Kristin Kobes Du Mez and Walter Kim: A Conversation on Masculinity and the Evangelical Church
In this Theology Lab conversation, Kristin Kobes Du Mez and Walter Kim explore evangelicalism, masculinity, and Christian identity, focusing on the American church. Drawing from Jesus and John Wayne, they discuss how rugged masculinity, power, and nationalism have often overshadowed the gentleness, compassion, and courage of Christ. Kim reflects on the many “rooms” within evangelicalism—some hospitable, some hostile—while Du Mez challenges rigid gender binaries and calls believers back to deeper theological reflection. Together, they model respectful disagreement, historical honesty, and hopeful dialogue. This discussion asks: What have Christians traded for power, and what might faithful witness look like now?
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Description
In this Theology Lab conversation, Kristin Kobes Du Mez and Walter Kim explore evangelicalism, masculinity, and Christian identity, focusing on the American church. Drawing from Jesus and John Wayne, they discuss how rugged masculinity, power, and nationalism have often overshadowed the gentleness, compassion, and courage of Christ. Kim reflects on the many “rooms” within evangelicalism—some hospitable, some hostile—while Du Mez challenges rigid gender binaries and calls believers back to deeper theological reflection. Together, they model respectful disagreement, historical honesty, and hopeful dialogue. This discussion asks: What have Christians traded for power, and what might faithful witness look like now?
Resources
📚 Check out Kristin’s book: https://kristindumez.substack.com/p/announcinglive-laugh-love
National Association of Evangelicals: https://www.nae.org/
Generated Transcript
Speaker-0 (00:01.582)
I mean, guys, I'm really excited to hear from you both tonight. Kristen, book, Jesus and John Wayne, When the Pandemic Hit, was one of our first sort of theology lab book conversations before I think we've been in the name theology lab. So I was geeking out a little bit when I we got to have you in conversation. And Walter, again, thank you for just
leaning in with us and helping facilitate a lot of these connections and conversations we're grateful. So we're going to just get into it. Does that sound okay? Yeah. So Jesus and John Wayne claims that evangelicals have worked to replace the Jesus of the gospels with an idol of rugged masculinity and Christian nationalism. With to each of you, does this resonate with your own experience or observations that you, that's the question that
that you all are gonna answer later today. That is not what you guys are gonna answer right now from me, is it?
I don't think so. This is why Scott is in charge of this because he multitasks so well. I think you're going to ask us if we're evangelical or how we connect to evangelicalism. maybe we can start. Let's start it over. If we take this from the, if we do the cut at this point in the recordings. So welcome everyone. And we're so glad that you're here. Friends, can you tell me how you identify with and understand evangelicalism?
speaker-1 (01:32.93)
Great. First of all, let me begin by expressing my gratitude for the comments that you made about the Asian American community and your solidarity and in lament with that is profoundly meaningful. And I think representative of a kind of following of Jesus that is gracious, compassionate, and very broad in looking for the expression of grace in these various spaces that includes lament.
So thank you. And I think we'll have occasions to come back and touch upon those themes. But in terms of evangelicalism, I mean, it's on my business card, National Association of Evangelicals. So I do identify with that, but I was not born into an evangelical family as a son of an immigrant. We were church going, but a lot of it was cultural as we were just trying to navigate a place to find some Korean community. So initially it was a Korean church.
My introduction to evangelicalism and specifically white evangelicalism was when a family had moved away from New York City and we lived in this small coal mining town in the foothills of Appalachia in Western Pennsylvania. And in eighth grade, I encountered a local youth director who invited me to listen to country music with him, to talk about the Bible, to
go do life together. And it was an extraordinary outreach on his part, very, very kind. And that led to perhaps, you know, one of the great symbols of evangelicalism, the four spiritual laws being shared with me one night and I became a Christian. And that started a journey of entering into a space of evangelicalism.
of a majority white evangelicalism over the course of the many decades after that time with staff, with Campus Crusade for Christ and in various pastoral positions. But my experience of evangelicalism has demonstrated to me that there are many streams or many rooms in the household of evangelicalism. And I think
speaker-1 (03:59.522)
by God's goodness and grace, I've entered into some rooms that were incredibly hospitable. Even as I acknowledge that there are rooms that have hostility in it. that's a complicated picture. And certainly in my position right now, I sense deeply the complicated picture that evangelicalism represents.
and you'll see our latest releases and what's happening at Theology Lab right now. Also, the description and comments have a link to our podcast that features folks like David Brooks, Kristin Kobus-Dumei, and others. Enjoy the video.
speaker-0 (04:43.884)
Yeah, I didn't consider myself an evangelical for a very long time. I still actually don't. I don't know that I ever have identified as evangelical. I grew up as a member of the Christian Reformed Church in the Dutch immigrant community in Northwest Iowa. My mom is an immigrant from the Netherlands, and my dad is an ordained minister in the Christian Reformed Church and a theology professor. And so I got a pretty
kind of formative upbringing spiritually that was very rooted in the Christian Reformed Church, the kind of Kiperian tradition, if that this is theology lab, so I can use that word, not just Kiperian, but even Doywardian. And so I just grew up very kind of distinctively shaped and I did not identify as an evangelical. Billy Graham was not kind of, you know, idolized in my home at all. He wasn't one of us.
