Anyone who has seen the film or the play Seven Brides for Seven Brothers knows that it is about seven wild backwoods men who become civilized through the process of learning to interact with women. But what makes it fascinating, and very biblical, is that it isnʼt just about seven brothers marrying seven women.

A guest post by Steven Opp

In Seven Brides, the story is about one brother, the “head”, or the Adam (which just happens to be the characterʼs name) getting married, and then his “body” of brothers following his example. This is the pluralization or spiritualization of man. It moves from a physical one-man to a sevenfold spiritual man.

I like to say theology is as easy as 1-2-3 because the Trinity is found everywhere, and it is the unseen reason why this musical works so well: it is tuned in at a very deep level to the shape of humanity and the ways in which we image God. Whenever you see three related concepts, you can probably bet they are Trinitarian. With the aid of what I hope is a familiar plot, let’s take a look at how the three persons of Trinity are expressed in four earthly domains. This will allow us to make some correspondences between the domains so we can hear how each of these realms “speaks” to the others. This probably sounds complicated and technical, but give it a go and you will see it is quite straightforward and intuitive.

Line 1:

Father

The first part of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers is the “Father” section because it is a song of creation. The Father is the one who speaks the creation into being. Any story that starts with a man joyfully singing about what he is creating is a story that starts by showing a Father. And what is Adam creating here? “Pretty and trim”, “Heavenly eyes”—he basically sings his bride into existence and by the end of the song he has found exactly what he is singing about!

Priest

Among all the rude men Millie has encountered as a waitress, Adam is set apart/holy. He is covered in animal skins as one who is ready to sacrifice for her: “Iʼd swap my gun and Iʼd swap my mule… Ifʼn you would say ʻI doʼ”.

Physical

As mentioned, Adam is in animal skins. He is singing about Millieʼs physical beauty:

“Bless Your Beautiful Hide!” Like the first man, he looks around until he sees a mate suitable to him. The attraction between them is almost purely biological, love at first sight, as she doesnʼt know him from, well, Adam. Natural as natural can be!

Husband

The focus in this section is on Adam, as he is the one singing the opening number. This is in contrast to the following sections of the film.

Line 2:

Son

The heart of the film is the most “incarnational” part of the narrative. Millie, who really is the “savior” of the story, has left the heavenly town and is now living with “sinners,” the ruffian brothers. She wins their allegiance through serving them and disciples them in the ways of courtship. She teaches them to pray and to turn the other cheek.

King

While Millie rules the house in regards to social matters, Adam leads the brothers to war both in the barn-raising fight and is their Roman Emperor in their campaign to steal the “Sobbinʼ Women”.

Social

While the early scenes in the film focused on physical attraction and beautiful landscapes, the middle of the story is about the social interactions, mostly between the brothers and the women: dancing, kidnapping, fighting, reconciling, etc.

Wife

Besides the Sobbinʼ Women song, most of the screen time in this section is about Millie. She is the main character, and the center of the entire story is her rebuking of Adam for leading the charge to steal the girls. This is when the Pentecostal/bridal fire falls, as happens at the center of every good narrative.

An interesting side note about this fire falling: It divides the social construction of the brothers, separating head from body, as we see in the Ascension offering in Leviticus one, pictured in the ascension of Moses on Sinai, and fulfilled in the ascension of Christ. She has in effect circumcised the family. Adam decides to go up the mountain to the hunting cabin for the winter, while the brothers are banished to sleep in the barn.

Line 3:

Holy Spirit

Seven is a spiritual number. The seven married brothers at the end of the film represent the spiritual man, as opposed to the one physical father-man at the beginning. The spiritualizing of a man is the pluralization of a man. The Bible begins with a physical Adam and ends with the spiritual Adam who has seven spirits (Rev. 3:1, 4:5). His fruit, his multiplication, his “seed” is not merely physical or social but also ethical, a new animus, a new heart for a people.

Also, the Person of the Spirit is the relationship between the Father and the Son. The final section concerns reunification, the reunion of the women with their fathers, the town with the backwoods family, and Adam and Millie.

Prophet

As the Spirit is the bond between Father and Son, so the prophet is the link between priest and king. Prophets counsel kings about the things of God. Prophets also have insight into the future, and can move armies with words. Adam is a prophet when he tells the brothers that if they donʼt return the girls to their families that they will be in constant conflict with them for years to come. The brothers heed the words of the prophet.

Ethical

As the Spirit is the bond between the Father and Son, the ethical is the unity between physical and social. It is voluntarily synthesizing your nature and nurture for the greater good, and usually involves some kind of “giving back.” The brothers put their natural strength to use in an ethical quest to chase down the women who are running from their families in order to return them. This results in peace and finally in marriage, which is an expression of the ethical heart of any culture, combining the physical (sex) and social (covenant) to open the future (succession).

Child

This Spirit section is about connections. The connection between husband and wife is the children. It is the news that Adam has had a child which causes him to return and reconcile with Millie. Also, having his own child is what internally motivated Adam to tell his brothers not to use violence to defend their women since he now understands how the girlsʼ fathers felt when their daughters were taken. He now has the same spirit as the men of the city. He is no longer just a natural man, a man of the woods. He is now a civilized man, a man of the people.

