The postwar era forged evangelical identity from gender, militarism, and nationalism

Evidence

Antecedents can be found in nineteenth-century southern evangelicalism and in early-twentieth-century “muscular Christianity,” but it was in the 1940s and 1950s that a potent mix of patriarchal “gender traditionalism,” militarism, and Christian nationalism coalesced to form the basis of a revitalized evangelical identity. With Billy Graham at the vanguard, evangelicals believed that they had a special role to play in keeping America Christian, American families strong, and the nation secure. The assertion of masculine power would accomplish all these goals. — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 27

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth chasing: what exactly did 1940s-50s ‘muscular Christianity’ look like, and how did Graham’s vanguard role operationalize it — through pedagogy, books, media?
• XREF: connects to: Boykin cultivated Christian nationalist networks in the military and disaster-relief NGOs — Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the…, 95; Nineteenth-century evangelicals adopted British premillennialism as a theology of social disengagement — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the…, 54; Billy Graham fused Christian identity with American patriotism as early as the 1950s — Andrew L. Whitehead, American Idolatry, 237 (+1 more)