Who Made all the Boys Wussies?

Who Made all the Boys Wussies? January 20, 2012

Over at Red Church, Mark Sayers has a fascinating little piece about You Will Never Guess Who is Really Responsible For the Softening of Males in the Church. It talks about how historic evangelicalism operated as a major social and moral force that worked to reduce male aggression in Western society (HT Douglas Groothuis). Do read it! I particularly like this line:

In our current crisis of masculinity it is tempting to ignore the past and instead look towards models of being a man which carry the scent of the alpha male. The danger however is that we create a new evangelical concept of maleness, a kind of Christian tough guy, one which attempts to fuse Christlikeness with machismo. Such a re-imagining of masculinity makes the mistake of replacing passivity with pridefulness. This new mode of Christian machismo paves the way for a new climate within evangelicalism marked by abrasiveness, authoritarianism and arrogance, a swelling of the male ego that blocks out others view of the Cross.

Sayers’ piece it is a great little rejoinder to efforts to establish a model of the “macho Christian male” based on degrees of aggression, power, and sexual penetration.  When in fact it is the gentle, the disempowered, and the pierced, that typifies masculinity according to the image of Christ.

 


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