(Note from Mike Bull: Steven wrote this post as a development of his insightful comments on a rant by Tim Bayly criticising a post by Rich Bledsoe, where Tim sadly fails to understand Rich before ridiculing him.)

See also A Titanic Reality.

Alastair Roberts has some wise things to say about rational public debate on important issues being hampered by the new culture of “tolerance.” Of special interest to me are his observations concerning the nature of the recent spat involving Doug Wilson, Jared Wilson and Rachel Held Evans. I have had similar experiences in online discussions. I’m relying on and presenting facts and somehow the other side is irate that facts are being presented. And the fact-free, vitriolic, ad hominem comebacks would make my hair curl if I had any.

A perfect illustration of this is the fact that the best argument those lobbying for same sex marriage had against the ACL’s and Sydney Archibishop’s statements this week concerning the health risks of certain behaviours boiled down to, “Those statistics are offensive.” Illogical as that statement is to me, there is a weird “shark-hat” internal logic at work after all. Here’s a (rather lengthy) excerpt from Alastair, which not only reveals the problem but also explains to me the complete lack of a sense of humour (or playfulness) in our opposition.

Contrasting Forms of Discourse

In observing the interaction between Pastor Wilson and his critics in the recent debate, I believe that we were witnessing a collision of two radically contrasting modes of discourse. The first mode of discourse, represented by Pastor Wilson’s critics, was one in which sensitivity, inclusivity, and inoffensiveness are key values, and in which persons and positions are ordinarily closely related. The second mode of discourse, displayed by Pastor Wilson and his daughters, is one characterized and enabled by personal detachment from the issues under discussion, involving highly disputational and oppositional forms of rhetoric, scathing satire, and ideological combativeness.

When these two forms of discourse collide they are frequently unable to understand each other and tend to bring out the worst in each other. The first form of discourse seems lacking in rationality and ideological challenge to the second; the second can appear cruel and devoid of sensitivity to the first. To those accustomed to the second mode of discourse, the cries of protest at supposedly offensive statements may appear to be little more than a dirty and underhand ploy intentionally adopted to derail the discussion by those whose ideological position can’t sustain critical challenge. However, these protests are probably less a ploy than the normal functioning of the particular mode of discourse characteristic of that community, often the only mode of discourse that those involved are proficient in.

To those accustomed to the first mode of discourse, the scathing satire and sharp criticism of the second appears to be a vicious and personal attack, driven by a hateful animus, when those who adopt such modes of discourse are typically neither personally hurt nor aiming to cause such hurt. Rather, as this second form of discourse demands personal detachment from issues under discussion, ridicule does not aim to cause hurt, but to up the ante of the debate, exposing the weakness of the response to challenge, pushing opponents to come back with more substantial arguments or betray their lack of convincing support for their position. Within the first form of discourse, if you take offence, you can close down the discourse in your favour; in the second form of discourse, if all you can do is to take offence, you have conceded the argument to your opponent, as offence is not meaningful currency within such discourse.

I also don’t think that sufficient attention is given to the manner in which differing forms of education prepare persons for participation in these different modes of discourse. There is a form of education – increasingly popular over the last few decades – which most values cooperation, collaboration, quietness, sedentariness, empathy, equality, non-competitiveness, conformity, a communal focus, inclusivity, affirmation, inoffensiveness, sensitivity, non-confrontation, a downplaying of physicality, and an orientation to the standard measures of grades, tests, and a closely defined curriculum (one could, with the appropriate qualifications, speak of this as a ‘feminization’ of education). Such a form of education encourages a form of public discourse within which there is a shared commitment and conformity to the social and ideological dogmas and values of liberal society, where everyone feels secure and accepted and conflict is avoided, but at the expense of independence of thought, exposure to challenge, the airing of deep differences, and truth-driven discourse.

Faced with an opposing position that will not compromise in the face of its calls for sensitivity and its cries of offence, such a mode of discourse lacks the strength of argument to parry challenges. Nor does it have any means by which to negotiate or accommodate such intractable differences within its mode of conversation. Consequently, it will typically resort to the most fiercely antagonistic, demonizing, and personal attacks upon the opposition. While firm differences can be comfortably negotiated within the contrasting form of discourse, a mode of discourse governed by sensitivities and ‘tolerance’ cannot tolerate uncompromising difference. Without a bounded and rule-governed realm for negotiating differences, antagonism becomes absolute and opposition total. Supporters of this ‘sensitive’ mode of discourse will typically try, not to answer opponents with better arguments, but to silence them completely as ‘hateful’, ‘intolerant’, ‘bigoted’, ‘misogynistic’, ‘homophobic’, etc.

A completely contrasting mode of education, one more typical of traditional – and male-oriented – educational systems, values internalized confidence, originality, agonism, independence of thought, creativity, assertiveness, the mastery of one’s feelings, a thick skin and high tolerance for your own and others’ discomfort, disputational ability, competitiveness, nerve, initiative, imagination, and force of will, values that come to the fore in confrontational oral debate. Such an education will produce a mode of discourse that is naturally highly oppositional and challenging, while generally denying participants the right to take things personally. Deep divergences of opinion can be far more comfortably accommodated within the same conversation by those accustomed to such discourse. While the first form of education risks viewing persons as passive receptacles of knowledge to be rewarded for their conformity to set expectations, which are frequently measured, this form of education prioritizes the formation of independent thinking agents.

