Fox News and evangelicalism shaped each other because both centered militant masculinity

Evidence

Neither Limbaugh nor O’Reilly made their name as Christian broadcasters, but many conservative evangelicals were attracted to their masculine brand. In the 1980s, Tim LaHaye had called for a Christian news network. Fox News didn’t frame itself in religious terms, but it more than fit the bill. The fit wasn’t a theological one, at least not in terms of traditional doctrine; it was cultural and political. Fox News hawked a nostalgic vision where white men still dominated, where feminists and other liberals were demonized, and where a militant masculinity and sexualized femininity offered a vision for the way things ought to be. White evangelicals were drawn to the network, and the network, in turn, shaped evangelicalism. But this is not a case of politics hijacking religion; the affinities between Fox News and conservative evangelicalism ran deep. Long before O’Reilly invented the “War on Christmas,” evangelicals knew he was on their side. Within two decades, the influence of Fox News on conservative evangelicalism would be so profound that journalists and scholars alike would find it difficult to separate the two. — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 342

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Du Mez’s core methodological claim in miniature: the affinity was cultural and political rather than doctrinal, yet media and religion became indistinguishable — this is the mechanism her whole book rests on, worth sitting with.
• SEED: The ‘War on Christmas’ invented by O’Reilly as received by evangelicals who already knew he was ‘on their side’ — an angle on how secular media can be perceived as religious before it names itself religious.