So this popped up on the Keene Church’s Face Book page, apparently posted by Southwestern Adventist University:
Kristin du Mez
That name rang a bell, and I recalled seeing her book on the Amazon website. So I looked it up and, sure enough, she is the author of “Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation.
You can tell from the title that she has little use for evangelical Christians, and especially white, male evangelical Christians. The book accuses white evangelicals of corrupting Christianity and splintering the United States of America into warring factions.
The book is yet another angry screed against white evangelicals for having supported Donald Trump in 2016 (about 80% of them did) and—since it was published in the summer of 2020—an attempt to talk them out of supporting him in the forthcoming election, which they overwhelmingly did again, Kristin’s efforts notwithstanding. There is so much of this “how can Christians vote for Trump?” literature that it constitutes its own genre.
But it fails in its intended purpose. Conservative Christians understand that the Democratic Party has been overtaken by atheistic Utopianism, and is unalterably and bitterly hostile to conservative Christians—those who still heed what the Bible teaches about human sexuality—and biblical Christianity, whereas the Republican Party is at least tolerant of conservative Christians, if disdainfully so. This literature typically argues that Christians should not vote for Trump because he lived the life of a billionaire playboy and is “deeply morally flawed.” But this critique is ludicrously hypocritical; the sexual misconduct of John F. Kennedy (still a Democratic Party icon) and Bill Clinton while in office was far more revolting than anything Donald Trump did in his younger years as a private citizen. Conservative Christians easily see through this laughable hypocrisy and know that people like Kristin Du Mez are just trying to get them to vote for an ideology and a party that is continually devising stratagems to destroy Christians and weaken Christianity.
For the details of this particular, “how dare you vote for Trump” screed, you’d have to read book, and I’m not giving her or her publisher one red cent of my money, much less the $11.49 for the Kindle version. But the flyleaf material is enough; Amazon supplies some frequently highlighted quotations from the book:
“More than any other religious demographic in America, white evangelical Protestants support preemptive war, condone the use of torture, and favor the death penalty.”
You’ll be hard-pressed to find any book more pro-death penalty than the Bible, not that Kristin Du Mez would know that. Interestingly, Scripture tells of how God did not want the death penalty at first, placing a mark on the first murderer, Cain, to insure that no one would touch him (Gen. 4:15). But the result of that experiment was a human society so bent on perpetual wickedness that God had to destroy it utterly with a cataclysmic global Flood (Gen. 6:5-8). After that failed experiment, God instituted the death penalty for murder: “Whoever sheds human blood, by humans shall their blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made mankind.” (Gen. 9:6).
“But evangelical support for Trump was no aberration, nor was it merely a pragmatic choice. It was, rather, the culmination of evangelicals' embrace of militant masculinity, an ideology that enshrines patriarchal authority and condones the callous display of power, at home and abroad.”
Apropos of this quote and the previous one, we note that President Trump started no wars, preemptive or otherwise. In fact, he tried to end a few smaller wars, but was obstructed by a lying and insubordinate military, abetted by a Washington uni-party that rakes in hundreds of millions in graft from otherwise pointless foreign wars. President Trump actually declined a strike on Iran that was planned in retaliation for Iran’s downing of an America drone aircraft, because it would have killed an estimated 150 people as collateral damage.
Trump’s use of military force was typically narrow and precisely targeted, like the killing of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the head of the Islamic state (ISIL or ISIS), who had raped and murdered an American girl named Kayla Mueller, and the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, commander of Iran’s Quds Force, the terrorist arm of the Revolutionary Guard, who had killed thousands, including hundreds of Americans in Iraq.
Trump may have exuded “militant masculinity,” but he was not a war hawk, he was a peacemaker (a deal maker is a peacemaker). He made a personal friend of, and thereby neutralized and pacified, the world’s most dangerous and unstable tyrant, KIm Jong-un, and made tremendous progress toward peace between Israel and the Arab states with the Abraham accords. Had he been a Leftist and a globalist, he would have won a Nobel Peace Prize for either or both of those accomplishments.
"For conservative white evangelicals, the "good news" of the Christian gospel has become inextricably linked to a staunch commitment to patriarchal authority, gender difference, and Christian nationalism, and all of these are intertwined with white racial identity."
As to patriarchal authority, it is the invariable rule of Scripture, and not just descriptive but prescriptive. (Gen. 2:18; 3:16; 1 Cor. 11:3; 1 Cor. 14:34-35; 1 Timothy 2:12-14; Col. 3:18; Eph. 5:22-24; Titus 1:5-9; Titus 2:3-5; etc.) Let me state this plainly: no one who attacks patriarchy is a Bible-believing Christian. To the contrary, the only purpose for such attacks is to suborn Christianity and destroy the Biblical worldview. Those who believe themselves Christians but who talk down patriarchy are deceived and lost eternally; in their delusion, they will drag many with them into the pit of hell.
As to gender differences, God created two and only two sexes, and any attempt to blur the difference between the sexes is rebellion against God’s created order. Both male and female are created in the image of God, but the distinction between male and female is also part of God’s created design for the human family; He does not want it messed with (Deut. 22:5; 1 Cor. 6:9). As we noted here very early in the history of this blog, the created distinction between male and female is as important as the created distinction between the seventh or Sabbath day and the other days of the week. Those nominal Adventists who will not respect the created sexual order will ultimately not respect God’s created day of rest and worship.
As to Christian nationalism, we’ve dealt with that adequately here. To be worried about Christian nationalism when the nation is the grip of a Marxist revolution is absurd; just now, the nation’s most powerful intelligence and law enforcement agencies are being turned against conservative Christians with satanic fury. Let’s wait until Christians actually control anything, any important government agency, corporation, or non-profit institution, before we start worrying about Christian nationalism, because right now they do not.
