Kristin Du Mez and Knowing Christian History
Feb 05, 2024
Kristin Du Mez is Professor of History at Calvin University and author of Jesus and John Wayne. If you haven’t heard about this book yet, you will soon because it is lighting Evangelicalism on fire. Kristin shares about growing up a bit sheltered in Northwest Iowa Dutch country, how moving and travel began to expand her understanding of the world, and why she decided to address militarism in the Christian faith. Kristen’s story reminds us that we need to know Christian history to understand our faith.
Listen to Kristin’s story now!
Stories Kristin shared:
- Growing up in Dutch Reformed circles in Northwest, Iowa
- Feeling supported and nurtured in that area
- Moving to Tallahassee, FL and learning that she was a little sheltered
- Spending a year in Germany
- Growing up always believing and making a profession of faith in college
- Cultivating spiritual experiences through reading in Christian history
- Observing how faith can be used to grasp for power
- A summer of discontent
- How understanding Christianity changed her faith
- The history of biblical literalism and how that shaped her
- Taking off the pressure to be right
- Landing on intellectual engagement as a way to inform her faith
- Deciding to address militarism in Christian faith
- Wrestling with whether she should be bringing issues to the fore
- How the cold war influenced our faith today
- How the Bible gets distorted and treated as truth
- The fruit of the Spirit as the definition of biblical masculinity
Great quotes from Kristin:
My working assumption was that Christianity is constant within history. If anything, my historical studies disrupted this notion of communion with my fellow believers.
If you’re holding on so tightly to your narrow conception of truth, that’s a faith that can easily be shaken.
A lot of Evangelicals have bought into a very us versus them mentality, that God is on our side and therefore anything that I do is righteous.
Resources we mentioned:
- Kristin’s website
- Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation
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