Militant masculinity fused religious and secular conservatism into one identity.

Evidence

As religious leaders like Hyles championed a militant application of patriarchal authority, other conservatives, too, embraced a nostalgic vision of aggressive, even violent masculinity. In this way, militant masculinity linked religious and secular conservatism. In time, the two would become difficult to distinguish. As red-blooded American manhood became infused with God-and-country virtues, otherwise secular models would come to exemplify an ideal Christian manhood. This conflation of religious and secular can be seen in the cultlike status John Wayne enjoyed among American conservatives in the 1960s and 1970s. — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 126

Categorization

• DEFINE: This is the load-bearing conceptual claim of the book: the mechanism by which secular figures like John Wayne became religious exemplars.
• SEED: An essay angle: how secular consumer icons become theological authorities — the inverse of secularization theory.
• XREF: connects to: A Christian nationalist group’s awards fused conservative elites with hard-right extremists. — Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the…, 727