Last week we began a series which which is exploring the relationship between masculinity and Christianity — mainly, why it is that the more a man embraces the former, the seemingly less likely he is to adopt the latter.Read more here.
In our first article, we laid out statistics which show that all around the world, and in almost every Christian church and denomination, women outnumber men. Women are far more likely to be involved in the Christian faith, to participate in church, and to feel that their religion is important to them. In addition, we demonstrated that this disparity is not rooted in the fact that females are simply more religious than males overall, as Christianity is the only major world religion where men are significantly less committed than women.
As we have documented in numerous articles on AoM, the traits and qualities that are considered “manly” have been consistent for thousands of years, and universal to cultures around the world. While a boy was born a male, he had to earn the title of man, and he did so by proving himself in tests of skill and self-control, developing his autonomy, self-reliance, and toughness, embracing risk, struggle, and conflict, and competing with his peers to earn status. Physical strength was valued, along with other martial virtues like courage; battlefield prowess has always been central to the code of masculinity. Overall, a male had to excel in the “3 P’s of Manhood” — Protection, Provision, and Procreation — in order to be considered a “real man.”
Manhood was never a private affair — a boy was initiated into it by his community and it had to be repeatedly re-proven in the public arena thereafter. A man was thus primarily concerned with his honor — with having a reputation worthy of the respect of his fellow men. To maintain that reputation, if he got pushed, he pushed back.
Finally, a man’s primary identity came from his membership in a tribe, and his primary social unit was the gang — a small, close-knit honor group. Honor groups were exclusive in nature — not every man could belong — and were suffused with an “us vs. them” dynamic. A man’s loyalty was intense — the willingness to sacrifice, to bleed, and even die for one’s people has always been central to the ancient code of masculinity — but such loyalty only extended to a man’s comrades and kin.
It is little wonder then that some have seen the Christian religion as positively antithetical to the central components of traditional masculinity.
From this perspective, Jesus is the paragon of the “soft,” gentle virtues traditionally associated more with women than men, like kindness, compassion, forgiveness, caring, chastity, and humility. This is the Jesus who walks beside you on the beach, and carries you through trials.
Rather than committing violence and seeking to triumph over one’s foes, he asks followers to turn the other cheek and to love their enemies. Rather than glorying in competition and status, Christians are to beware of pride, to avoid comparing themselves to others, and to seek complete humility.
The body is seen as less important than the soul and earthly status is meaningless in the kingdom of God; worldly success doesn’t make you “better” than other people, as all are alike unto God. Not only will the strong be saved alongside the weak, power and wealth are, if anything, a hindering block to salvation, rather than an advantage. Jesus promised that the meek and poor would be exalted, while the rich and mighty would be brought low.
The Christian way is open to all — it is universal, rather than exclusive. It asks believers to overcome their inherent propensity towards tribalism in order to embrace the brotherhood of man. Strangers are to be loved as much as kin, as much as oneself.
The opinions of others matter little in comparison to the judgment of God. A man’s honor is thus primarily private rather than public in nature; it doesn’t come from the approval of peers, but arises from the possession of inner integrity and a clean conscience.
Finally, Christianity is based on submission — dependence on a martyr king; followers of Jesus must kneel before their savior and rely entirely on his merits to be saved.
An argument can be made for many of the above imperatives constituting the components of human excellence, but it would be difficult to say they’re distinctly related to manly excellence. In fact, one would be hard pressed not to view such tenets as direct contradictions of the ancient code of manhood.
Christianity, seen this way, might make you a good man, but it won’t make you good at being a man.
...Defenders of the masculinity of Christianity don’t deny that many of the tenets of the Christian gospel are “soft” in nature, but argue that they are joined by an equal, if not greater number, of “hard” virtues and strenuous requirements that align with the code of manhood in many respects. In fact, there are those, like Catholic scholar Leon J. Podles who argue that the way of Christ is primarily masculine in nature — that “Women can participate in this spiritual masculinity, but men could be expected to have a greater natural understanding of the pattern.”
Podles and others say that while the loving, merciful, nurturing, gentle side of Jesus represents one part of his character, he has another, often ignored side — a lion in contrast to the better-known lamb — marked by traits like justice, boldness, power, and self-mastery. This is Jesus the carpenter, the desert camper, the whip-cracker.
The man who said to “judge not” roundly condemned his critics.
The compassionate healer who championed children, cleansed the temple in a righteous rage.
The gentle sage who spoke of lilies and sparrows, rebuked his friend as Satan incarnate, and declared he had not “come to bring peace but a sword.”
The teacher who admonished his followers to “love thy neighbor as thyself” called Gentiles dogs, and at first reserved the teaching of his message for his own people. And while those “others” were eventually able to fully adopt his message, the Christian gospel hardly disavowed its “us vs. them” ethos; Jesus had no problem drawing lines between the sheep and the goats — those who were part of his tribe, and those who had no place in it. All would be welcome, as long as they lived a strenuous code of ethics.
