The search for a better Christian man
Last year at our former church, I headed up planning for the first men’s conference in well over a decade. The event came at a time of deep staff and member frustration with most of the present and past elders, whose history of shirking responsibility and the devastating consequences were coming to light. The senior pastor —who had never fully succeeded in enforcing the entirely male, authoritarian belief that is complementarianism— had finally left. There was a widespread sense in the mostly younger, diverse congregation that it was past time for the church to move away from the harshness of the past.
The conference itself was a hopeful experience. It was a good mix of robust discussion about what is considered “essential” in the Christian faith, planning future groups and events, and an open opportunity to begin building something new. The immediate aftermath was even more energetic, with men stepping up left and right to start rebuilding the sense of community that a handful of complementarian elders had destroyed. Many were refreshed that we were asking them to be their best selves and use their gifts, instead of trying to force them into a cookie-cutter, performative masculinity they weren’t designed for. Several women in the church even remarked that they noticed the near-instant change underway and were hopeful the men would finally catch up to them.
But there was a small red flag during the conference. We had split up into several small groups to capture as many needs, hopes, and ideas as we could to better serve men moving forward. The feedback was helpful and creative. It was encouraging to see common themes that such a diverse room could gather around.
Well, almost all of it was common and encouraging. When the stack of papers was handed to me at the podium, it was impossible to ignore the words aggressively scrawled on the top sheet: WE NEED BIBLICAL MANHOOD.
That was it. No ideas, no suggestions, no specifics…nothing.
I barely managed to stifle a laugh. The rest of the comments expressed the need for community, learning, listening, serving, doing life together... everything you’d hope to see. All but this one that I knew was from a former elder with a checkered past. The complete lack of self-awareness in offering the root cause of the church’s problems as the solution had to be comical, or it would have just been depressing.
Sadly, as is often the case in these situations, biblical manhood got the final say. News broke at the end of the conference that the former senior pastor was a closet alcoholic and had verbally abused staff. His wife had just been arrested for child abuse. A handful of past and present elders apparently had some knowledge of these issues and had swept them under the rug. Stories began pouring out of how those men had verbally abused past and present staff. Newer elders who were not responsible for the disaster offered a sincere apology, but those responsible for the mess refused to join in. And over the next two weeks, a wave of deceit, misleading promises, and gaslighting were unleashed by bad authority figures against members who demanded answers and accountability.
Considering that many examples of men in the Bible are brittle failures, I suppose they were at least honest about wanting to adhere to “biblical manhood.”
Life in the rigidly gendered in-between
I don’t share this story to express pain from harm done or to vent. Having lived through a church calamity before that was driven in large part by a crisis of masculinity, we were mostly prepared to deal with the moral rot that was uncovered. I was merely one of many people who sought out and told the truth without gossiping. We knew when it was time to leave and avoided sustaining serious damage. We found a new church home. We’re doing just fine.
I share this because it is illustrative of this strange moment in church life here in the American South. Growing numbers of Christians are searching for a healthier default starting place not only for our churches, but also for future generations. The old and decaying is dying off, yet still holds sway in older leaders who control decision-making seats and financial resources. The new has not yet arrived. Many of us don’t even know what the new is despite getting glimpses of its goodness.
This is not the first time in Church history that pressing the reset button has become the only viable option left. Those who benefit from the “old ways” —a way that is in fact historically recent and broken beyond repair—are clinging to the past, screaming atop the crumbling ramparts that salvation can only be found in the fragility of “biblical manhood.”
Ironically, those ramparts are crumbling from the inside. It is men and women in the fold who are blasting their way out to reach centuries back and learn from the wisdom of earlier generations of Christians, even as they look forward to what reform and renewal should look like in our context.
We are living atop these ruins of the in-between for the foreseeable future. Death and life. Despair and hope. False starts and real room to build something new. And, like so much of American culture today, mounting frustrations with rigid expectations of gender are a driving force in fractured church life. I keep asking myself this question: what does a healthier default for masculinity look like?
I don’t have hard answers, but please consider this my modest contribution to the conversation.
Do we even need a default starting place for men?
