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Just one of the basic arguments of Jesus and John Wayne is that, whatever definition you want to give it, "white evangelicalism" is far more of a cultural phenom than a theological position. They didn't know Billy Graham, but, Lord 'a'mighty, they knew someone who did. Truth be told, they had good reason not to distrust Billy Graham their own beloved sister-in-law knew him well, rode back and forth to Wheaton College with the guy when he was just a rugged, handsome kid, and she was a Southern belle. If my parents were more than a little leery about the whole Graham phenomenon, that attitude would put them outside the boundaries of what might then have been considered "American evangelicalism." They were Dutch Reformed, emphasis on were.īecause they didn't stay there. Eventually, they too became American.Īnd, if I've got my ears on, I'm guessing Kristin Kobes Du Mez would say so too.
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The truth is, or so it seems to me, my parents were, back then, the foreigners.
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The title line is a blessing, but this book's goods are in the subtitle: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation. The whole revival business was foreign to them, not as all-American as Kristin Kobes Du Mez makes it in her fascinating and fine book Jesus and John Wayne. When I was a little shaver, not yet participating in theological discussions around the dinner table, I remember my father being, well, skeptical of the all that frothy grace-"cheap grace"-front and center at Billy Graham's immodest extravaganzas, thousands and thousands of repentant sinners marching forward, in tears, to confess their troubled need for "Jeee'zus." Really, all of that in a football stadium? What they'd seemingly forgotten was that they once did so themselves. How could their son besmirch the great evangelist's name with such cheap-shot criticisms? I was their son, but who was I to say bad things about a living saint? My folks, proud of their son's writing appearing there, were more than a little disappointed and even annoyed. A couple of decades ago, I suggested a few negative things about Billy Graham in a piece I wrote for the Banner, the denominational magazine of the church in which I was reared, the Christian Reformed Church of North America.