Logical argument?
Given that masculine and feminine are opposite, or counterparts.
Given that a more masculine man is more manly.
Given that a more manly man is movement toward the optimum.
Then, a feminine man is the least optimum.
Then, male is good, and female is bad.
Then, one must reject what is feminine as a disadvantage, and outrightly negative, to move toward the good.
I have a 75% + male readership, and I know most, if not all the males who hear hyper-masculine rhetoric get, at least, a bit nauseated, or frustrated by the vitriol.
“Most [church] dudes are sort of chicks.” -Mark Driscoll (see video)
Please tell me how promoting hyper-masculinity is not also misogyny?
I think this is a situation of a leader being allowed to run amuck with therapeutic misogyny that comes under the guise of Scriptural authority. This is a perversion of leadership.
Is the movement toward masculinizing the church a seductive trap? What about gender is so super important to spreading God’s love and the message of the gospel? How can men be best mentored/discipled?
What should be done?
If you would like to read about this topic from a man’s perspective: both a theologian and former Mixed Martial Artist (a.k.a. “cage fighter”) I recommend this poignant and potent article: THE CONFESSIONS OF A CAGE FIGHTER: MASCULINITY, MISOGYNY, AND THE FEAR OF LOSING CONTROL -by Matt Morin (Matt is a man anyone can respect, but for none of the reasons that Mark Driscoll cherishes.)
Kudos to Matt. I dub you “awesome”.
In the next post, I’ll explore Christian therapeutic, misandry. It’s real, and it doesn’t happen as overtly aggressively as its male counterpart, but it’s just as destructive to the ministry, message, and sacrifice of Christ, our Savior.
So that we may be one in Christ, we must abandon our old, worn out ways that secular culture has blanketed us with. Men and women are not stereotypes. They are not caricatures of the masculine and the feminine, unless those people are spiritually under-developed and unhealthy emotionally. They are instead God’s image bearers, and God’s vehicle to put the world to rights.
A sylogism: If most church guys are “sort of chicks” and I am a “church guy” and Mark Driscol is fully masculine (good) then Mark Driscol is sort of attracted to me. Right?
It’s amazing how these sub-biblical ideas can take hold. Ick! It’s pretty tough to deal with because of the patriarchy of the Bible’s culture that gets read as normative.
too funny! wait…..uh oh. He might want to take you in the cage, man. I hope a rear naked choke isn’t in your future. LOL. thanks for your comment.
I agree. It feels like a yoke of bondage, not redemption….so we got off track some where.
Interesting…I am working on a post for tomorrow that addresses the issue of gender roles, trying to sort through what is and is not biblical. I think the problem is that (like Driscoll) we sometimes have notions about gender that are just not true. We think roles=value for example, and I don’t think this is true AT ALL.
I am sad that so many men listen to Driscoll as the definition of biblical teaching. However, I am not in favor of the pendulum swinging the opposite direction either.
Oh Lisa, bet you can’t guess what I’m thinking??
I think, really think, that Driscoll and others are trying to coerce against the idea that faith is a “feminine ideal” and that they’re fighting for the notion that men should play a bigger part in the spiritual formation of their families. It maybe a bit over reactionary now, but I just came from a church where men do not teach Sunday School or volunteer for the youth programs. That’s what the women of the church are expected to do. I’ve heard sermons from both Driscoll and Matt Chandler where it is basically telling the men in their church to “man up” and take on the responsibilities to lead their families and to be the examples.
That’s how I read all this that Driscoll and others put out. He may go a bit to the gimmick to sell his point, but then we got another guy telling us we should be radical with our faith, and another trying to sell us on God’s crazylove, and then we have Beth Moore telling ladies about being teeth deep in the carpet… the gimmick can get the point across.
Did you hear about CJ Mahaney taking a leave of absence from his church over some issues, including that there are some who do not agree with him over the priority of male leadership? There are other issues, too, but he’s taking the time to think through, meet with others, and pray through these things.
Thanks for an interesting post, Lisa! No one can accuse you of shying away from controversial topics, that’s for sure.