The cultural winds of much of the United States right now is various forms of you do you. To a certain extent I have no issue with this. Expecting everyone to believe and behave in the exact same way is as silly as it is unrealistic. People are different because we were designed to be. But the overtly strong individualism found in this prevailing attitude can easily drift into self-worship and seeing other people as less than. Christians are no more immune to this than anyone else. Heck, we’re sometimes the worst offenders.
Tending to default starting places remains important for this reason. Every culture has defaults whether we want them or like them or not. It’s the nature of being human. When these are healthy, flexible, and well-tended to more people can thrive. When they are noxious, intransigent, and left to drift people in more extreme camps often benefit at the expense of others.
This truth may be easiest to see when it comes to the conversation on gender in relation to the dominant church culture here in the American South. Indeed, merely trying to have a moderate conversation on gender in complementarian spaces is often not permitted. Men are required to perform leadership —whether they are actually good leaders or not doesn’t seem to matter that much— and women are required to submit, regardless of their calling, passions, and skills. Anything less is frowned upon at best and ascribed to sin at worst.
Broken theology plays a role here. The brittle framework of complementarianism requires evermore complicated intellectual games and verbal abuse to hold ground against mounting dissent stemming from harm done, church scholarship and history, and easier access to other church subcultures that are home to much richer and deeper forms of the Christian faith.
But this is only one side of the issue. Complementarian spaces often have no mechanism to reflect on the ways that theology gets warped when it is pushed onto people’s lives and their church’s culture. A heavy focus on “protecting” notions of absolute truth and enforcing views of theological and cultural “correctness” often leaves leaders blinded to the impact they are having on real people and on outside perceptions of their church. The men’s conference anecdote I shared at the beginning is a perfect illustration of this reality.
All this to say, American culture, broader church subcultures, and even individual churches are going to have default starting places for men and women. Ensuring those are as healthy and good as possible is everyone’s responsibility. The problem today with regard to masculinity, at least in a lot of churches in my neck of the woods, is that we’ve replaced men’s character and spiritual formation with rules and expectations. And that is largely a reflection of how American culture approaches this problem, too.
The default options for men right now are…not great
Much of the debate around masculinity seems to be more concerned about what men should and shouldn’t do, not who they should be. This is a necessary part of the conversation considering the uncovering of so much toxic behavior by men both inside and outside the church. Again, when cultural defaults are noxious, intransigent, or left to drift, people in more extreme camps will benefit at the expense of others.
This is exactly what is happening with masculinity right now. Many men were handed something broken that we are increasingly rejecting, but we are being set adrift at the same time. Growing numbers of men feel lost, lonely, and unvalued as a result. And the slim roster of new starting places leaves much to be desired.
On the secular right and in Christian nationalist spaces, broken ideas of patriarchy are descending from staunchly conservative into transgressive malevolence. Dominating others, even to the point of physical assault, is considered masculine. Who needs authoritarianism when you can have fascism? Many men rightfully view this subculture as absurd, but writing it off for absurdity alone is dangerous because of the fallout it is having on many others.
Large swaths of conservative evangelicalism are going down a similar path, albeit with its own quirks. This is easiest to see in the upper echelons of American evangelical consumerism and how beliefs and ideas there filter down into local churches. Just one example is The Gospel Coalition —an organization with a massive reach— which continues sliding down the slippery slope of fundamentalism and trafficking in men’s breeding fetishes and phallus worship, openly calling for the weaponization of children, and winking-and-nodding to condoning mass killing along the way.
Secular moderates and self-declared centrist Christians are often a weird mix of exhaustion and out-of-touch elitism. Exhaustion is found in men who wish to avoid conflict at all costs, which is understandable given the fractured state of American and church life since at least 2016. This “exhausted majority” includes a lot of thoughtful people, but they aren’t much of a majority as long as they’re self-silencing on the sidelines. Meanwhile, out-of-touch elitism spews from male Christian influencers who loudly try to position themselves as being at the center —they’re usually right of center in word and deed— by looking down with haughtiness on all who disagree with them and acting as if they alone are equipped to be the arbiters of truth. It’s as obnoxious as it is divisive.
