Jesus and john wayne chapters
I wonder if Du Mez is at all aware of this “other side of the story?” We adolescent evangelical males were told about the (probably non-existent) “bleeding Sadducees” of Jesus’s time who bled because they kept their eyes closed in public so as not to see women and they kept running into buildings and other obstacles. In the evangelicalism I grew up in (long before she was born), there was at least ALSO a strong emphasis - aimed at young males- that we were totally responsible to rein in and control our sexual urges until marriage and that only within the bonds of marriage could we have sexual thoughts and desires.
I do not discount or deny Du Mez’s “story” about the white, American, evangelical tendency to blame women for men’s immorality, but I never experienced that.
Masturbation which was never mentioned by name but strongly hinted was so sinful that a young person (or anyone) who engaged in it was already halfway to hell. What I now consider normal puberty and adolescent feelings and thoughts, desires, were considered almost mortal sins. We were told that we could easily fall into Satan’s hands just by having dirty thoughts about girls’ and women’s bodies and about sex. I and my white, American evangelical male peers were harangued by evangelists, pastors, Sunday School teachers and writers about our sexuality and how we could go to hell for having sexual desires and feelings. I grew up in the thick of mid-to-late 20th century white American evangelicalism-as a boy and young man. Here I will respond to only one part of Du Mez’s responses to the interviewer’s questions.ĭu Mez claims that the white American evangelicalism of the 1940s through the end of the 20th century thrived on a vision of male sexual dominance over women that excused distorted and abusive masculine sexuality and blamed women for their experiences of sexual and other abuse at the hands of evangelical men. However, I have watched the following Youtube interview with Du Mez: “Kristen Du Mez: How Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith | Amanpour and Company.”
I admit that I have not yet read Kristen Du Mez’s book “Jesus and John Wayne.” I plan to.