We kind of thought that we were better than evangelicals and frankly smarter than evangelicals. We a different kind of view of inspiration of scriptures, the authority of the scriptures. So all in all, it just wasn't part of my self identity. That said, we had one bookstore in my small town and it was a Christian bookstore. I only listened to Christian music because I thought that it was taught that top 40 is sinful.
And so as I grew up, even though I didn't identify as evangelical, looking back, I can see that I was immersed in a popular evangelicalism, the popular culture of evangelicalism. And I think that's the case for many. Evangelicalism is so powerful because of its kind of cultural presence that many who maybe grew up or have been located in distinctive Christian traditions
those traditions have been greatly shaped by contemporary evangelicalism. And so am I evangelical? Am I not? I don't identify as that, I, you know, as close as I can come, would say evangelical adjacent. I think it's just worth pointing out that your two responses are indicative of sort of the breadth of what we have heard from our speakers so far, from our fall sessions of what does that mean to you? Well, it can mean lots of different things to different people.
speaker-0 (07:09.346)
And a lot of that comes with your social location. Where did you grow up? Who influenced you? Who helped introduce you into meeting Jesus through some of these ways or intersecting with culture, whether you realized it or not. So thank you guys. I appreciate that. Kristen, there's been a huge response to Jesus and John Wayne. What of the responses to this book have been?
encouraging to you and what has been discouraging about responses to your work? So the most encouraging I would say is really what we're doing here tonight. I did not anticipate or expect that I would be invited into so many evangelical spaces when I wrote the book. And the, just the openness that so many evangelicals have shown to this book. Now, if you're on Twitter, you might be focused on
kind of the points of conflict because that tends to generate a lot of heat. And also, the algorithms favor that. What is less visible are the hundreds, thousands of evangelicals, laypeople, and pastors, including many, many conservative white evangelical complementarian men.
who have engaged the work with so much integrity and humility and openness. And honestly, as a historian, you just cannot ask for more. To have your research really just read and grappled with by the people who care most about it is a privilege and an honor. So that has been incredible. And when people say, it must be so hard, you know, because you can see some of the hits that I take.
That is such a tiny, tiny percent of kind of the response I get every day. I get letters of affirmation. The book's been out two and a half years and I still get several messages a day from readers, most of whom are evangelicals themselves. So that's the encouraging. The discouraging part, you know, I expected pushback, certainly, and I've received pushback in different ways. What has been discouraging
speaker-0 (09:25.216)
I will say is that the pushback that has come from certain evangelical leaders or evangelical academics of a certain stripe has not been engaged with such integrity. It has not engaged the work as a work of scholarship. And so there have been a lot of attempts to discredit me personally.
or to just write off the book in and of itself. what I keep trying to say is, okay, here's historical methodology. There's no such thing as complete objectivity. I'm putting all my cards on the table here. Here's where I'm coming from. Here's my training. Here's what I think. And take that all into consideration and challenge my interpretations. But at the end of the day, there is evidence here, right? And there are sources. so...
engage the work as a work of scholarship. And I expected more of that, to be honest, in evangelical academic spaces, seminaries, and so on. And I've received almost none of that. And it's actually been a little disappointing because I'm an academic. love a discussion, debate around academic topics. It's been much more personal and kind of attempts to discredit me based on theology.
Walter, wonder, this was not on our list of pre-questions, but I might bump it to you. I'm hearing echoes of ways that others, frameworks have been engaged similarly, as we've talked about, like critical race theory is a hot button thing where we've seen people almost theologizing that or discrediting people, like slandering folks.
So I'm sure that, you know, we've all seen some of that. Have you seen Walter in your interactions with folks through the NIE? Have you seen people engaging in positive ways with Kristen's work as an academic pursuit or, you know, the converse of seeing like maybe feeling a little attacked and over-spiritualizing what was intended to be a historic work?
speaker-1 (11:44.204)
Yeah, thank you. That's a I'm totally fine with conversations that twist and turn. And I appreciate the dialogues that Kristen and I have been able to have this past year. I feel like they're very, important. I will get to answering your question about the NAE's response and how I've seen some things within that. But let me set it up by making a couple of comments. One is I'm intrigued by Kristen's experience that
on the popular level, you've received a lot of support. And I'm sure within that critiques, but the thing that you have most been surprised by also somewhat surprises me that the disproportionate balance between the support or affirmation of this is giving voice to my experience, or at least thank you for naming something about cultural Christianity that's important for me.
but academically not so much. And I think there are a couple of things now kind of drawing attention. Evangelicalism, like every cultural movement needs its heroes. Every nation has its origin story. There's a reason why everyone gravitates toward Marvel nowadays or Lord of the Rings. I we just need stories to make sense of our lives. We need heroes.
