A leading Evangelical pastor spent twelve years calling Islam wicked and warlike

Evidence

Stoking fear in the hearts of American Christians played into the hands of conservative evangelical leaders, too. Just as Jack Hyles, Jerry Falwell, and Mark Driscoll had stage-managed in their own churches, evangelicals in post-9/11 America enhanced their own power by ratcheting up a sense of threat—a tactic that only worked within a militarized framework. … Were evangelicals embracing an increasingly militant faith in response to a new threat from the Islamic world? Or were they creating the perception of threat to justify their own militancy and enhance their own power, individually and collectively? By inciting fears of an Islamic threat, men like Falwell, Patterson, Vines, and Dobson heightened the value of the “protection” they promised—and with it, their own power. — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 508 (#complicates, via linked claim)

As in the Cold War era, for all their militant rhetoric and supreme confidence that God was on their side, evangelicals seemed curiously fearful. In twenty-first century evangelicalism, the threat of radical Islam loomed large. Yet upon closer examination, this fear appears suspect. On the part of evangelical leaders, at the very least, fear of Islam appeared to be nothing more than an attempt to drum up support for the militant faith they were hawking. — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 493 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Prominent Evangelical leaders urged Muslims to leave the US as a fifth column; A military evangelical fused the War on Terror with spiritual warfare against Satan. — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne: How White…, 516; Evangelical leaders manufactured Islamic threat perceptions to inflate their own power — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne: How White…, 508 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Evangelical leaders manufactured Islamic threat perceptions to inflate their own power #complicates (0.85) — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 508
• Evangelical leaders’ fear of Islam was manufactured to sell militant faith #complicates (0.83) — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 493