For example, I\u2019ve often come back to <\/span>the three Pauline virtues<\/span><\/a> and asked myself, <\/span>Shouldn\u2019t history as written and taught by Christians be faithful, hopeful, and loving?<\/span><\/i> That same question seems to have been in the back of the mind of one Christian historian I admire, John D. Wilsey, as he read the work of another Christian historian I admire, Kristin Kobes Du Mez.<\/span><\/p>\n Let me reiterate my admiration for both historians and my appreciation for their work, in the ways that it is similar (rigorous research, thoughtful and often thought-provoking analysis, clear and compelling writing) and in the ways that it is different. Having regularly used this blog <\/span>to praise<\/span><\/a> Kristin, let me do the same now with John. As a historian of U.S. foreign policy, I learned much from his study of <\/span>American exceptionalism<\/span><\/a>, and this fall I want my <\/span>Cold War <\/span><\/i>students to engage with his recent book about <\/span>John Foster Dulles<\/span><\/a>, which preceded mine in the same series of religious biographies.<\/span><\/p>\n But if I\u2019m more sympathetic than John to what Kristin is doing in J&JW, that doesn\u2019t mean that I\u2019m unsympathetic to his concern that Christian history be marked by faith, hope, and love. <\/span>I just think that I may understand differently how those virtues work themselves out through the practice of history. Because I see all three in\u00a0Jesus and John Wayne<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n I currently serve on the tenure and promotion committee for college faculty at Bethel, so hardly a week goes by without me applying to colleagues a criterion that would seem out of place in other academic settings: their ability to integrate faith and learning in their teaching and scholarship. Early this summer, I\u2019ll again co-lead the workshop meant to help Bethel faculty coming up for tenure and promotion to write their \u201cfaith integration\u201d essay. So you can assume that I\u2019m convinced that Christian faith ought to inform academic practice by Christians.<\/span><\/p>\n Even if they don\u2019t realize it, all scholars are shaped by what Nick Wolterstorff calls \u201ccontrol beliefs.\u201d So it\u2019s obviously important that Christian historians consider how their religious convictions influence their motivations and interpretations. But how they do this might seem more implicit or explicit, depending on the historian and her context..<\/span><\/p>\n For example, I think you could read through 98% of <\/span>my biography of Charles Lindbergh<\/span><\/a> and not know that, unlike my subject, I am both religious and spiritual. Lindbergh was an occasional admirer of Jesus as an ethical teacher, while I\u2019m a follower of Jesus who knows him as our Christ, but my purpose wasn\u2019t to rebut Lindbergh\u2019s theology. Still, in the background of the entire book, and coming to the foreground at key moments, is my belief that God created humanity in God\u2019s image. To my mind, that both motivates telling the story of a life and made it impossible for me to avoid wrestling in view of my (mostly Christian) readers with Lindbergh\u2019s rejection of basic human worth, dignity, and equality.<\/span><\/p>\n Likewise, it seems clear to me that Kristin\u2019s criticism of white evangelical patriarchy is motivated, at least in part, by her faith as a Christian who takes seriously the pervasive effects of the Fall \u2014 and our inability to recognize our own sinfulness. As a historian of culture and gender, she is drawing on the theoretical insights of thinkers who are not animated by Christian faith, but as a study of sin, <\/span>Jesus and John Wayne <\/span><\/i>strikes me as an exemplar of the Calvinist model of faith-learning integration that shapes so much discourse about Christian scholarship.<\/span><\/p>\n As a Pietist, though, I tend to ascribe less importance to fusing scholarship with faith understood as a set of doctrines and look more for the actual effects of faith \u2014 as a transformative gift of God reshaping us from the inside-out \u2014 in a scholar\u2019s life. In that sense, Christian history needs to be more than faithful; it must make evident the fruits of the Spirit, including what Paul says is the greatest of the virtues: love.<\/span><\/p>\n After all, the apostle writes, \u201cthe only thing that counts\u2026 is faith working in love\u201d (Gal 5:6). Can Christian history truly reflect Christian faith if it\u2019s not working \u2014\u00a0being made active or effective \u2014\u00a0in love?\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThis love is not sentimental, nor does this love absolve the subjects of their sins,\u201d concedes John. \u201cLoving the dead means we tell the truth about them, as far as it is possible given our limitations and the complexities of the past.