New Male Spirituality II

I have many letters from Christian women who find today’s ideal Christian man boring and even creepy. His lack of get-up-and-go sets off warning flares in their feminine souls. He’s so distasteful that some women say they do not want to get married. And those who are married to one wish they hadn’t said “I do.”

Writes the wife of a Christian man low on what history recognizes as gumption, assertiveness, and readiness: “I struggle to love my husband, but I no longer respect him. We’re separated and contemplating divorce. I’ve spent endless nights crying over what I’ve come to see as my sweet Christian husband who everyone else loves but who I can’t stand anymore. He is so unreliable and unmanly. He doesn’t know how to act like a man.”

Sometimes Christian men recognize this deficit in themselves: “Before getting married women told me how pleasant I was. Now that I’m married, my wife tells me that she wishes I were more alive and motivated. She says I’m not as assertive as a married man with two kids should be. She’s right. But something inside me tells me it’s wrong to stand up and behave like a man.” I know this sounds harsh, but I’m willing to bet that his “something” is sermons he hears at church.

Sometimes their cry for help is shorter and more haunting. “When am I going to feel like a man?” asked one husband after the latest GodMen conference, a man also on the verge of divorce.

We expect conservative churches to point out the lack of masculine balance in church, but it’s also being pointed out by more moderate to liberal churches. Writes reporter Douglass Todd, “There is now a popular Christian hymn, Spirit of Gentleness, which includes the line ‘Our women see visions; our men clear their eyes.’ The hymn suggests, not too subtly, that women have got it together, while men are misguided. Is that the best vision of manhood that boys and men can hope for from liberal spirituality?”

David Guiliano of the United Church of Canada is concerned that “mainline churches reflect the casual devaluation of men that occurs in mass entertainment and advertising, where men are often comically portrayed as incompetent bumblers.”

Another moderate to liberal Christian, humorist Garrison Keillor, lamented decades ag “Years ago manhood was an opportunity for achievement, and now it is a problem to be overcome. Being ‘all right’ is a dismal way to spend your life, and guys are not equipped for it. We are lovers and artists and adventurers, meant to be noble, free-ranging and foolish, like dogs, not competing for a stamp of approval as a ‘Friend of Womanhood.’”

The ideal man is being redefined before our bewildered eyes. The word masculinity is only about 100 years old. It never appears in the Bible, though examples of it (and its lack) sure do. We men search for an understanding of it the way a young buck pants for water. And sometimes we find it in dubious sources. A man who takes his understanding of manhood from MTV, pro athletes--or even more pathetically, pro wrestling--will have a very different definition than one who takes his understanding of manliness from the Marine Corps or Peace Corps. In the coming months this blog will provide a new definition that’s older, wiser, and time-honored.