And there's something deeply challenging that's happening in this work because heroes are being taken down a notch. And when those hero experiences or needs are not met in our actual life of damage or abuse or difficulty in churches, we need something to make sense of that disconnect of why the innate need that all of us have for heroes are not matched with our lived experience.
and so Christina, seems to me you've tapped into some of that discord. I think evangelicalism much to my chagrined, you the scriptures give us a man, model and a mandate. In ancient, my, my academic expert expertise is in the ancient Near East. If you look at the literature of the ancient Near East, the Bible stands out for the ways that it tells its story.
speaker-1 (14:12.966)
All the heroes with very few exceptions, and those exceptions tend to be actually the women in the biblical story, which itself is extraordinary in the ancient world. All the heroes are actually really complicated and often the stories accentuate their failures and only the grace of God at the very end of the story redeems the person, I mean, Moses, David, I mean, all of these figures.
speaker-2 (14:27.544)
Really?
speaker-1 (14:42.826)
that's, that's a model and it's becomes a mandate that we as evangelicals ought, if we really hold to the inspiration of scripture, ought to be the quickest to be self critical, very quick to be self critical. And I think this is a failure because that's just not what humans want to do. I think the challenge that we're seeing is this tension of, we just don't like.
speaker-2 (14:55.63)
Hmm.
speaker-1 (15:14.26)
actually being a we're sinners. We can say that abstractly, but when confronted with a very particular sin that will humiliate us, we want to repudiate that. And I think evangelicalism is experiencing corporately what many of us do individually. It's okay to acknowledge that we're sinners in general and sing about it. But the moment someone actually comes up and says to me, brother, I have something I need to tell you.
So like, whoa, whoa, whoa. And then I come up with all the excuses of like, they're mitigating factor. I think evangelicalism as a whole is doing that corporately, what we do individually. And there's a mismatch with our theology right now. Our theology calls us to something quite different. In the NAE, so quick response. I actually have been very pleased within the leadership of the NAE of how many have been, even if when they profoundly disagree with
you, Kristen, and your conclusions or analysis. I have been more often than not engaged with the response of, need to listen to this. We need to examine ourselves.
speaker-0 (16:29.068)
That is, it's a whole lot, right? About our individual identity, our corporate identity, what we're willing to train personally versus what we don't maybe recognize we're trading for as a body. Kristen, you say in Jesus on John Wayne that evangelicals traded a gentle and meek Jesus for this conquering hero. Perhaps if Walter's assumptions here are correct, that it was unintentional, but it was for looking for this hero that was gonna be a conqueror.
To both of you, what do you think we lost in that trade? Trading a gentle Jesus for a conquering hero.
speaker-0 (17:08.558)
So this is doing a little theology here and Walter has led the way. to clarify too, the response to my book among many evangelical scholars and any evangelical historians for the most part has been very positive. The book is actually in secular scholarly circles. It's not at all controversial. So I think that gives me a bit of a...
kind of ballast, right, that when I engage in some of these other conversations. But the kind of pushback is on these kind of theological points or seeing the book as theology rather than as history. Now I'm reformed and so I don't draw the super stark line, right? All of life is kind of responding obediently or disobediently and all of that. And at the same time, there are some distinctions that can be drawn.
So here to do a little theology and to think about what has been lost, think that...
First, let me say that, know, kind of meekness and compassion should not be confused with weakness. And often the kind of popular masculine ideals, and there are always multiple masculinities at play always. But often those kind of
you know, separate. So meekness is weakness and is femininity and, you know, and compassion. Also, that's for the girls. And then we need strength and we need courage and we need aggression and all that to fight for truth, right? It's that separation that has done so much harm to Christian witness and act not just to like out facing, but inwardly. Because if you think about, you know, what are the
speaker-0 (18:56.334)
What is the fruit of the spirit in our lives? And we can all rattle off that list, right? Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, self-control. Those sound pretty feminine. If you take kind of our modern constructs of this kind of rugged masculinity versus a more dependent femininity, but that is not biblical. And
It's also counter-cultural, right? Isn't just evangelicals who lead with this. That's kind of the John Wayne part of the title, right? This isn't, we're talking about religious and secular as they feed into each other. And when we separate those out, it's doing violence to truth, to what we are called to be. But because it's counter-cultural to hold these things together, it takes a whole lot of courage.
speaker-1 (19:41.25)
It's.
speaker-0 (19:51.874)
to be gentle, whether you're a man or a woman. It takes a whole lot of courage to not be self-seeking. It takes a whole lot of courage to follow Christ. And all of us will fall short. This is why being a Calvinist is super handy. None of us are going to do this perfectly. But with this kind of celebrating a warrior Christ and cutting that off from
the whole Christ of the New Testament. That means we're not even trying. We're not even trying to follow that Messiah. Instead, we have recrafted it into something that is much easier for us to follow and is a lot more satisfying, but ultimately it's not following Christ.
