Mapping Jesus and John Wayne

Du Mez' book by the numbers, why we need Paul Ramsey, and more on mapping the mainline

As I said in the last post, this kind of ‘mapping’ “requires a great deal of sleight of hand in simplification, but the result was interesting.” Quantifying the number of pages that the major characters of Jesus and John Wayne appeared on was easy and objective with the help of the appendix. But determining whether someone like George W. Bush should get coded as belonging to Connecticut (his place of birth), D.C. (his place of greatest prominence), or Texas (the state where he made a name for himself) is a subjective exercise (I opted for the latter of the three). Mapping this out with more sophistication (alternatively coding Bush to Texas or D.C. whenever a page’s action is set there) would be a gargantuan (albeit more enlightening) task.

Nevertheless, the result (simplifications and all) certainly was interesting. By my math, Du Mez’ book is primarily about Texas (Bush, Bill Gothard, Doug Phillips), California (Ronald Reagan, John Wayne, Mel Gibson), Virginia (Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Chuck Colson), New York (Donald Trump, Oliver North, Teddy Roosevelt), and Colorado (James Dobson, John Eldredge). One question I have is: how might the narrative look different if it was weighted more towards the Bible Belt and where most Christians exist (as a percentage of the state population) rather than California and New York? Does concentration on celebrity and the sensationalistic (which makes the book a gripping read for so many determined to “understand” evangelicals and Trump voters) cast a shadow over Du Mez’ case for her status as an “objective” observer?

According to data from the Pew Research Center, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Dakota, and Tennessee are the five most Christian states in the country. Yet altogether, they only make up about three percent of the book (for comparison, Texas, California, Virginia, New York, and Colorado make up 51 percent). Even if we just look at states in terms of total population, Du Mez’ five should have about half as many mentions, whereas the five most Christian states should see twice the limelight.

Lastly, it’s not even clear that this book is really about John Wayne, “toxic masculinity,” martial character, or nationalism. (See Ploughcast 46 for a compelling take that Du Mez has fundamentally misunderstood the nature of Western films).

According to Du Mez’ own index in the back of the book, James Dobson—and not Donald Trump, Ronald Reagan, or John Wayne—is the star of the show (or, as she might prefer us believe, the spider at the center of the web). Dobson is mentioned twice as much as the titular John Wayne!

Paul Ramsey: A Necessary Guide for Christian Ethics

After mapping academic theology and seeing how important Paul Ramsey was for academic theology (teaching the greats like Oliver O’Donovan and Gilbert Meilaender), I remembered that I wrote a piece on Ramsey more than five years ago that fell the cracks during the editorial process. Well, now you can read it here: "Navigating the Scylla and Charybdis: Paul Ramsey and Contemporary Political Theology"

Also, during that same time, this Paul Ramsey Institute fellows program for bioethics came to my attention. I highly recommend checking it out for those of you interested and qualifying! Ramsey’s student, Meilaender, served on the President’s Council on Bioethics and is one of the scholars associated with the program. And Katelyn (Mrs. Shelton) will be joining the 2023-2025 cohort of fellows. Matthew Lee Anderson, whose Substack on theology and ethics is worth a follow, is also affiliated with the program.

More on Mapping the Mainline

The ever insightful Brad East has written some on the Mapping Mainline Theology chart I cooked up for the last post.

He makes some great points about the cacophonous state of academic theology (and how Oliver O’Donovan’s Ethics As Theology trilogy was, as a result, largely overlooked) and the waning influence of Stanley Hauerwas, but my biggest takeaway was how much institutions (and not just genius) matter.

The unsurprising spider at the top of this web is Barth. The more surprising is Niebuhr—H. Richard, not Reinhold. Reinhold’s influence on twentieth century thought, including academic theology and ethics, was great and lasting. But H. Richard always had more theological influence (or so I think), and this map captures that nicely. Niebuhr the younger was an institutionalist, and there is a sense in which his legacy stretches longer and wider than his brother’s.

You can read Brad’s full thoughts on the map here: Mapping Academic Theology.

There’s a lot of very interesting Catholic and philosophical connections that I wasn’t bold enough to attempt to include, but you can get one really interesting glimpse into that through Benjamin Lipscomb’s 2022 book, The Women Are Up to Something: How Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Mary Midgley, and Iris Murdoch Revolutionized Ethics. You can get it for free through the library on Hoopla but it’s definitely the kind of book that you would want to have physically on hand for reference and re-reads.

Finally, as Jean Monnet said, “Nothing is possible without men, But nothing lasts without institutions.” See my latest piece at Mere Orthodoxy for more reflections on the importance of institution-building: "Os Guinness: The Christian Public Intellectual After Jacques Maritain"