Kristin Kobes Du Mez is a New York Times bestselling author and Professor of History and Gender Studies at Calvin University. She joins us today to talk about her most recent book, Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation, in which she presents a seventy-five-year history of evangelicalism. Challenging the commonly held assumption that the “moral majority” backed Donald Trump for purely pragmatic reasons, Du Mez says that Donald Trump in fact represents the fulfillment, rather than the betrayal, of many white evangelicals’ most deeply held values. Jesus and John Wayne is included on our latest UPR Community Booklist.
Kristin Kobes Du Mez holds a PhD from the University of Notre Dame and her research focuses on the intersection of gender, religion, and politics. She has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Religion News Service, and Christianity Today, and has been interviewed on NPR, CBS, and the BBC, among other outlets.