Walter, how would you respond?
speaker-1 (20:47.244)
Yeah. So after I became a Christian, during my college years, was involved with Campus Crusade, grew a lot in my faith, really, really appreciated what I gained from that, even if I could look back and say there are things, of course, that were imperfect or flawed about that. I was struck, though, with after college as I was discovering a bit of my own ethnic identity.
having become a Christian in predominantly white evangelical space, growing in my awareness of, what does it mean that I'm actually by God's design also Korean American? And so I spent some time after a tail into college one summer in Korea with a Korean Christian group. And I remember walking down the street with some newly found friends in Korea.
and down the street in Seoul and with some guys and girls. And all of a sudden, as I was walking, two of the guys reached over and they held my hands, like both, like, and we're walking down the street. And of course, the American part of my Korean American identity recoiled at that. I mean, I wanted to pull my hands away, just felt so weird. But then, you know,
didn't want to be culturally inappropriate. I'm trying to find my own identity in all of this. I kept holding hands. And I just reflected a lot about that after coming back from Korea and looking at stories of Jesus interactions physically with other men or when John, presumably the beloved disciple leaned against Jesus breast at the last supper or the way that Jonathan and David talked about each other.
I think it really opened up a world for me of the complexity of male expression of affection that exists throughout the world and what Christians would deem legitimate, like literally greeting one another with a holy kiss as two men. That's totally acceptable in other parts of the world. And that's where I come back and think, you know, there...
speaker-1 (23:10.668)
there really is a conflicted way of understanding masculinity in America at this moment. And perhaps for a very long time. And there are aspects of it that I think can draw out certain elements of who God truly is. He does. There is the holy warrior of the Old Testament, divine warrior of God against injustice. But as Kristen has pointed out, there is
tremendous amount of compassion. And I'm actually reluctant to even concede that as a feminine quality. Again, just walking down the street, holding hands with two guys. Is that masculine? Is that feminine? don't, I mean, how would one even quantify it? It's human. It's a human need for affection. And so I think we have an opportunity with works like Kristin to be deeply challenged in what we have.
made Christian that was really cultural. And then to learn from what is cultural to have a more Christian and expansive understanding of who Jesus is, who God is.
speaker-0 (24:26.016)
Amen to that. That was so beautifully said. I'll just add a quick point of clarification as a gender studies scholar, have to, by calling that feminine, I don't mean to endorse that or, but as it's coded, right? Feminine in particular cultures and in this cultural moment. Yeah. But I think even the difficulty of even naming some of that for both of you and sort of just the opaque nature of what does that mean? It reflects some of the larger conversation that's being had in our culture right now.
around gender norms. What are those things? What are things that are distinctly sacred because they are human in the sense that they bear God's image? And what are things are sacred because they represent different parts of God's image that are distinctly female or male or in between, right? And so I just, I think even in those responses that they're beautiful and thoughtful, it points to some of this question that your book is wrestling with Kristen that is causing a crisis almost within
the church where, don't know, maybe I'm reaching here, but I think it's easier to try to have a solidified ideas of what is masculine, what is feminine and land in those things and then raise our children up in those ways. so even if, know, culturally it shifts to say, men, want men who are in touch with their emotions. That can be masculine too. What does that leave, you know, for women, does that take away? You see that reactions within women who have been brought up where they had to like,
fight for a seat at the table in some of those spaces to say, no, no, you can, I, anyway, I'm just, I'm just pointing out that this is, it's a, it's a big question that we have to continue to ask, I think as Christians about what does it mean to respect our differences as they're made in God's image and reflect those things together and learn. Do you have different ideas? Maybe Walter, I'll put this to you first as a man, like what would an alternative
way of following Jesus look like for Christians in America right now.
speaker-1 (26:30.37)
Yeah. I mean, certainly we have in Genesis this, you know, the leading statement that we're all created in God's image, male and female. So there is some differentiation that appears to me to exist within the creation narrative. all falls within sun, moon, day, night, land, sea. So there are these built into the story of scripture, encoded difference. There is difference.
and part of the human creation is this difference male female. But in the biblical narrative, it's not filled out. It's just stated male and female. There is a difference, just as there's a difference between night and day. But it's not described very fully. And even the language of helper that's often appealed to, know, that term all throughout the Old Testament and from starting from Genesis 2, but
going on that's just typically referred to to God directly or to people in power. So it's not the help of a weaker to a superior, in other words, a servant to a master. It's actually the help of someone in power to toward those who can benefit from it, like God or a general giving help to the troops. That's an extraordinary countercultural statement.