The more liberal Christian and secular progressive ends of the spectrum offer some good suggestions for what men should do. Be an ally, believe women who have been harmed, listen to others…these are things men can and should be doing and, in fact, many already are. But there is little to no organized thought on the left about who men should be. To make matters worse, in some circles one can even find an underlying, false belief that all men are inherently bad, untrustworthy, and incapable of changing.
Surveying our present landscape, it’s obvious there is no real vision for masculinity worth aspiring to as a starting place, be it inside or outside the church. At best men are given a script to follow. Some of those are good and even helpful, others are somehow even worse than what we inherited. A lot of it is more of the same. None of it gets to the core issue of being that many men are struggling with.
But just because there is no apparent vision worth aspiring to does not mean there are no visions. I’m far from the first to notice this; but, because there are no perceived alternatives worth aspiring to right now, some men who could be persuaded otherwise are heading into unhealthier forms of masculinity. To a certain degree we can’t blame them. Men have to go somewhere whether they are Christian or not or in a local church or not. Both American culture and the Church’s unwillingness to offer men a better way of being is aiding and abetting darker forms of masculinity and paralysis.
The obvious questions we fail to see
Last Fall, a men’s bible study at a larger east coast church invited me to share virtually about a piece I wrote on reformation and faith. I kept my talk brief as conversations and Q&A tend to be more beneficial in these environments. The resulting discussion inevitably drifted into the masculinity crisis plaguing so many churches. Several men affirmed their church was not immune to any of it, but much of what was suggested concerning solutions was more about what men should do, not who they should be and the structures and beliefs that prevent them from getting there.
I don’t even know how many such conversations like this I’ve been privy to that get stuck in this rut. And I get it. In more fundamentalist and evangelical churches especially, masculinity is more or less a performance. It is so enculturated we are blinded to our inability to cultivate something deeper in our very being. Who you are doesn’t matter. Your giving the appearance that you are playing the role and following the script very much does.
One of the men eventually asked who a good role model for masculinity could be. The suggestions included names familiar in Christian circles such as Tim Keller, Eugene Peterson, Esau McCaulley, and Dallas Willard. Someone said Mr. Rogers and, after a smattering of laughter gave way to a truly thoughtful explanation, a lot of them saw merit in it. But there was a name noticeably absent from their list.
No one suggested Jesus.
I’ve found it baffling for a while now that Jesus rarely comes up in conversations about gender. Much of his ministry involved pushing past cultural expectations and roles concerning gender to minister directly to women and men considered to be less than. Here we are 2,000 years later and, as churches today have tried to articulate a more nuanced vision of masculinity, we’ve merely managed to fall back into defining roles. Two primary camps emerged: the complementarians and the egalitarians. Ideas of masculinity on both sides became rooted in theological positioning. Being able to articulate roles and expectations, and then perform them, became the definitions of masculinity and femininity.
This has created glaringly obvious problems, especially in the complementarian camp. For starters, it gave men a sense of purpose (leadership) without the tools needed to achieve desirable outcomes (healthy and whole humans and peaceful faith communities). Some men got near-absolute power and were never taught how to use it responsibly, or worse, were taught to use it for anti-Gospel ends.
This has also prevented Christians of many different stripes from seeing the immense wisdom in Scripture. We pigeonhole ourselves to specific interpretations of Paul’s writings on marriage, “leadership,” and relationships in the New Testament. We already assume the Bible has something to say about everything; as such, when Scripture is silent —which it is on many issues as it is not a modern book— or contradicts itself, we start taking passages out of context to create answers that are segregated from Christ and broader, time-tested Christian virtues (Galatians 5:22-23). This is how we get fragile and aggressive men ranting about the virtues of male headship and trashing the fruits of the spirt in the middle of abuse crises, and calling it righteous every step of the way.
We have been trained to avoid Jesus by downgrading the Bible into something it’s not: a rulebook that needs enforcing. But doing this also raises many other questions. Do we do this because, deep down, we think what Jesus offers men will be too hard? Do we say Jesus is sufficient, but actually don’t believe it? Is it because we’ve failed to see who Jesus really is?
