The church’s meek Sunday school Jesus was blamed for failing to inspire masculine faith

Evidence

Unfortunately, the church was part of the problem. Failing to present the true Jesus, it instead depicted him “as a meek and gentle milk-toast character”—a man who never could have inspired “brawny fishermen like Peter to follow him.” It was time to replace this “Sunday school Jesus” with a warrior Jesus. Citing “significant parallels” between serving Christ and serving in the military, Dalbey suggested that a “redeemed image of the warrior” could reinvigorate the church’s ministry to men: “What if we told men up front that to join the church of Jesus Christ is … to enlist in God’s army and to place their lives on the line? This approach would be based on the warrior spirit in every man, and so would offer the greatest hope for restoring authentic Christian manhood to the Body of Christ.” — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 370

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘Sunday school Jesus’ critique connects to the book’s claim that consumer culture, not pulpit theology, transmitted this identity. — connects to: The feminization of religion was blamed for driving men from the church — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 648
• SEED: Angle: the military-recruitment framing of church membership (‘enlist in God’s army’) as a metaphor that fundamentally reorders what conversion means.