I mean, just mind blowing in the ancient Near East, but even mind blowing today in our culture, because patriarchy is something that no one has a corner on and everyone has been complicit in in human history, really. So I hesitate to give a very firm answer to that because I think scripture gives us in the beginning, some general principles. There's difference. Those differences are important.
But those differences probably show up in various cultures in different ways and over time in different ways. There are biological differences, there are differences in physical strength, there are differences in mental processing. Those things are really, really true, valid, important, but how that expresses itself is, I don't know. I'm wearing pink for a purpose because a hundred years ago, you know, in, in there was a magazine article,
speaker-1 (28:54.232)
that talked about boys being dressed in pink and girls in blue. mean, even in our own country, we've swapped in a century, swapped colors that defined identity. mean, so there is a difference. The Bible mandates that difference, I would argue humbly, but it doesn't describe the difference in prescriptive ways. And I think that is a creative genius of God.
speaker-0 (29:27.286)
Yeah, so I would say that, you know, we can look to the early chapters of Genesis, where yes, we have male and female. And then as we dig a little deeper, as Walter's already suggested, that Genesis narrative is fascinating. it's, my whole first book actually was on women's interpretations of
the scriptures, especially some of those early chapters from from like 100 years ago and more. So in the idea of helper, they they were they had figured that out right long ago. And so this really good theological work that has been done. One of the things that is striking in terms of modern evangelicalism is
this theology has really been narrowed, reduced to, you know, this is orthodoxy, this is the only way, this is God's truth, and anything outside of that, you know, you're not with us, you're against this kind of thing, and as a historian, right away, you have to object to that and say, no, no, actually, these were evangelicals. No, actually, these were folks who believed in the inerrant authority of the scriptures, and they interpreted this passage in the opposite way. So let's take a look together.
and pray for the Spirit's guidance and work together in community on this. having these kinds of conversations, doing this theology together is so incredibly important. Together across difference in the moment and also drawing on historical resources is just hugely important. So we can talk, Dennis, as we also have in the New Testament, in Christ there is no male or female. What do we do with that?
And then we can also think of the diversity within creation, right? And because we have male and female does not mean that male and female are opposites, right? And that anything that male is, female is not. And anything female is, male is not. We know that, and yet we still often will work with that kind of a false binary and a false construct.
speaker-0 (31:33.39)
So here again, as a reform person, I think in terms of a creational normativity, you how are we created? And you go back and you look to Genesis for that. And then you look at the fall, right? How did sin corrupt in all? And we have a very expansive understanding of that. And then we go to redemption, right? And what does this look like to be restored in Christ?
in all of the beauty of creational normativity, creational diversity, and what does that redemption look like? And in every single step, it's incredibly complicated, But it's not that it's a free for all, right? We have these guiding principles. We have the story of the scriptures. And so one of the things that I lament is in contemporary conservative evangelicalism,
there are such orthodoxies, right? You think this and the kind of inculcation of these truths that shut down theology, that shut down, know, and having boundaries is necessary in some ways, but the boundaries are often, you know, mixed in theology and cultural truths.
which actually that's not safe keeping for the gospel, right? That's not safe keeping for the Christian faith. That's flattening it such that we lose this kind of life-giving engagement with the scriptures and with the longer history of the body of Christ, of the church of Christ. And so, you know, I would love to have us
open up more space, which doesn't mean that, you know, it's a free for all. It doesn't mean that you're going to necessarily give up all of your convictions, but we, we need more space to do this well and to do this together and with the guidance of the spirit.
speaker-1 (33:42.798)
Yeah, I'm struck by how throughout the scriptures, again, there are differences that are built in. And Kristen, I appreciate your emphasizing those differences don't necessarily mean that they're oppositional, like binary oppositional differences, but they can be complementary differences in the general sense of the word complementary.
speaker-0 (34:06.574)
Are you trying to get me to agree to something here?
speaker-1 (34:08.898)
Yeah, no, I'm not in a technical sense. you know, were gendered ways of expressing the Christian life so important, it would appear to me that there would be gendered applications of the commands of Scripture. But you don't have that. You just have commands. Love, not love. And if you're a woman, love this way. Love. If you're a man, love this way. You you look through all the commands in Scripture, they're just commands. And they're not given a personality. So
If you're an introvert, you don't get away with saying, well, I can't apply love because that's kind of like an extrovert's thing or, you know, whatever you like to lead things. I can't apply the commands to serve because, you know, that's not my spiritual gifting is service. My spiritual gifting is, I mean, I find it extraordinary that the commands are non gendered in that way. What does that say about our essential call together?
while simultaneously affirming that there are differences. Again, there's this complexity, but also creative possibility that makes it possible to apply the commands of God, both men and women, no matter what culture you're in, no matter what historical time period you live in, because they're just given as commands to us as humans. Yes, we'll have particular gendered ways of expressing it.
