Reviews tagging 'Violence'

Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation by Kristin Kobes Du Mez

6 reviews

pearlisarobot's review

challenging dark informative tense fast-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Hate crime, Colonisation, Sexism, Xenophobia, Islamophobia, Gun violence, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Infidelity, Homophobia, Misogyny, Cultural appropriation, Religious bigotry, Classism, and Racism

Minor: Emotional abuse, Gaslighting, Trafficking, War, Violence, Hate crime, Gun violence, Sexual violence, Antisemitism, Rape, Child abuse, Colonisation, Genocide, and Mental illness

thisisadri's review against another edition

dark informative medium-paced

5.0

A must read for anyone who’s remotely interested in how America came to be 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism, Transphobia, War, Sexual harassment, Gun violence, Homophobia, Sexual violence, Xenophobia, Islamophobia, Toxic relationship, Violence, Religious bigotry, Pedophilia, Misogyny, Lesbophobia, Hate crime, Fatphobia, and Domestic abuse

mfrisk's review against another edition

informative reflective fast-paced

5.0

I can’t even begin to express how much I want everyone I know to read this book. It maps out with care, critique, and precision the rise of the religious right over time and where the cultural met the religious aspects of evangelism to bring us to the state of fear and anger which has stoked bubbling hatred and concealed abuse. I think this book is extremely important for those in politics or involved in civic engagement in any way to read as well as those who practice religion in a way which goes against the harmful ideals detailed in this book. It is not a guidebook to the other side of the harm which has been created but to better understand this movement is to know how to deconstruct it and I feel more informed having read this book. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Religious bigotry, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual harassment, Sexual violence, and Racial slurs

Moderate: Ableism, War, Violence, Xenophobia, Trafficking, Sexism, Racism, Islamophobia, Homophobia, Infidelity, and Child abuse

Minor: Abortion, Transphobia, and Gun violence

abutler's review against another edition

challenging dark informative reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Misogyny

Minor: Adult/minor relationship, Antisemitism, Emotional abuse, Gaslighting, Homophobia, Infidelity, Islamophobia, Pedophilia, Rape, Religious bigotry, Sexism, Sexual assault, Slavery, Transphobia, Violence, War, and Xenophobia

elly29's review

challenging informative sad slow-paced

3.25

There was a deluge of information, and I'm unsure I processed or retained a lot of it. I listened, and had to go back again to catch a lot of what Du Mez said. Notably, there were a lot of players -- both individuals and organizations -- that contributed to the coalescence of white conservative evangelicalism and christian nationalism, and it was difficult sometimes to get a picture of how they all fit together. It starts with Billy Graham, and John Wayne, and moves to Oliver North and James Dobson and Jerry Falwell. I think Du Mez did the best she could to make a cohesive narrative out of it, but I'm still reeling and can't express the things I learned from it.

At times, I wanted to breathe fire. For example, with Marabel Morgan's "Total Woman," which set women back by a century, or the purity circles, or Chapters 16 which was on how Christian evangelical patriarchy self-justified abuse (major content warning on that, about victim-blaming). A lot of the tools that crystallized the cultural movement were the same through 1960, 1980, and 2010: a focus on a (fragile! They emphasized that the male ego was fragile and needed assuaging!!) male ego, with a docile/submissive femininity that needed protection (but who will protect women from self-aggrandizing, power-hungry patriarchs?).

Some of it hit close to home, as Du Mez mentioned Mormonism on occasion, and the same scandals in evangelicalism and Catholicism have occurred.

I... I have so much less sympathy for the culture of evangelicalism. It is divorced from any sense of religion. And, it drives home the point that Trump's election was a litmus test of our political and cultural climate: that a swathe of white males are frantic about losing their position in society. (It really is all about racism -- which Du Mez acknowledged briefly, but not enough). Very interesting to read this on the heels of Wilkerson's "Caste" and Haidt's "The Righteous Mind": definitely evangelicals/conservatism appeals to Authority/Order, Sacredness (ish?). 

Like, I still don't know what to do with this book, y'all.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexism and Religious bigotry

Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Biphobia, Bullying, Emotional abuse, Gaslighting, Racism, Violence, War, and Islamophobia

Minor: Homophobia and Abortion

It's a cultural-polticial-historical analysis, so it discusses and analyzes sexism, misogyny, homophobia, abortion, etc, not necessarily graphic detail. However, Chapter 16 was rough on the sheer volume of evidence of sexual abuse, and conservative christians' dismissal of sexual abuse. If you're sensitive to discussion like that, steer clear!

crunchy_hobbit's review against another edition

challenging dark informative slow-paced

4.0

It doesn’t really come together till the final two chapters (ie, I’d like the author to be a little more explicit about the term she uses as her through line) but when it hits, it hits. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual assault, Child abuse, Violence, and Religious bigotry