The Christian masculinity genre rooted manhood in the mythic ideal of combat

Evidence

In Healing the Masculine Soul, Dalbey introduced themes that would animate what soon became a cottage industry of books on Christian masculinity. First and foremost, Dalbey looked to the Vietnam War as the source of masculine identity. The son of a naval officer, Dalbey described how the image of the war hero served as his blueprint for manhood. He’d grown up playing “sandlot soldier” in his white suburban neighborhood, and he’d learned to march in military drills and fire a rifle in his Boy Scout “patrol.” Fascinated with John Wayne’s WWII movies, he imagined war “only as a glorious adventure in manhood.” As he got older, he “passed beyond simply admiring the war hero to desiring a war” in which to demonstrate his manhood. — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 367

Categorization

• DEFINE: First explicit link between the genre’s core and actual war imagery — the template for the book’s ‘Jesus and John Wayne’ thesis.
• XREF: Directly instantiates the book’s title and central claim — John Wayne as the masculine blueprint folded into Christian identity.