But those are not articulated and mandated in some frozen manner. That, to me, is extraordinary that scripture would approach it this way.
speaker-0 (35:42.284)
And I think the fact that you're both, you know, I just hear some differences in the way that you would maybe take some of the edges of this conversation, but I just, point out and I mean, it's our hope of this lab that people can engage in conversations the way that the two of you have with standing firm in your convictions and expressing your hopes for what could be and respecting the person that's across the screen from you. And I just, I appreciate both of you modeling that well in this conversation.
We are at time with getting ready to head to our breakout rooms. So friends who are going to go into your breakout rooms, there was one question that we had maybe wanted to get to that I'm actually going to give you that you can talk about in your breakout rooms. Dr. Dumé's work really talks about this historical narrative of pursuing power.
at the expense of a faithful witness of the gospel to our culture. Given what we've heard today about maybe some of trades for power or not, or whatever you think in that, do you think that it is possible in our culture to be a Christian and to be a politician? That's a bonus question for your breakout rooms. Get excited. Pew pew.
That being said, Dr. Douay and Reverend Kim, thank you so much for your time today here. This was awesome. I feel like I could have just listened to this for hours more.
speaker-1 (37:20.046)
We still have a few more minutes here.
speaker-0 (37:22.722)
Well, we're going to take Q and A's from the people. This is my transition back to Dr. Scott, who is going to take over asking Q and A's now. So thanks guys.
speaker-1 (37:25.646)
Oh, yes, sorry. thought that was.
speaker-1 (37:38.05)
Okay, Megan, just real quick, can you take care of the rest of the breakout groups from there? They're like 80 % done. Okay, so let's go to Q &A. We'll use this time as best as possible. This is for both of you. What do you think it is that makes a book like Wild at Heart, the book by John Eldredge, early 2000s, super popular, four million sold? Why, what makes it so popular? Eldredge and others, just false teachers? Or is there a real unmet need that they are responding to, but-
wrongfully. Who wants to this first?
speaker-0 (38:12.526)
I'm not quick to throw around the false teacher. Maybe because I haven't called that enough lately. I think most of us in these spaces are trying to respond obediently with the tools that we have, the insights that we're given. And there are lots of things that go into a book and then many things that go into a health book is received.
Absolutely, it was speaking to the moment as a cultural historian. That's how I examine works of literature, works of popular Christian publishing. Like what makes it popular? What is this connecting to? So it absolutely was speaking to a moment of as I described in the book there, it was on the end of a decade where people were asking over and over over what is masculinity precisely because and what is Christian masculinity because there were so many economic, political,
cultural shifts going on, right? And so these are things as a historian of gender, you just see when these things shift, then people start asking, wait, what does it mean to be a man? Because when things feel super comfortable, you don't ask that question, you just be a man, right? And so it's when things are in flux and change, and then there's this searching. So yes, that book met this need and then anticipated a need even with 9-11 and with the war on terror, and it fit very well also into this political agenda.
So was amplified in that way. And then frankly, we can just talk about evangelical consumer culture. And there are thousands, tens of thousands of small groups in churches. And these are phenomenal conduits for selling books because what do small groups do? They study books. And so this is a massive industry. And so it succeeds, it meets a need, or it feeds a desire.
whether it's good or sinful or some combination, and then it just, goes from there, right? And so there's many different ways that we can actually approach the question that you asked.
speaker-1 (40:17.006)
So Scott, I never read the book. don't, so I can't speak to it specifically, but as a pastor who had many congregants read that book and ask me about that book, Kristen, I appreciate this kind of cultural context that you're trying to put something in. What is it responding to? And I would situate it in terms of my experience as a pastor. What are the spiritual longings?
where the holes that that seemed to be filling. again, I say this lightly, because it's really not the substance of the book that I'm responding to. It is the impact of the book that responded to you, because I didn't read the book. I don't want to presume to say one thing or the other, but I will presume that it's not heretical. I will presume that, you know, I mean, Jesus loving brother in Christ, I want to concede all of that.
But the spiritual impact part I can definitely speak to broken families in which men had not good models of how do you even do marriage? Sexual revolution that was changing in society. So traditional ways didn't work. Rapidly changing technology demographics that were changing with different family structures.
speaker-2 (41:31.096)
Rills?
speaker-1 (41:44.212)
Asian, Hispanic, Therian structures are different than Northern European. All that's happening. And so it raises uncertainty and longing. So while the substance I can't refer to, know, the critique or one way or the other, I can say there is something about the spiritual longing, the impact that book seemed to me as to whether or not it met it in the best way possible. Again,
not having read the book, I don't want to comment on that. But I can say my appreciation that it seemed to tap into a longing that needed to be filled. think time has shown that there are various ways that we have failed to fill it well, and some ways that we have done well with that. And I think Kristen's pointing out ways in which we have failed to fill that well.
and that is a service to the Church.
