By 2008 evangelicals had fused Jesus with John Wayne into one militant figure

Evidence

IN 2008, THE GAITHER VOCAL BAND, A LEGENDARY southern gospel vocal group with roots in the contemporary Christian music scene of the 1980s, released the single “Jesus and John Wayne.” The song set up a contrast between a mother’s gentle faith and a father’s toughness, between a cowboy and a saint, and the singer found himself somewhere between the two. True to the Gaithers’ brand, it was a nostalgic ballad; by that point in time, for many of their evangelical fans, little separated Jesus from John Wayne. Jesus had become a Warrior Leader, an Ultimate Fighter, a knight in shining armor, a William Wallace, a General Patton, a never-say-die kind of guy, a rural laborer with calluses on his hands and muscles on his frame, the sort you’d find hanging out at the NRA convention. Jesus was a badass. — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 663

Categorization

• SHARE: The actual Gaither Vocal Band song that literally titled this book is a trivia nugget worth sending to anyone who has read or is reading the book.
• CANDY: ‘Jesus was a badass’ as the culminating line is a compact, quotable summation of the whole book’s thesis.