jesus and john wayne discussion questions

#Jesus and john wayne discussion questions professional#

I just found the Evangelical brand of Christianity I had known all my life to be rather shallow.Īlthough I would still be more or less in the orbit of Evangelical Christianity throughout my life, my spiritual journey from that point on took me more and more away from standard American Evangelicalism. It wasn’t that I found either one bad or corrupt, or anything like that. Almost immediately, I had this distinct sense that I no longer really “fit in” anymore with Evangelicalism, either at the church in which I had grown up (particularly the youth group) or at Wheaton Christian High School. By the end of that summer, I decided to get baptized. The Christianity that Lewis discussed made sense to me- that Christianity was challenging and appealing. It was then that I read Mere Christianity by C.S. During the summer after my junior year in high school, I guess you could say I had an initial “crisis of faith,” and I proceeded to rethink what I really believed.

I grew up in an Evangelical family, went to an Assemblies of God/Evangelical church, and attended Wheaton Christian High School. In fact, I lived pretty much at the center of it, in Wheaton, Illinois. By the time we can resume our normal lives, I’m going to be ready to put out fires, fight in combat, and save damsels in distress.I grew up within the Evangelical world of the 70-80s. I couldn’t talk my church into hosting a Smoking Barrel event until COVID-19 subsides, but I’m eating all the smoked meat I can find at the grocery. Why can’t Mel Gibson star in and make movies nowadays? I spent five hundred bucks buying all the episodes of Duke Dynasty on Amazon. I’m watching The Green Berets and Braveheart and The Passion. But I’ve got time for spiritual reeducation during this pandemic. For instance, if dirty dishes lingered in the sink, he must immediately sit her down and remind her of her duty if she rebelled, he was to call the elders of the church to intervene.” I had never thought of the threat to call the elders! That’ll do the trick.Īfter many years in the ivory tower surrounded by leftist radicals, my transformation into a Christian warrior-scholar probably will take some time. But then I found this nugget in Jesus and John Wayne: “If a wife was not properly submissive, it was a husband’s duty to correct her.

Until now, I worried that if I didn’t do the dishes they might not get done. I’ve done a lot of dishes over the last two decades and now I’m done with doing the dishes. With all due respect to Brad Wilcox, real Christian men need to do more than simply spend more time with their wives and children than average American husbands. It’s the age of crass, badass, militant Christianity. I need to pepper my lectures and tweets with expletives. Otherwise, I’ve sounded like Mitt Romney instead of Mark Driscoll. I had a phase back in middle school when I used bad language to try to sound cooler in front of other boys, but in recent years, I’ve only used naughty words when quoting Brigham Young sermons. I’ve never been a gun guy anyway.Īfter reading about the evangelical heroes of the last fifty years, I also need to loosen up a bit. For that, I will need a gun, or at least a crossbow, which might actually be cooler. Birding is fine, as long as it’s shooting birds. Baking is out, MMA is in, though I don’t know what the acronym stands for. Things I currently like include tennis, watching The Great British Baking Show (gulp), and birding (double gulp).

My out-of-the-classroom hobbies need retooling. See Eric Metaxas, who also has way better hair than I do. It’s not impossible to be a manly evangelical scholar. Go into the classroom with a camo tie or jacket? Maybe a camo tie and jacket? At least a camo mask for this fall? There is hope. Maybe I could rebrand myself as a scholarly warrior.

#Jesus and john wayne discussion questions professional#

Being a professional historian and a Professor of Religious Studies is not exactly airborne ranger, wild at heart, spiritual badass stuff.