speaker-1 (42:48.258)
total aside that will add nothing to our conversation tonight. That book made me get into this like mountain biking phase and Abigail writes, if you're out there in tonight's participants, that attracted you more, me, affected you to be a little bit more, just add that to the comments and we'll kind of, we can always factor that in. Let's go to the next one here. Okay, so we've heard a bit about criticism historically, Christian masculinity and evangelicalism, a bit about the openness on the
Bible around gender, there's differences, but they're not as filled out as we might expect. How about positive visions for Christian masculinity? Maybe you've either seen them historically, maybe you're seeing them in your work with the NAE, Walter. We've heard what it is, but can you speak to any ways about positive examples? Where you've seen them in your work or in your scholarship or your ministry?
speaker-1 (43:44.761)
I think
There are ways in which, and I'm not gonna divide this up into what's the masculine, what's the feminine part, but a courageous compassion. think there was a moment within our NAE board meeting, which is really a network of Christian leaders, denominational leaders, leaders of various humanitarian organizations, Christian institutions.
that we met in March, a week after the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. And had written my president's report, know, a couple of weeks before that, which didn't include any reference to it. And so when we got to the board meeting, I ditched it. I ditched my report. And so we just have to spend some time praying and talking. And the extraordinary response that combined both
courage of what denominations, humanitarian aid organizations were doing, but a profound compassion for the ways that orphan children were going to be, were talked about, the ways in which trauma of broken families were talked about, and the ways that organizations were seeking to engage. To me, that is the evangelicalism I long the world to.
actually know because it's true. It was there. How do we in a moment of deepest need meet both with courage and compassion, profound fallenness with tremendous grace and redemptive power in Christ? And, you know, whether you're a man or a woman in that room,
speaker-1 (45:43.17)
denominational leader or church leader or institutional leader, there was a putting aside of power and a putting aside of competition that I found extraordinary. People willing to say, use our resources, our facilities, doesn't matter what denomination you're from, you could be Christian Reformed and use our Pentecostal facility.
Again, it was a picture of the body of Christ and what we shared together. So what is my vision of masculine and femininity within that? I can say that there are different issues that men and women are sensitive to. And within conversations, are perspectives, there are things that can be pointed out that I think women point out much faster.
and more insightfully than men. Power dynamics, how the marginalized might experience something. As to whether or not that's indigenously engendered, like natively DNA engendered, or because of the cultural experience of having been marginalized, it is true and so often the case in my experience. And that when you don't have that in a room,
in leadership context within the NAE, the body of Christ is impoverished. There is a blind spot to so many issues. So once again, I'm hesitating to dive too deeply into define what a man is and define what a woman is in hard cultural terms. But I can say that men and women do bring different things to the table.
and the kinds of questions that they ask in their social experience and what that makes them sensitive to and the kinds of solutions that are offered will often feel a little bit different. They are shaped a little bit differently and we need all of that.
speaker-0 (47:56.43)
Yeah, so I'll start with a bit of a confession. When I had proposed Jesus and John Wayne and sent the proposal off to my agent, it had an additional chapter in it. And that was a chapter on alternative evangelical masculinities. Because I really wanted to amplify some of these less toxic versions. And that was the one that actually got cut, not out of any, let's make evangelicals look bad. was, I was told,
This would be great if it were an academic book in trade publishing. You really have to take one thread and you pull it through. And what is this book about? And this is what that book is about. But I think about that choice from time to time when people want, because when you close this book, if you are evangelical, if you're in those spaces, you want to know, but what can we do? That said, in this whole conversation, one of the things that I'm
a little uncomfortable with is that we're still dealing with kind of male, female, masculinity, femininity, even as we're problematizing those categories, we're still kind of using them and building them. And I have a very hard time, I can't talk about masculinity really. We're always talking about masculinities, plural. We're always talking about, right?
And yeah, our culture doesn't, whether it's evangelical culture, whether it's other cultures, historically, we tend to think that whatever we understand men's role should be, that is God ordained or the God's ordained masculinity. And it's static and it's timeless, right? Again, as a historian, I have a hard time with that. But we can also, even if we think about men, women,
I do think it's helpful to think not in binary, but in terms of spectrum. And we could talk sexual identity and how that shapes people's embodied experience and how there's different sorts of marginalizations that come from that and give people just so many different vantage points and perspectives. And so,
speaker-0 (50:15.808)
It's all very, it's very complicated. So what does it mean to be a faithful Christian man? I'm gonna say that that's gonna look different for every single Christian man, ever so slightly different maybe, or sometimes dramatically different, because God did not create men.
in one kind of uniform way. And then you've got women over here. You've got, again, so much creational diversity, even within those categories. so sometimes the questions that I get, know, what is, okay, okay, but tell us how to be a faithful Christian man. I really think we have to de-center that question. And we can ask, what does it mean for me as God created me?
to be a faithful man in this moment as I'm created or as a woman, as I'm created or as you're understanding your identity. But too quickly, it shuts things down in a way that frankly I think is not creational and is not ultimately biblical. Certainly also we should start, what does it mean to follow Christ? And as Walter was saying in the scriptures,
It's shocking, you you look like all these commands, all these commands given to everyone. And then a few passages. And if we start with those few passages and try to build this difference, this binary on top of that, I really think we're not doing justice to the word of God.
speaker-1 (51:50.744)
Well, I so appreciate your thoughtful responses to these. We're going to finish with a little tradition here with a lightning round. There's going be two questions. You have 15 seconds to answer the questions. You are allowed to say no comment if you just don't feel like you can do it justice. First question, if you are at least this convinced that Professor Dumais' book is at least this much right in your evangelical influence space, it's hard to do introspection.
