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Limbaugh loved to deride Clinton as a draft dodger, even though he himself had secured a deferment to avoid serving in Vietnam.

— Jesus and John Wayne by Kristin Kobes Du Mez (Page 147)

They opposed the Violence Against Women Act, signed into law by President Clinton in 1994, on many counts.

— Jesus and John Wayne by Kristin Kobes Du Mez (Page 145)

Within their own circles, evangelicals didn’t have a strong record when it came to defending women against harassment and abuse. In the 1980s, for example, Dobson had recommended a healthy skepticism toward certain allegations of domestic violence. In Love Must Be Tough (1983), he warned of women who “deliberately ‘baited’” their husbands into hitting them, “verbally antagoniz[ ing]” them until they got “the prize” they sought: a bruise they could parade before “neighbors, friends, and the law” to gain a “moral advantage,” and perhaps also justify an otherwise unbiblical escape from marriage through divorce.

— Jesus and John Wayne by Kristin Kobes Du Mez (Page 144)

If this precedent prevailed, Schlafly prophesied, “Americans can look forward to a succession of TV charlatans and professional liars occupying the White House.”

— Jesus and John Wayne by Kristin Kobes Du Mez (Page 143)

Sometime in the mid- 1980s, God had told Pat Robertson to run for president, according to Pat Robertson.

— Jesus and John Wayne by Kristin Kobes Du Mez (Page 136)

In 1986, Jimmy Swaggart, a rival televangelist located upriver in Baton Rouge, accused Gorman of committing adultery with several woman— including the wife of another preacher, a woman Gorman had been providing with “biblical counseling.” Gorman eventually confessed to “one act of adultery,” though he claimed it was the pastor’s wife who had started grabbing and kissing him. [...] In 1988, Swaggart himself was caught cavorting with a prostitute by none other than Marvin Gorman, who enjoyed a sweet revenge when Swaggart, too, was defrocked. A few years later, Swaggart would again be caught with a prostitute, but rather than confessing, he would tell his congregation, “The Lord told me it’s flat none of your business.”

— Jesus and John Wayne by Kristin Kobes Du Mez (Page 126 - 129)

“Mr. and Mrs. Baptist may not be able to understand or adjudicate the issue of biblical inerrancy when it comes down to nuances, and language, and terminology,” he acknowledged. “But if you believe abortion should be legal, that’s all they need to know.

— Jesus and John Wayne by Kristin Kobes Du Mez (Page 109)

(BJU did not admit African American students until 1971, and then only with strict rules against interracial dating and marriage that remained on the books until 2000.)

— Jesus and John Wayne by Kristin Kobes Du Mez (Page 92)

But the LaHayes took Morgan’s advice a step further by situating sex more fully within the framework of patriarchal authority. “God designed man to be the aggressor, provider, and leader of his family,”

— Jesus and John Wayne by Kristin Kobes Du Mez (Page 91)

AS EVANGELICALS BEGAN TO MOBILIZE AS A partisan political force, they did so by rallying to defend “family values.” But family values politics was never about protecting the well- being of families generally. Fundamentally, evangelical “family values” entailed the reassertion of patriarchal authority. At its most basic level, family values politics was about sex and power.

— Jesus and John Wayne by Kristin Kobes Du Mez (Page 88)

By that time, the Southern Baptist Convention’s Richard Land would label Dobson “the most influential evangelical leader in America. . . . The closest thing to his influence is what Billy Graham had in the sixties and seventies.” That a child psychologist, not a pastor or evangelist, would in Land’s opinion surpass Graham’s influence testifies to changes within evangelicalism itself.

— Jesus and John Wayne by Kristin Kobes Du Mez (Page 86)

Schlafly concluded her book with her “Vision for America.” First and foremost, “The Positive Woman starts with the knowledge that America is the greatest country in the world and that it is her task to do her part to keep it that way.”

— Jesus and John Wayne by Kristin Kobes Du Mez (Page 70)

Only in time, as abortion became more closely linked to feminism and the sexual revolution, did evangelicals begin to frame it not as a difficult moral choice, but rather as an assault on women’s God- given role, on the family, and on Christian America itself.

— Jesus and John Wayne by Kristin Kobes Du Mez (Page 68)

But most evangelicals were far less certain. The Bible didn’t offer specific advice on the topic. Many evangelicals disapproved of “abortion- on- demand,” but not in the case of rape or incest, where fetal abnormalities were present, or when a woman’s life was at risk. In 1968, Christianity Today considered the question of therapeutic abortion— was it a blessing, or murder? They gave no definitive answer. As late as 1971, the Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution urging states to expand access to abortion.

— Jesus and John Wayne by Kristin Kobes Du Mez (Page 68)