Book Review: Jesus and John Wayne: How white evangelicals corrupted a faith and fractured a nation by Kristin Kobes Du Mez

Abstract

sive and unified could benefit from reading this work. The reflection and discussion questions encourage any reader to consider the experiences of single people in ministry, and in the church more broadly, and respond with care. I read this book through multiple lenses, informed by my own experiences: former church and parachurch ministry staff member (9 years while single, 3 while married), qualitative researcher, congregation member, and wife of a ministry director. Sitting in the pews with this research in my mind, I was stirred to think about the experience of the single woman sitting next to me. It heightened my awareness of how many times the teaching pastor made reference to his own marriage or used marriage as a metaphor. It made me wonder how she was receiving that message, and made me want to find out more about her experience as a single woman in our church. I felt invited to extend Lawson and Carr’s research in my own context, by listening and learning so I can better understand and support. As with any qualitative research, there are a couple of limitations. First, qualitative research has limited generalizability. The authors rightly note that their findings represent the range of participants’ experiences, rather than making claims about the universality of single ministry staff experiences (146). Second, sampling for qualitative research may also limit the generalizability of findings. In this case, Lawson and Carr admit that while they were seeking to have geographic, racial/ethnic, gender and denominational diversity in their sample, “the sample has a high percentage of people serving in larger church contexts, maily in Southern California, with a stronger representation of evangelical congregational settings than mainline church contexts” (148). Thus, they encourage others to “build on this research” in other contexts (148). As stated above, there is also an implicit invitation for the reader, regardless of their context, to informally extend the research by asking the questions provided and listening carefully to the responses. Each reader, church, denomination, parachurch organization, and seminary classroom may ask the core questions of themselves and those around them. “What is it like...? What are the joys....? What are the challenges...?” Perhaps the final question we should add is, “How can we help?”