John Wayne, Jesus, and the struggle to define the Christian man

If you—like me—looked at the awful misconduct the #MeToo movement exposed in Hollywood and the mainstream media and thought, “This is a clear sign of a cultural crisis,” I defy you to read page after page of horrific Christian abuses—including in many of the most powerful institutions in Christendom—and think, “Those are just a few bad apples in a healthy church.” Here is the key insight Evangelicals can and should take from the book. If you simply add a dose of Christian seasoning and language to an aggressive, secular conception of masculinity—and then marry that aggressive, secular masculinity to religious doctrines of male leadership—the result is disaster. Obsession with male power (rinsed through scriptures misused to manipulate and subjugate not just women, but every person subject to the male leader) manufactures abuse.