And the long term trends for Christianity look bleak; Christianity has suddenly collapsed in the United States. In my adult lifetime, Christians have fallen from 85% to 65% of the population; membership in a church, synagogue or mosque has fallen from about 70% to 47%. Meanwhile, those who profess no religion has skyrocketed from 5% to about 25%. A similar collapse of Christianity has already happened in most of the West; only a third of Finns believe in the Christian God, and only about 37% of Kiwis are believing Christians.
So the three most highlighted passages from Kristin’s book are revealed to be anti-Biblical and anti-Christian when they touch on theology, and starkly counterfactual as to their political claims.
Another problem with Kristin’s book is that it is vulgar. You can download and read the first two chapters, including the table of contents. Chapter 2 is entitled "John Wayne will save your ass," Chapter 11 is entitled “Holy Balls” (I hope it doesn’t mean that, but it probably does). Chapter 13 is called "Why We want to Kill You," and Chapter 14 is: "Spiritual Badasses."
But the worst problem with the book is its ugly racialism. Du Mez concedes that evangelicals do not define themselves racially, but by four religious pillars: (1) the primacy of Scripture as the ultimate authority, (2) the centrality of the atonement of Jesus Christ, (3) a conversion experience, or being “born again,” and (4) a willingness to spread the word and evangelize the world with the gospel.
Du Mez does not accept this self-definition of evangelicalism. She claims that many blacks who believe in these four pillars nevertheless do not identify as “evangelical,” and that blacks have tried to point out that evangelicalism has “a problem of whiteness,” hence there must be a racial element to the term “evangelical.” She then asserts that race is “foundational to white evangelical identity” (which is a lie and a slander) and finally that,
“for conservative, white evangelicals, the “good news” of the Christian gospel has become inextricable linked to a staunch commitment to patriarchal authority, gender difference, and Christian nationalism, and all of these are intertwined with white racial identity.”
As noted above, patriarchy is an important scriptural teaching, and sexual distinctness, “male and female created He them,” is crucial to the created sexual order. But Kristin Du Mez does not agree with these biblical teachings—she doesn’t like them—so instead of making a biblical argument against them, or simply saying that the Bible is wrong to teach these things, she tries to discredit them by connecting them with race, and by implication with racism.
Du Mez seems herself to have an unhealthy obsession with whiteness and maleness. There’s this about Billy Graham:
“For the better part of sixty years, every newspaper article about Graham commented on his appearance,” standing six feet two inches tall he was “the all-American male, with Scottish genes and Nordic looks, a craggy face, blue eyes, square jaw.”
If Billy Graham’s race discredits him and the evangelicalism he helped foster in America, what are we to think of Kristin Du Mez? I’m looking at her picture, and she is 100% Nordic, with blue eyes, blonde hair, and very pale skin. She is Aryan, and she spent one of her college years in Germany as an exchange student, and majored in German. I trust I need not connect the dots for you.
Seriously, and it is hard to be serious while dissecting such nonsense, the basic conceit of the book is that whiteness and maleness are bad, and that Christianity should discourage both, and if it does not, then Christianity has been perverted. But there is certainly nothing biblically wrong with maleness—God created it—or with whiteness—God allowed that to happen, too—just as there is nothing wrong with femaleness or blackness, or brownness or Asian-ness or whatever. The idea that the male sex and the white race are troubled and suspect, and to be kept a close watch over, is not from the Bible but from contemporary Leftism, a/k/a communism.
But if you would like to hear Kristin Du Mez speak, you can hear her at the Keene Seventh-day Adventist Church at 4 pm Sabbath, February 19, 2022. Southwestern Adventist University is "honored" to have her speak for the Adventist Theological Society Distinguished Lecture Series.
Alas, what happened to the “Adventist Theological Society”? For those of you who don’t know the history, the Adventist Theological Society (ATS) was created to be the conservative alternative to the Adventist Society for Religious Studies (ASRS) which was always infested with liberals like Fritz Guy and Larry Geraty, both of whom served as presidents of La Sierra while it was becoming . . . well, what it became.
What happened to it? All organizations are eventually liberalized unless they are purposefully, vigilantly, and militantly conservative; this is known variously as Robert Conquest’s second law and as John O’Sullivan’s first Law. But wasn’t the ATS designed intentionally to be a conservative society? Yes it was. So, again, what happened?
In the article in which we pointed out that Carl Cossaert had recently been president of both the ASRS and the ATS, we noted:
A few years ago, one of the founders of the ATS was relating some of the history of that organization to several listeners, including Gerry Wagoner and me. He related a conversation he had with one of the liberal scholars, who was arguing the pointlessness of founding the ATS. The liberal said something like this, "it doesn't matter what you do, what creeds you require people to sign in order to join your society; we [liberals] will eventually take it over." And it seems they have at last.
But it wasn’t just that liberals insinuated themselves into the organization. The ATS is now bringing you abominations like Kristin Du Mez because about a decade ago, it intentionally made a decision to remain “neutral” on the female ordination issue. But to remain neutral on an issue upon which Scripture has spoken with such clarity and repetition is to repudiate Scripture, and wholeheartedly throw in with the liberals. That’s what happened to the ATS. It opted for liberalism, and become irrelevant and redundant, another liberal theological society, just as the larger SDA Church will become irrelevant and redundant if it continues to flirt with female ordination. Female spiritual headship is pure paganism and it leads to pagan “Christianity.”