So AFPAC was recent and this seems like the new conservative maga-style movement. My question is — is there a truly patriarchal PAC? One which is men only?
I know such a PAC would be incredibly unpopular at first, but it would begin to shift things right.
If I find anything I’ll let you all know, but it’s something I’m interested in, would perhaps be a great topic a conference talk.
A men-only political movement is ridiculously outside 2022 America’s Overton window. Given the state of right-wing politics in America, it would be a good way to get un-personed even by your “own team,” as it were.
My unsolicited suggestion would be to focus on men-only social and religious movements. And, as always, start in your own heart and work your way outwards to your family, church and city. Our cities won’t be ready for men-only anything until our churches are, and our churches won’t be ready until our families are. Certainly there is chicken-and-egg stuff here, but in politics, the chickens are all dead and the eggs are all broken.
There are good churches with these things in order. Start there. Start small. But start. This is redeemable. (I’m evaluating what this would look like for our family)
Right now, being able to say you are funded by individual donations is so ‘narratively’ powerfully effective that I think individuals would rather contribute to causes individually rather than pooling money into a PAC first.
I’m less sure about corporate donations, but I don’t think they are as ready as individual families for this.
There’s a National Organization for Women. May as well be for men. Maybe our oath could be:
I am a man.
I can change.
If i have to.
I guess.
Indeed there are.
And the notion to begin with families and then with churches is also spot on.
However, there is a way to combine these two, and I’ve seen (maybe) a shift in how the suggestion I’m going to make has been “processed” within the churches.
Suggestion: begin with men-only prayer meetings held weekly. It must be men only. No women. they can (and usually do) organize their own women-only gatherings for prayer, often with no leadership from church leaders to do so.
In my first pastorate (44 years ago), I changed the Wednesday night prayer meeting to men only. It got a huge push back from many of the women, even though I assured them that they could come to the church house on Wednesday evenings and pray up a storm. But the men would meet only with other men for the same activity.
In my last pastorate (ended after 16 years in 2020 because of health-related retirement) I also set Wednesday night for a men-only meeting for prayer. No push back from the women at all (!). They even thanked me for doing that (!!).
Maybe it’s an irrelevant report I’m making. Or, maybe some women in our churches have at least a dim sense that it’s a good thing for their husbands, fathers, brothers to be in a male-only setting for something expressly spiritual.
A final observation: over the years of this male-only prayer meetings, it came to pass that conversation - serious conversation about a whole range of topics compelling to men - occupied about the same amount of time as the praying. I cannot see what happened to our prayers in the heavenly courts. I did see how the relationships among the men evolved over months and years. It was a very good thing to watch.
And to men-only prayer meetings, I would add: men-only evangelism. This is something which Promise Keepers used to do. Now, I know that the attitude to PK in Reformed circles ranges from thoughtfully critical down to downright snobbish, but they were on the right track.
Here’s why. In our culture(s), men learnt about faith, if they learnt at all, from their mothers or from female Sunday School teachers. Nothing wrong with that, and many men have come to faith that way. But for many more men, not having heard the Gospel from men, makes it more difficult for them to see how it relates to them as a man. Hearing the Gospel from another man is what often helps it to get through.
Example: for many years pre-Covid, the church I go to used to run something called “Beer & Carols” every Christmas. This was a men’s event where the men of the church were invited to bring their friends/workmates etc. We would sing carols, drink some beer, and the pastor would bring something of a Gospel message - enough to get the men thinking, anyway - and invite them on an Alpha course. Many took up the invitation.