There's a lot of fear, there's a lot of shame around it. What advice do you have for communities and individuals to start looking and asking, you know, how has this shaped me? How does my community go forward? All right, I know 15 seconds, who can give me a nugget first?
speaker-0 (52:41.11)
say read the book and critique the book. mean books are made to be torn apart. Go for it.
speaker-1 (52:47.412)
That was great. Eight seconds. Last one. All right. This is getting into some really serious stuff here. We'll see if we can do it or not. All right.
All the masculine figures, machismo figures in your book, Kristen, that you deal with, which one would be more likely to be Jesus in an arm wrestling match? I'm not talking about the Meek and Gentle one from Matthew, Mark and Luke. I'm talking about the gospel of John, the eternal word, the miracle worker. Which figure is most likely to win in an arm wrestling match? Also, James Dobson, Billy Graham when he's young. Who's it going to be?
speaker-0 (53:23.47)
I'm back to school,
speaker-1 (53:25.004)
Mark Driscoll, Mark Driscoll, interesting, interesting. Walter?
speaker-0 (53:28.12)
That was my answer. I just needed to have been there. just needed to have been there. my gosh. my gosh. I mean, I can't even because of course we know that the bigger, the stronger, the more that they would be just thrown under the table.
speaker-1 (53:42.356)
Do you have Hulk Hogan in your book?
speaker-0 (53:46.378)
I also got cut.
speaker-1 (53:49.486)
Okay, so we'll leave it there. Walter, did you want to throw a name? Okay, no comment is wise. This will be put on YouTube at some point. I have this one question that was put here that I would love your take on. we actually put this in? It's a difficult one, but I would love to get it. The depiction of God in the Old Testament, Walter, you referenced this. There's a notion of God. This is a strand in there of God as a warrior God.
Has this contributed to the kind of forms of masculinity that you speak about in your book, Christian, or forms of religious nationalism? And then just how do you respond to that as scholars, as Christian thinkers? How do you deal with this depiction of God in the text and also the way it's been received or interpreted and used?
speaker-0 (54:44.706)
very quickly, I will say that I am in my review of the literature and the discourse, I find much less of the Old Testament God than you might think, and much more of the the God from Revelation and Jesus from Revelation. so, and there's, which is a little, I think there's a lot of flexibility there with what you do with Revelation, right. And, and so I, I actually just read a new book that's going to come out soon by Scott McKnight on kind of
And he's not the first to say, you know, we're getting it wrong. We're getting revelation wrong. And so ultimately it's going to bring us back to theology. So I'll say that much. what do we do? I mean, we start with Christ. We always start with Christ. And then we start with this redemptive narrative. And then we go from there.
speaker-1 (55:36.354)
So with the Old Testament, maybe to build on Kristen's observation, my general observation is evangelicals tend to not deal with the Old Testament very much. If you look at preaching series and so forth, there might be some dabbling in the prophets every once in a while or Exodus story, but generally not as a whole corpus in the way that the New Testament is, and maybe for some obvious reasons.
I would say when you do dive into the Old Testament, it's gloriously complex. And visions, I mean, the Old Testament is where you get the story or the comments about God being like a nursing mother. mean, this is, it's extraordinarily complex. But yes, you also get stories of violence in ways that you don't in the New Testament, or at least in, you know, the narratives of the gospels. Revelation aside.
My comment to that is the Old Testament with the Christological reasoning, we should view it as a moral trajectory, not a moral destination. It's the progressive revelation of God in the moral trajectory that leads to Christ, and it should not be viewed as the moral destination. There are things in the Old Testament ethic that were still being formed for the people of God, but fulfilled in the person of Jesus.
So I would not say, and that's where you need a very careful reading of the Old Testament. You need to have a hermeneutic that understands the complexity, but you also need a hermeneutic that understands it within its canonical place as a moral trajectory, not a moral destination. Okay, friends, Walter.
Kristen, thank you so much for joining us. Again, I just go back to the comment at the beginning, appreciating your public witness and appreciate, appreciating the respect we've seen here. You've modeled a conversation that we hope as communities and individuals that we can go forward and do, do well, do better to reflect Christ's love. Thanks for joining us.
