Now post on Warhorn Media by Eric Conn
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It’s interesting how easy it is to pose as masculine online, and how hard it is to pose as masculine in person.
Actually, it’s easy to pose in real life, too. But it’s hard to pose once the work starts. This is why many men who have never had fathers teach them how to work with their hands are insecure and ashamed about their inability. It’s true that physical prowess is manly. But then he says…
Men who stop at the physical are dead on arrival when it comes to building the Kingdom (or their household, to connect to another current theme in the discussion of manhood).
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That was a great article. I’ve also found the real battle of today is around masculinity and the feminized church. With the exception of the edification of alcohol and tobacco, it was a great article. We definitely need men focused on this today.
This hits hard, because here I am, with gifts in writing, editing, and publishing, not doing very much at all in this arena. If anyone has advice for how the layman should approach all of this, throw it down.
I think I saw Joe Carter say TGC readership is 48% men somewhere recently. I can dig it up if needs. I wonder which of Carter and Maxwell are correct?
I’m sympathetic to a lot of what is being said in these videos but isn’t there a danger of falling into the victim group game with this line of thinking?
The call to be upstanding Dads and Elders is rooted in Scripture. Isn’t part of that caring about the family/flock that’s right before you and not fretting about these macro trends? Macro trends that likely wouldn’t have manifested nearly as strongly had the Dads/Elders stuck to the narrow path of saying/believing/living the non-trendy things the Bible has to say.
Provided the content made for men isn’t about cultivating a shared sense of grievance and building us up in the Word then it sounds great.
It was while I was backing away from these trends in TGC, CT and rest that I stumbled into Sanityville!
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I’ll confess, I have a bit of the herd mentality, and I think I will always struggle with that. I remember beginning seminary with a lofty goal somewhat equivalent of learning the original language and context so well that I would never again depend on other men to explain it to me. Now I laugh at my naïveté and grandioseness, and strive to find men to emulate who I think are following Christ in leading His church, even if they don’t all agree with one another, sometimes sharply. I just want to stand on the right shoulders, and try to push the ball a little further down the field, or at least hold the line.
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I wonder which of Carter and Maxwell are correct?
Carter, I’m guessing, but they’re a “certain type” of male. Love,
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cultivating a shared sense of grievance
Yes, no more victims, please! Esp male ones. Still, no one puts up his guard unless he hears a clearnote of warning, and the warnings against androgyny and effeminacy today must shove the macro in our faces to demonstrate how ashamed of our failure to care for our families and churches we should be. Instead of the pulpit leading the world, the world has been leading the pulpit, and now we have all the pastors trying to copy certain celebrity pastors’ abuse of adverbs—which is precisely the sort of verbal effeminacy these publishers pay for. Love,
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Love it
twenty characters to get the “love it” to go up
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Churches with more men than women feature the men, not just the pastor, actively participating in the worship service, as per I Cor 14:23-33. They teach men to interact, not just to sit down and shut up. If all prophesy, the unbelieving visitor will acknowledge that God is present. All are able to prophesy that all be edified. If something is revealed to the 2nd prophet, the 1st prophet sins by not letting him say it. If “prophesy” be taken strictly, and men speaking word-for-word the word of God should submit to interruption (as Peter did at Pentecost), how much more mere preachers! If preachers were always right, they needn’t submit for correction; if always clear, not for clarification; if always complete on the topic at hand, not for someone to point out something missed.
Definitely a post that was really needed.
I love the cigars and theology crowd found in Reformed circles especially at my current church, Faith OPC in Garland, TX. They lead, love, and shepherd their families and the flock with such grace. I’m quite certain they don’t pay any attention to TGC or the evangelical publishing world. Too busy reading the Reformers to worry about guys like Chandler.
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One more note, if you’re interested in a flawed, but truly man’s man, read Field Marshal: The Life and Death of Erwin Rommel by Daniel Allen Butler. He truly gave his life for his wife and son.
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The rot has been there for a long time – read “The Feminization of American Culture” by Ann Douglas
Are you part of a church that practices what you’ve described based on your understanding of 1 Corinthians 14?
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Andrew, So your idea of a sermon is more of a back and forth? In our more liturgical church, we definitely have the men involved, but that interaction is through the responsive readings and prayers, singing, reciting the creeds, etc.
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New here. I read the article with interest and agree with a lot of it.
However I think that it skips over why things are the way they are. Why does publishing and the current book industry seem to pitch toward feminism? Why does it always seem to eventually veer off in that direction?
I suggest that men are more suspicious of novelty than women are. And most modern books seem to offer little more than novelty, from whatever area on the spectrum they originate. All the -isms are enough to make one’s head hurt. I tend to feel like I’m on a busy tech expo floor and all the booth denizens are screaming for my dollar.
I tend to look at the current first-world model of the “successful pastor”: preach for a while, amass a following, amass a bigger following, write a book, go on the conference circuit, get an agent, etc., etc.
I am suspicious of this sort of thing and suspicious of giving my money to people who armchair quarterback the culture - even if I agree with them. I guess I tend to think that most of what has already been written is pretty sufficient. I look at my shelves full of books - such as Pilgrim’s Progress, Spurgeon’s Sermons, the Institutes, Ryle, Hooker, Augustine. This is good stuff. I tend to think that men should read more ODG (old dead guys) than stuff from today. Like Ryle, I am convinced that the old paths are best. There is a flimsiness about much modern writing that I think is a result of what Neil Postman warned the culture about in the 1980’s - the saturation of the mind in video and the loss of contextualization. This leads ironically to a lot of slap-dash analysis and emotionalism even in the criticism of emotionalism.
Thus, I don’t think the idea is to somehow grow the publication offerings for men because I think men don’t really care. It’s a little like how Air America failed - leftists just don’t do talk radio; the intrinsic need for video to drive visceral reactions make leftism a bad fit for the medium. Similarly, I think men are going to be suspicious at the BOOK YOU ABSOLUTELY MUST BUY, IT WILL IMPROVE YOUR WALK WITH THE LORD!!! Maybe I’m painting with too broad a brush, but I think men are too skeptical about modern theological punditry in general.
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Welcome Eric. Great addition to the conversation.
Yep. My understanding is that, for example, language changes, such as adopting politically correct phraseology, are driven by women adopting them first. (@tbbayly may be able to give us a citation or at least which book that came from.)
Novelty is the easy way to generate excitement. In a culture that doesn’t recognize its own true needs or feel its sickness, even truly useful content isn’t likely to move the meter much. Add the reliance of most on social media to filter their content, and the issue is amplified, so that even men who would be interested aren’t likely to see it.
Agreed. And so does the author of the original piece. However, there is always a fight of today that we need to be fighting, and that means producing content of one sort or another, unless we are content to abandon others to the error while avoiding it ourselves. This is precisely what Ezekiel is warned against.
This is true, but maybe not in the way you mean it. I mean, part of it is that men are less convinced by the obviously bogus claims and idiotic novelty, but a big part of it is that many men aren’t reading at all, including the ODGs. They can’t be bothered to do the hard work of studying and reading.
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Thanks for the insightful thoughts. I am not as much of an Eeyore as I seem and agree that there is a need to contend in our own era. Merry Christmas!
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