\u201d But he finds \u201clittle of Schweiger\u2019s pastoral imagination reflected in Du Mez\u2019s approach to evangelicals over the past century,\u201d which judges some of those Christians and finds them wanting.<\/span><\/p>\n Correctly, in my estimation, even as I thought she did well to seek to understand what led her subjects into \u201cmilitant masculinity.\u201d But I take seriously John\u2019s concern here: as I\u2019m sure it was for him in writing his Dulles biography, it was ever always in the back of my mind that Charles Lindbergh was at my mercy. Whenever that infamous pilot offended or infuriated me, I threw back at myself my admonition to students that history teaches us humility, empathy, and comfort with complexity. By the end of the book, I did render a measure of judgment on Lindbergh, but more, I tried to invite what another Christian historian, Robert Tracy McKenzie, calls moral reflection<\/em>: holding up Lindbergh\u2019s life as a mirror for our own sins \u2014\u00a0mine and my readers\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n To tell the truth about Lindbergh is to document his racism and anti-Semitism, but also to explain where it came from and to see him as a multi-faceted person worthy (as one endorser<\/a> put it) of \u201cadulation, pity, and scorn.\u201d In that sense, I tried to love Lindbergh as my neighbor.<\/span><\/p>\n But along the way, I realized that a key benefit of a Lindbergh biography is that it helps us to see and love people he couldn\u2019t really see or love: the Jewish refugees he reviled and other victims of the Nazi regime he admired; the persons of color he saw as threats to global white supremacy; and all others whose worth he was willing to sacrifice to a notion of \u201cthe quality of life\u201d that initially emerged from eugenics.<\/span><\/p>\n Likewise, <\/span>Jesus and John Wayne <\/span><\/i>struck me as an example of Christian history being <\/span>loving<\/span><\/i> because it helps its readers to love past neighbors who suffered under the toxic mix of patriarchy, militarism, Christian nationalism, and racism that Kristin describes.<\/span><\/p>\n The heart of Wilsey's critique is my lack of empathy as a Chr historian. Perhaps. But I'd argue that empathy must extend not just (or even primarily) to those who've wielded power but also to those w\/out institutional& religious power. J&JW centers experiences of the latter.3\/<\/p>\n \u2014 Kristin Du Mez (@kkdumez) February 9, 2022<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n![\"Wilsey,](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/168\/2022\/02\/American-Exceptionalism-and-Civil-Religion-200x300.jpeg\")
<\/a>In <\/span>a recent review<\/span><\/a> for the online journal <\/span>Ad Fontes<\/span><\/i>, John acknowledges the significance of Kristin\u2019s much-discussed book, <\/span>Jesus and John Wayne<\/span><\/i><\/a>. \u201cTo say that this book is important, that it should be widely read, that it should be taken seriously, is obvious,\u201d he concludes, adding that the \u201cmost singular value that Du Mez\u2019s book has for us as Christians seeking to submit our lives to the Scriptures\u2014those of us who would classify ourselves as complementarians, conservatives, evangelicals\u2014the book forces us to examine ourselves.\u201d And yet, he also finds J&JW an example of \u201chistory as social and political posturing, the firing of salvoes in the culture wars\u2026. Du Mez\u2019s work reads less as history and more as ideology, and an ideology with little in the way of faith, hope, or charity.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/168\/2022\/02\/faith2-medium-scaled.jpg\")
<\/a>Faithful History<\/h3>\n
Loving History<\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/168\/2021\/01\/jesus-and-john-wayne-200x300.jpg\")
<\/a>To that end, John\u2019s review of <\/span>Jesus and John Wayne <\/span><\/i>appeals to one of my favorite essays about Christian history: Beth Barton Schwieger\u2019s \u201cSeeing Things,\u201d in which she argues that history is an act of loving our neighbors in time \u2014 in particular, those who are dead. Before my <\/span>Intro to History <\/span><\/i>students get too far into their research projects this semester, I\u2019ll have them consider Schwieger\u2019s caution that historians have power over their deceased neighbors in the past. The dead are, as John puts it, \u201cat our mercy\u2013they cannot come back and offer their explanations, their justifications, their apologies, or their acts of restitution.\u201d So we must act with humility and empathy, and perhaps hesitate to judge them too quickly or too harshly.<\/span><\/p>\n\n