Sadly, most people won’t care to notice this, and so her book will likely gain credence in certain circles, but it is still sloppy “history.” Instead, one finds mostly contemporary news articles and books written by others about the subject in question. So, with a book like this, with its massive claim to prove, “How white evangelicals corrupted a faith and fractured a nation,” one expects lots of primary sources to prove the point. The evidence of the historian is primary sources-documents and artifacts that come from the people or time period in question. You, the reader, are the jury, and his job is to convince you that his claims are true. He aims to prove a claim by bringing forth various pieces of evidence. The historian’s work is analogous to a prosecutor in a court room. This is a problem when one purports to be discussing historical events. As a case in point, a run of the mill scan of the end notes reveals that a good number of her citations are not primary sources, but news articles and books written by others, some actual historians, but many not so, who are just as removed from the actual events and actors as she is. ![]() The book is high on the personal agenda of the author, low on serious historical scholarship. ![]() It doesn’t take much to call oneself a historian or scholar these days, and Kristin Kobes du Mez’s book, Jesus and John Wayne, proves the point.
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