Sharp of tongue, deft in debate, and unafraid of conflict, challenging the status quo, or causing offense, Jesus was anything but safe and predictable. Far from hiding in private solitude, and playing it small, Jesus was a public figure, a revolutionary who rigorously confronted the establishment, and who preached such a confrontational and audacious message that he was ultimately killed for it.
...In fact, during his life critics called him a lestes — a word that meant an insurrectionist, rebel, pirate, bandit. Though the label was often associated with violent thievery, Jesus practiced what anthropologists call “social banditry” — groups of men operating on the margins of society who refuse to submit to the control and value system of the ruling elite, and who fight for the justice, independence, and emancipation of the common people. While the existing power structure considers them criminals, the exploited see these outlaws as their champions.
Like all bandits of the time, Jesus hung out with a gang — twelve comrades — and he invited others to share the same risky, subversive, challenging life with him — to become brothers in suffering and the fight against oppression and sin. Taking up one’s cross wasn’t for the faint of heart; physical courage was at times needed, and moral courage was required in spades.
While Jesus went to his death as a martyr, the ethos of laying down one’s life for one’s friends fits with the code of manhood, as does the way he bore that death (and its prior torture) with an ironclad stoicism.
While Jesus does not directly charge his followers with fighting human foes (though there have been those who have found an implicit justification for such in the name of a righteous cause), many of the faith’s adherents have seen the gospel as a call to continue Christ’s cause by engaging in another kind of warfare — one waged on the spiritual plane. The Bible is full of references both to contest — what the ancient Greeks called agon — and to war. Individuals wrestle with God (both metaphorically and literally), and the apostle Paul refers to believers as “athletes” who must “train” their souls and run the race set before them. Believers are to gird themselves about with spiritual “armor,” and wield the “sword of the spirit” in battling unseen forces and directly confronting the conflict between good and evil.
C.S. Lewis thought that Christians should conceive of the world as “enemy-occupied territory,” and of themselves as sort of secret agents. “Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us to take part in a great campaign of sabotage.”
St. Ignatius de Loyola, a Spanish knight who converted after being wounded in a physical battle, founded the Society of Jesus for “whoever desires to serve as a soldier of God” and organized the Jesuits around a martial ethos. Ignatius saw, in the call to the discipleship, something very similar to the summons of an earthly king who is assembling an army for battle, and is looking for those who will be willing to live hard and die hard in service to the mission ahead:
“Whoever wishes to join me in this enterprise must be content with the same food, drink, clothing etc. as mine. So, too, he must work with me by day, and watch with me by night, etc., that as he had a share in the toil with me, afterwards, he may share in the victory with me.”
Different scholars have lent a different order, and more or fewer steps to the journey, but its three big stages are separation, initiation, and return, and these are some of the basics contained within those stages:
Hero receives a call to adventure
Leaves his ordinary life
Receives supernatural aid
Crosses a threshold that separates him from the world he has known
Gathers allies for his quest
Faces test, trials, and challenges
Undergoes an ordeal
Dies a physical or spiritual death
Undergoes transformation and apotheosis (becoming godlike)
Gains a reward or magic elixir
Journeys back home
Shares the reward and wisdom he’s gained with others
Becomes master of the two worlds he’s passed through
Gains greater freedom
...The pattern of the hero’s journey manifests itself in the rites of passage that tribes around the world used to initiate a young man into manhood: a boy would separate himself from the comfortable world of his mother, gather with male mentors, undergo a painful test of skill and/or toughness, die to his immaturity, rise to his manhood, and return to the tribe both with greater responsibilities — committed to serve and to sacrifice — and with new freedoms.
The story of Jesus also fits the pattern of the hero’s journey. A son descends from heaven, and with the supernatural aid of his heavenly father, becomes a mortal on earth. He gathers allies for his mission, faces tests and trials, undergoes a sacrificial ordeal, dies and resurrects, returns to the earth to announce that the power of sin and death has been conquered, and then ascends back into the heavens.
...Podles argues that “For all human beings, life is a struggle, but men know that it is their duty in a special way to be in the thick of that struggle, to confront the hard places in life and strive to know, in the fullest sense, what the mysteries of life and death are all about.” Christianity then, in his view, offers precisely the kind of epic, heroic struggle that appeals to the masculine soul.
So is the Christian religion more feminine or masculine in nature? Is it inherently better suited for men or women? Is it the faith of slaves or masters? Milquetoast or heroic?
Well, that depends on how you look at it, and who you ask.
Clearly, there are two sides to the coin. Indeed, Christianity is like that optical illusion where if you look at it one way, you see a woman, and if you look at it another, you see a lamp.
Its emphasis on kindness, acceptance, forgiveness, and humility represent those traits traditionally associated with femininity.
Its requirements of suffering, sacrifice, self-mastery, conflict, and contest represent those traits traditionally associated with masculinity.
Most Christians would say that setting up a masculine/feminine contrast creates a false dichotomy, and believe that Christ represents the perfect synergy of soft and hard qualities — that in fact this harmonious blend of all that constitutes human excellence is part of what makes him a god worth worshipping.
h/t Grim
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