing and divided world.

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@ryanpanzer is the author of "Grace and Gigabytes"

Book Review: The Analog Church

If you've followed this blog or read "Grace and Gigabytes," you know that I'm an advocate of technology in the church, and you yourself are at least somewhat interested in the topic. In thinking about the church's digital (or, hybrid) future, it's interesting to consider what tools and tactics will help our communities to be more faithful, inclusive, and collaborative. But it's imperative to occasionally pause to ask the big question: What if the church shouldn't have a digital future?

What if the pursuit of Christian community in digital spaces is a fruitless pursuit of "relevance," a distraction from the true work of proclaiming God's word, administering the sacraments, and making Christ known to our communities?

"Analog Church" by Jay Y. Kim, which was published only two weeks into the COVID-19 pandemic, presents a compelling critique of technology in the church, an argument borne out of the idea that so much of our technology is in service to relevance, as opposed to transcendence. The book suggests that every time we seek to use tech to reach more people, we lose focus on the local character of the church, sacrificing real connections for a shallow form of click-based community.

Jay Y. Kim argues convincingly that digital platforms cannot be the only location of Christian community. The corporate acts of singing, praying, and learning are fundamental to the Christian tradition. There is, in fact, something that we lose when prayers and hymnody, scriptures and teachings, are reduced to memes and posts on social media. There is something that we miss out on when church becomes a passive, consumer-oriented experience.

Yes, as a church leader I want to serve and reach as many people as I can with the gospel. This is true of most church leaders I have known. But often, the desire to "serve and reach as many as we can" in the digital age devolves into methods that essentially equate to "what's the fastest, most efficient way for us to get bigger?"

-Jay Y. Kim, "The Analog Church"

Still, I have questions. The author suggests that "digital" is by definition an antonym of "real," that our virtual connections are, in their essence, fake. I'm unconvinced. As Riverside Church Digital Minister Jim Keat has said, digital is not the opposite of real. Digital is the opposite of physical.

Can we know real people, can we connect in real places, can we learn about real things in a digital form of church? Of course we can.

For me, the question is not whether we should be using digital technology - the question is how we will blend the invitational character of the online world with the connective core of our face-to-face experiences.

To that end, Jay Y. Kim's work is indispensable. "Analog Church" gives us a set of signposts for navigating the potential and the pitfalls of church in the digital age. It warns us of church as a "consumer" experience, it steers us away from individualistic Christianity. It cautions us against reading scripture out of context, or only attending to fleeting aspects of a church's life together.

In this moment, so many of us are looking to the future, considering how the tech we have relied upon in the last 13 months informs our ministry and mission. I remain convinced that the best model for doing church is a blend of offline and online. For anyone who believes the same, "Analog Church" is simply a must-read.

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@ryanpanzer is the author of "Grace and Gigabytes"