Through blogging I have learned to appreciate thoughtful critics. That doesn't mean I like everything people criticize me for nor does it mean I like every critic. But, when the critics are thoughtful and well-spoken I think it is great. Check out Pam's comments on the penal substitution post. I disagree with almost everything she says, yet she was well spoken and really pushed her opponents in the right way. Similarly, though I detect some frustration in the following comment, I thought that a commenter named "Light" brought up something important in response to my "church of the girly-man post." Light said this:
Men leaving the church because it's too feminized? I suggest you look at the other side of the coin and read "Wicca's Charm" by journalist and Christian Catherine Sanders. Spending a year studying, observing, and blending in with Wiccans yielded some interesting insights. Sanders heard the same story over and over again from former Christian women: it is precisely because of patriarchal, masculinized Christian churches that women are turning to Wicca. They are tired of being seen as good for little more than working in the church nursery and serving at church suppers, tired of having their leadership and intellectual gifts ignored.
The reason this comment stood out to me is that I read and reviewed Catherine Sanders book here. Light accurately reflects Sanders findings and her point is well taken that in many churches women are treated as only good for menial and mindless tasks.
I don't know how one would go about finding this out, but I wonder how many of the women Sanders interviewed came from fundamentalist-authoritarian churches, which I did criticize in my earlier post. While all of this masculine talk may resonate with many, there are many others for whom this is quite scary. I've met people who grew up in male dominated fundamenatlist/authoritarian churches and they have many scars.
I had started to come up with a response affirming the valid parts of Light's criticism while re-articulating my own sympathies for the Podles/Murrow point of view. Fortunately, I don't have to go to all that trouble. Mad Minerva came along and offered a comment which says what I would have said better than I would have said it. And by the way, let me just say that I always appreciate it when someone else does my work for me, like Mad Minerva did. The last paragraph is especially good:
Thanks for this post! I'd like to add that a superfeminized church can also turn off some...women. Yes! I'm not one for tea parties and such; I am a graduate student and researcher. The superfeminized, touchy-feely church for me has the unhappy effect of making me feel rather out of place: the men seem emasculated and the women seem frilly. Where are the strong men and women of faith and purpose? They must be out there somewhere, but maybe their presence is obscured by all the fripperies.
Yet there's more to church than pastel walls and feel-good choruses, after all. I keep feeling that some substance, real substance, is missing. Besides, I've always been an independent sort of chick (you have to be in order to survive grad school, really), and the uber-girly church makes me...er, uncomfortable, as if somehow I weren't girly enough to fully participate. I find myself sympathizing with the guys in a "Why Men Hate Going to Church" scenario. Ubergirliness ultimately = irrelevance.
Anyway, I don't think you're arguing as much for a "masculinized" Christianity as much as you're really arguing for a ROBUST Christianity. And there's nothing wrong with that! Using terms like "masculinized" brings up all sorts of other associations, and we've all been in religious circles where men who are insecure deep down parade their "male headship/leadership" to mask their inadequacies at the expense of the ladies' own important roles. Really, what we need is a church in which men and women are free to be themselves, not pale versions of that.
Thanks for the kudos David.
I started asking a long list of questions on this subject again and I suddenly realised that you are US-based and not UK-based as I'd thought! So I shall refrain from my questions as perhaps the geography difference explains why these complaints seem odd to me; I don't think I've ever seen a pastel-coloured church (my mind boggles at that!) and I've never understood the "touchy-feely" complaint which seems to pop up in a lot of different contexts.
Posted by: Pam | August 02, 2006 at 02:58 PM
Robust Christianity! Yeah, that's more like it.
I must confess that, while I agree that a lot of modern church teaching seems to (inadvertantly) emasculate men, the stereotypes brought forward to describe what men "ought to be" are too...stereotypical. In fact, according to some of the more detailed lists of "what a man should be", some godly men of history would not be considered masculine enough.
"Robust", on the other hand, is a better word. It allows men to be the men God made them to be, not the men our cultural stereotypes dictate. It also allows, as Mad Minerva points out, women to be their godly selves - not some caricature (spelling?).
