Review by Eleanor J. Bader
It’s no secret that many mass shootings in the United States have been carried out by white men whose fury has been bolstered by Christian nationalist organizations and websites. How and why this hateful worldview has enticed so many young men is at the center of Angela Denker’s latest book, Disciples of White Jesus. Denker, an ordained pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, as well as a journalist, is an adroit storyteller. And while the book focuses more on individual examples of teens and young adults who’ve been lured by rightwing hate groups than it does on probing how denominations can undermine these ideologies, it is nonetheless a valuable contribution to understanding boys and men as both victim and menace.
Denker is well-versed in the lies and misrepresentations that ground Christian nationalism, including the near-universal mainstream Christian presentation of Jesus as a blonde-haired, blue-eyed, hunk who is violent, macho, and tough. “Most pernicious,” she writes, “is that weakness is to be avoided at all costs, that showing vulnerability and emotion is a recipe for disaster, a potential upheaval in a society that has placed white Christian men at the top of a teetering house of cards.”
For white males who are themselves teetering, or who see themselves as outcasts, feelings of isolation or shame typically lead to depression. Predictably, websites that blame feminism, DEI, or CRT can appeal to their perceived sense of entitlement and victimization. Add in reinforcing messages from racist-sexist-homophobic-xenophobic evangelical and fundamentalist preachers, and the mix is potent. Still, it’s in finding like-minded others that their youthful fury is stoked. As one former skinhead told Denker, he joined a hate group for the camaraderie; the politics came later. It’s a valuable insight for anyone working with disaffected young people.
All told, Disciples of White Jesus is a crash course in the marketing of toxic masculinity for white supremacist and Christian nationalist ends. It’s a powerful indictment.
Disciples of White Jesus: The Radicalization of American Boyhood by Angela Denker. Broadleaf Books, March 2025.
Reviewer bio: Eleanor J. Bader is a Brooklyn, NY-based journalist who writes about books and domestic social issues for Truthout, Rain Taxi, The Progressive, Ms. Magazine, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Indypendent.