‘Jesus and John Wayne’ author Kristin Du Mez on how white evangelicals came to embrace Donald Trump
Portrait by Deborah K. Hoag / W.W. Norton & Company
Ten years and one month ago — January 23, 2016 — Donald Trump appeared at a rally in Iowa, ahead of the caucuses that year. He was boasting to the crowd about his popularity, and in so doing, made one of the most memorable, outrageous comments of his political career.
“The people, my people are so smart,” Trump said at Dordt College in Sioux Center, Iowa. “And you know what else they say about my people? The polls? They say I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters.”
Kristin Kobes Du Mez was watching that event online, and says she knew the setting well. She had grown up there and was an alum of the small, Christian college.
Later that year, more than 80 percent of white evangelical Christians voted for Trump — a man who'd been married three times, bragged about grabbing women, and when asked to name his favorite Bible verse, didn‘t come up with one.
How did this happen?
Du Mez argues it wasn't a betrayal of evangelical values. It was their fulfillment — the culmination of decades spent cultivating what she calls “militant masculinity” in evangelical culture.
Kristin Kobes Du Mez is a professor of history at Calvin University and a Senior Democracy Fellow with the Public Religion Research Institute. Her 2020 book, Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation, became a New York Times bestseller. Her next book, Live Laugh Love, focuses on white Christian women and comes out in September.
She’s scheduled to be in central Illinois on Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026, to give the annual Thulin Lecture at the University of Illinois (see below).
Guest
Kristin Kobes Du Mez
Author, Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation
Professor of History, Calvin University
Senior Democracy Fellow, Public Religion Research Institute
Event Information
Thulin Lecture: An Evening with Kristin Kobes Du Mez
From Jesus and John Wayne to Live Laugh Love: The Religious Roots of our Current Moment
When: 5:30 – 7:00 p.m., Tuesday (February 24, 2026)
Where: Alice Campbell Alumni Center, 601 S. Lincoln Avenue, Urbana, IL 61801
Admission: Free
