Cowboy Christianity: A Short Review of Du Mez's Jesus and John Wayne - Neil Shenvi - Apologetics

Cowboy Christianity: A Short Review of Du Mez's Jesus and John Wayne - Neil Shenvi - Apologetics

"...Du Mez offers no exegesis of key biblical passages about gender, power, or authority. Indeed, the book offers little if any theological reflection at all on these issues. Rather, it simply assumes without argument that the conservative views it describes are perversions of genuine Christianity. Yet how can we know whether that's the case in the absence of appeals to Scripture? Granted, the cultural zeitgeist is surely on Du Mez's side. Yet this is dangerous ground for a Christian....

"...Du Mez is not merely criticizing particular expressions of gender roles but the very existence of gender roles, either in the church or in the family. Here, the omission of any kind of biblical argument for her position becomes particularly noticeable. Certainly, complementarians can try to appreciate the truth in some of Du Mez's critiques. But we have to do so with the understanding that she is operating from an entirely different understanding of gender roles....

"If "patriarchal authority" is not only broad enough to include all complementarian views but is also the motive force behind evangelical commitment to a traditional view of inerrancy, gender, sexuality, the existence of hell and even substitutionary atonement, what happens if we commit ourselves to deconstructing "the patriarchy"? Worse still, how can we defend these doctrines on the ground that they're biblical? Such an attempt could merely be dismissed as an effort to "protect patriarchal power," whether it comes from a man ("male privilege") or a woman ("internalized sexism").

"I sincerely wish that this book had been written by a complementarian. But I just as sincerely wish that this book had been written by an egalitarian. Or a radical feminist. What do I mean? I mean that I wish the book had been written by someone who was explicit about their own theological commitments, who made overt appeals to the Bible, and who provided arguments for their claims. As it stands, the book subtly encourages a very corrosive approach to doctrine, one that appeals to our reflexive moral intuitions and to skepticism towards power rather than to exegesis or to careful argumentation. If we begin to see doctrines as expressions of privilege, rather than as objective truth claims made by Scripture, it will be difficult to turn back. This approach, once embraced, is spiritually deadly."