I honestly don’t know how to answer these questions. I know they make me uncomfortable. What I am saying is that we should at least be honest about what we are doing and ask the obvious question while we’re at it.
What would it look like if we made Jesus the model for masculinity?
So much of what Jesus taught about was transforming underlying heart habits so that our outlook, actions, and world around us can change, too. The conversation on gender in many church settings does not reflect this. Far too often it is laser-focused on defending the gender expectations we’ve created. All we’re doing is offering a slightly-tweaked form of what the world offers. We should not be surprised that growing numbers of men are leaving churches. We’re not countercultural. We are the culture.
Developing good character seems to be the key distinction Jesus offers. There are far too few conversations in churches about how to cultivate good character that would allow men to carry themselves well. We tell men do this instead of helping them learn how to be like Jesus. So, what would it actually look like if we made a shift toward him?
If the character of the Christian man strived to meet the character of Jesus, then men would reflect the love of the God of the cosmos internally and externally. The emphasis on corporate leadership culture and culture warring would no longer exist. Indeed, men would be much more interested in giving up power than clinging to it. Grace would no longer be overly cheap. We would be emotionally-attuned to the communities and families we are a part of instead of trying to carry out a role that degrades us into being cheap, miniaturized versions of a fragile God. We would rest with God in community with others. It’s not a jump to think that the male loneliness epidemic would be thrown into reverse. That could spread into the broader culture as churches would have something of value to offer men.
And yes, this would also deeply change how men behave, especially when it comes to traits that many view as toxic. Rather than flipping tables out of fragility or defensiveness, men would recognize that the one time Jesus truly lost his cool (Mark 11:15-19) was when the temple had become a “den of robbers.” Imagine living in a world in which Christian men were truly angry at abuse in the church and did something about it instead of being ticked off every time a woman speaks the truth. Imagine if men actually worked with women to hold to account the robbers in our midst today instead of defending them at all costs.
If Jesus was the model for masculinity, then we would walk in the Way of the Lamb. We would live as if heaven were coming to earth. Men would be a part of something bigger than themselves instead of feeling like they are supposed to be above or outside of community. Men, women, and children would enjoy all the gifts that so much of American culture and so many churches have yelled at men to cast aside. We would be closer to the beautiful picture cast in Galatians 3:23-29:
Now before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed. Therefore the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be reckoned as righteous by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.
Closing Thoughts
Good character is not developed over night. Neither is a culture that makes it easier for men to grow into being healthier. Replacing consumerism with spiritual formation is no easy task. Formation has no shortcuts, but it does leave flexibility for men to learn about who they are and lean into the best version of themselves over time. It makes tending to a Jesus-centered masculinity much, much easier over a longer haul as the culture of masculinity changes with men who are changing.
Practically speaking, I think the first step men who feel lost and unvalued can take is to see the Imago Dei in themselves. Doing so teaches us that we are more than what we do and are capable of doing. We have intrinsic value because of who we are. We can be redeemed because of who Jesus is. Most all of today’s visions for masculinity do not begin here. I can’t think of a better place to start. I, at least, have found this to be life-giving.
We must also never forget that men are not just being discipled into whoever we believe Jesus to be, but also into a local church and whatever subculture —denominational or otherwise— that church is a part of. It matters that the culture men are being discipled into is steadily becoming more healthy and whole. If the culture he is being brought into is sick, the sickness will infect him with time. No man is an island.
We have to walk and chew gum at the same time. We have to pay attention to Jesus. We have to teach ourselves and be taught by other men and women who are out ahead of us. We have to constantly remind each other that being better is possible. And we have to bring in more men and women around us to figure out what the future of men will look like. This has to be done in community. There is no other way.
Doing these things will not be easy. They fly in the face of much of what the world and many churches are offering. Most of today’s gatekeepers have proven unable or unwilling to provide men a healthier starting place. Thankfully, the Great Gatekeeper is always ready. We should listen to what he has to say (John 14). The answers we seek begin and end in him.
I explore faith and church culture in the American South from Memphis, TN. Never miss an article by signing up for my newsletter and subscribing to the podcast. You can also become a member or leave a tip to help keep this site free and open to all.