Good on you Mad Minerva. And thanks for the post, David.
Posted by: Ali | August 02, 2006 at 06:36 PM
Thanks, David. My wife made similar comments about her experiences as a single woman prior to marrying me -- she was a director in a large corporation. We indeed need to be careful not to add restrictions upon women where Scripture is silent.
Posted by: Alex Chediak | August 03, 2006 at 01:45 AM
I agree that there are Churches which don't fully celebrate either gender. The one we have found through the Lord's leading is not one of those thankfully. I respect every member of the body of Christ, and my opion is best summed up in a quote from Native American pastor Richard Twiss.
"When God created Adam, and saw that he needed a companion, he did not create another Adam, instead he created Eve. Each represents 1/2 of the full face of God". This sums up my feelings. I know part of the reason for the turning away from the church is the misrepresentation of the wife or females must submit to the males. God only calls for this submission as the male submits to God.
Wives, be under the authority of your husbands, as of the Lord.
Eph 5:23 For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the church, being himself the saviour of the body.
Eph 5:24 And as the church is under Christ's authority, so let wives be under the rule of their husbands in all things.
Eph 5:25 Husbands, have love for your wives, even as Christ had love for the church, and gave himself for it;
So men must take there true place as LOVING, kind, nuturing, healers if we expect women "be under our authority" which is not in my mind equal to submission. We must also as brothers and sisters raise each other up to our fullest potential and the sooner we all realize that, the sooner the true healing will begin and we will again start to have true revival in the Body of Christ. Thank you for an awesome blog, and Thanks for reading this.
Peace and God's Love
Bryan Greager
Posted by: Bryan Greager | August 03, 2006 at 02:49 PM
I think it might help to point out two quick things about the "manliness" problem in American evangelicalism:
1) It is less a problem of women having power over men, than of men being less than men.
2) The male/female polarity is a red herring. What a man must overcome to be a man is not womanliness, but boyishness. A man must cease being a child, and he will become a man.
Feminism has badly misconstrued the second, in part because feminism is just a reaction within a bad 19th-C social-Darwinist construct (man = amoral = hunter = aggressor = polyamorous; woman = moral = gatherer = nurturer = monogamous) which entirely fails to see THROUGH the false phenomena of gender. The result is that, in reaction against the "women and children" versus "men" polarity, a man's pushing off against boyishness is attacked as (counterintuitively, when you take of feminist lenses) misogyny.
Boyhood must cease to be consolidated into womanhood, and childishness cease to be considered a male virtue, in order for virtue and true manhood to flourish.
The "guy" culture will never allow this (just ask Dave Barry), and feminists will cry "woman-haters! Neanderthals!" But the women who love us, and who we love, will know better.
Cheers,
PGE
Posted by: pgepps | August 08, 2006 at 12:20 AM
Hi, David. I know this is an old thread, but this discussion continues in other parts of the blogosphere, with some interesting and insfightful comments. Much of it revolves around a Mark Driscoll comment. I thought you might want to take a look at two other ongoing, interesting threads, both missional, but proceeding from apparently different views of Driscoll's comment. It might be worth another new post. Here are the threads:
http://bobhyatt.typepad.com/bobblog/2006/08/chickified.html#comments
http://www.stevekmccoy.com/reformissionary/2006/08/driscoll_on_chu.html
Posted by: Barry Wallace | August 17, 2006 at 11:03 AM
Hi, David. This discussion continues, with some interesting and insfightful comments, in other parts of the blogosphere. Much of it revolves around a Mark Driscoll comment. I thought you might want to take a look at interesting threads from two other blogs, both missional, but proceeding from apparently different views of Driscoll's comment. It might be worth another new post. Here are the threads:
http://bobhyatt.typepad.com/bobblog/2006/08/chickified.html#comments
http://www.stevekmccoy.com/reformissionary/2006/08/driscoll_on_chu.html
Posted by: Barry Wallace | August 17, 2006 at 11:06 AM
"insfightful" - lol. I love typos when they hit on a blogosphere reality.
Posted by: Catez | August 28, 2006 at 11:11 PM