Masculinity Caricatures, Part 2

Brandon O'Brien's Christianity Today column, "A Jesus for Real Men," is an unfortunate example of opinion offered from cursory knowledge. A little bit of religious history is a dangerous thing. In fact, the overall consensus of O'Brien's disserts is that he misses the point and innacurately caricatures and revises John Eldredge, Mark Driscoll, David Murrow.

I completely agree. O'Brien's named "masculinity movement" has been the subject of much conversation over the past 25 years or so because a dying church in America is witnessing the fruit of radical feminism and the warehousing of generations of passive or abusive men.

Here's recent data from David Murrow:

The typical U.S. Congregation draws an adult crowd that's 61% female, 39% male. As many as 90 percent of the boys raised in the church will abandon it by their 20th birthday. On any given Sunday there are 13 million more adult women than men in America's churches. This Sunday almost 25 percent of married, churchgoing women will worship without their husbands. Midweek activities often draw 70 to 80 percent female participants. The majority of church employees are women (except for ordained clergy, who are overwhelmingly male). [Many only return when their girlfriends or wives bring them back.] More than 90 percent of American men believe in God, and 5 out of 6 call themselves Christians. But only 2 out of 6 attend church on a given Sunday. The average man accepts the reality of Jesus Christ, but fails to see any value in going to church.

We must wrestle with the fact that men have checked out of church-life in America.

Leon Podles provides a historical narrative of the masculinity crisis in The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity. Historian Anne Braude's essay "Women's History Is Religious History," in the book Retelling U.S. Religious History readily admits that for quite some time Christianity has been, and continues to be, primarily oriented around meeting the needs of women and their children. Men are not around because American church does not connect.

However, O'Brien, doesn't get it. The men he critiques are not trying to "re-masculate Jesus," introduce "greater testosterone" into the church, or use natural instincts to define masculinity. Those are ridiculous assertions. They are addressing the fact that the average man in America simply does not connect with narrow image of Jesus presented in most churches today. The average man doesn't feel like he fits into the overall ethos of church life since it has been, for far too long, almost exclusively oriented away from bringing men into a broader view of kingdom mission in ways that are unique to callings God has placed on men as they bear the image of God. Moreover, many of the men that do fit into churches organized primarily to meet the needs of women and their children are not the types of men that others look to follow.

O'Brien's biblical theology is so bad that I'll have to deal with it elsewhere but his claim that the only time Jesus appears as warrior are his "pre-incarnate" and "post-resurrection" debuts has no biblical warrant and largely misses the reality of spiritual warfare during Jesus life and ministry. Casting out demons is not spiritual warfare? The Kingdom needs warriors who are allied with God to fight against "principalities and powers." Was Jesus not fighting the devil during his ministry?

Overall, O'Brien wrongly prejudices men against being challenged in good ways because of his own misunderstanding of church history, the reality of the church in America, and a biblical theology that may suffer from a lack of exegetical depth. If O'Brien "got it" a more accurate title to his unuanced opinion would be "The Bible's Jesus for the Regular Guy."

If O'Brien knows very little about the writings and teachings of the men he critiques, argues against a straw man, and mishandles biblical theology why should we take him seriously? This would be equivalent an accountant critiquing the Navy's assessment of what makes a man a good Navy seal.