For what it’s worth, I can give you my own thoughts on this. I am an unmarried man, and I can give you my own thoughts, though I am only a sample size of one. The problem that I have with contemporary evangelical attempts to laud masculinity is that there is seldom any sound Biblical exegesis to really define “masculine” traits, let alone to prove that they should apply to all men. Even the example characteristics Driscoll gives of the truly masculine men are hardly impressive from a spiritual point of view: Slaughtering other men…fixing the truck….watching football, running a business, having babies. A big part of the problem is take our 21st century Western ideals about manhood and then transpose them into our reading of scripture.This yields a paradigm in which every man must be loud, confrontational, physically impressive, mechanically inclined, or perhaps even domineering. (Finding a scriptural basis for these paradigmatic attributes, though, is somewhat difficult.) Some have gone as far to use the KJV translation of I Cor 6:9 (which translates the word that is translated by most modern versions as “homosexuals” as “effeminate”) in order to argue that men who do not possess these Masculine traits are not truly redeemed. I hardly think that this is a Biblical view.
Scripture does not generally give detailed, codes of conduct for men and women. Most of the separate sets of commands given to men and women are given specifically to husbands and wives within the context of the marital relationship (e.g. Ephesians 5:22-33), or else are instructions regarding how men and women are to behave in the context of congregational worship (e.g. the latter half of I Timothy chapter 2)..Virtually all other instructions regarding the conduct of believers are given as blanket commands to all believers:(Ephesians 5:1-21, I Thessalonians 5:12-24, etc.). Paul also gives a lengthy description of how we are all members of Christ’s body (I Corinthians 12), indicating that there is room for a wide range of personality types, dispositions, and talents within the body of Christ.
I would agree with the speaker’s assertions if his main point is that we should not be weak and mealy-mouthed in our faith. This does not mean, however, that we need to be overbearing or rude. However, this ideal of spiritual strength would apply to both women and men. In fact, to label traits such as “weakness” as feminine is quite pejorative and unfair. Many of the great examples of strength that are shown in Scripture are from women (think of the women who followed Jesus first to the Cross and then to His tomb, when his male disciples had all but abandoned him).
I also think that it is a horribly stereotyped and fractured view of masculinity which denies that men can have a deep emotional life (Driscoll’s pejorative comments regarding the “chick-i-fied” version of Christiantiy which is characterized by music which is “love songs to Jesus” seems to evince the view that men are only barely emotional, that men are rational (and that women, by contrast, are irrational bundles of emotion. Though I am only a sample size of one, I can only say that this is not the case in my own life; I experience a variety of strong emotions in my life, and it is only with the help of Christ that I am able to modulate them in a healthy way. In fact, Christ was not afraid to express his emotions, even in public (John 11:35).
And as for the “love songs to Jesus,” I can hardly think of any music which could be more beautiful, if sung in the Spirit…
While Driscoll makes assumptions I don’t make, he’s probably onto something w/regard to why some (emphasis on *some*) males haven’t been drawn to churches. Trucks and football and guns do not a man make, but neither does passive pew-sitting, whether the arms are open with submissively raised hands, or the arms are folded, showing the bulging biceps.
I’ve never been one to think that deep feeling should be thought of as feminine, of course there are aspects of church that need a fresh look. It may not be the supposedly feminine aspect of the “love songs to Jesus,” for instance, that deserves critique!
Valid points, Brian! David, a “slaughter of men” as Driscoll puts it, had a very artistic and poetic streak in him. A very passionate man after God’s own heart. Probably the church could be more accessible to various kinds of men, (with varying interests). Our church had a guy’s camp out. They cooked Steaks, did some wall climbing, fishing, hiking and had a great time around the campfire. I was ALL for my husband going.
Seems like he has his analysis of King David all wrong. Yes, King David fought battles and was a warrior. But he also wrote some tender emotional poetry. If anything, David demonstrates a balance between emotion and warrior.
Once again, Driscoll gets caught up in a sensational concept that might be on base in a couple of points, but so off-base in the rest that I can’t buy it.
What needs to be done is that we, the church, need to make room for men, women and children, as groups *and* as individuals. If we do this, we are the body of Christ, empowered by God and His priorities. Otherwise we are guilty of favoritism and idolatry (by trying to make Christ’s body in our image).
I think a lot of these problems would go away if we could really, actually, truly trust God to make us in His image… *His* way. If we embrace His work in us, our confidence is in Him, rather than in our conformity to others, or in others’ conformity to us.