This form of discourse typically involves a degree of ‘heterotopy’, occurring in a ‘space’ distinct from that of personal interactions. This heterotopic space is characterized by a sort of playfulness, ritual combativeness, and histrionics. This ‘space’ is akin to that of the playing field, upon which opposing teams give their rivals no quarter, but which is held distinct to some degree from relations between the parties that exist off the field. The handshake between competitors as they leave the field is a typical sign of this demarcation.  It is this separation of the space of rhetorical ritual combat from regular space that enables debaters, politicians, or lawyers to have fiery disagreements in the debating chamber, the parliamentary meeting, or the courtroom and then happily enjoy a drink together afterwards.

This ‘heterotopic discourse’ makes possible far more spirited challenges to opposing positions, hyperbolic and histrionic rhetoric designed to provoke response and test the mettle of one’s own and the opposing position, assertive presentations of one’s beliefs that are less concerned to present a full-orbed picture than to advocate firmly for a particular perspective and to invite and spark discussion from other perspectives.

The truth is not located in the single voice, but emerges from the conversation as a whole. Within this form of heterotopic discourse, one can play devil’s advocate, have one’s tongue in one’s cheek, purposefully overstate one’s case, or attack positions that one agrees with. The point of the discourse is to expose the strengths and weaknesses of various positions through rigorous challenge, not to provide a balanced position in a single monologue. Those familiar with such discourse will be accustomed to hyperbolic and unbalanced expressions. They will appreciate that such expressions are seldom intended as the sole and final word on the matter by those who utter them, but as a forceful presentation of one particular dimension of or perspective upon the truth, always presuming the existence of counterbalancing perspectives that have no less merit and veracity.

In contrast, a sensitivity-driven discourse lacks the playfulness of heterotopic discourse, taking every expression of difference very seriously. Rhetorical assertiveness and impishness, the calculated provocations of ritual verbal combat, linguistic playfulness, and calculated exaggeration are inexplicable to it as it lacks the detachment, levity, and humour within which these things make sense. On the other hand, those accustomed to combative discourse may fail to appreciate when they are hurting those incapable of responding to it.

Lacking a high tolerance for difference and disagreement, sensitivity-driven discourses will typically manifest a herding effect. Dissenting voices can be scapegoated or excluded and opponents will be sharply attacked. Unable to sustain true conversation, stale monologues will take its place. Constantly pressed towards conformity, indoctrination can take the place of open intellectual inquiry. Fracturing into hostile dogmatic cliques takes the place of vigorous and illuminating dialogue between contrasting perspectives. Lacking the capacity for open dialogue, such groups will exert their influence on wider society primarily by means of political agitation.

The fear of conflict and the inability to deal with disagreement lies at the heart of sensitivity-driven discourses. However, ideological conflict is the crucible of the sharpest thought. Ideological conflict forces our arguments to undergo a rigorous and ruthless process through which bad arguments are broken down, good arguments are honed and developed, and the relative strengths and weaknesses of different positions emerge. The best thinking emerges from contexts where interlocutors mercilessly probe and attack our arguments’ weaknesses and our own weaknesses as their defenders. They expose the blindspots in our vision, the cracks in our theories, the inconsistencies in our logic, the inaptness of our framing, the problems in our rhetoric. We are constantly forced to return to the drawing board, to produce better arguments.

Granted immunity from this process, sensitivity-driven and conflict-averse contexts seldom produce strong thought, but rather tend to become echo chambers. Even the good ideas that they produce tend to be blunt and very weak in places. Even with highly intelligent people within them, conflict-averse groups are poor at thinking. Bad arguments go unchecked and good insights go unhoned and underdeveloped. This would not be such a problem were it not for the fact that these groups frequently expect us to fly in a society formed according to their ideas, ideas that never received any rigorous stress testing.

As I will argue in more detail as I proceed, the problem does not lie with sensitivity-driven discourses per se – there is a genuine need for such discourses – but rather with their immodest demands upon public life and interaction and academic discussion. The expectation that all public and intellectual life must be ordered in terms of the sensitivities of the members of such groups or reformed in terms of the ideas of such groups cripples society, preventing it from engaging adequately in the searching and difficult task of intellectual inquiry. Both confrontational and sensitive discourses are essential in their own place, but both can endanger the other and, by extension, the healthy functioning of society when they have ambitions beyond that place.

I believe that, within the recent debate, such a distinction between modes of discourse and the training appropriate to each could be seen. A deeper appreciation of the strengths and weaknesses of these two approaches is important here. When the sides in a debate are operating using entirely incompatible modes of discourse communication between the two is quite unlikely. What we need are means of communication and translation between the two, and an appreciation of the strengths, weaknesses, and place of each. The common expectation that challenging conversations must yield to the demand of ‘sensitivity’ is unreasonable, but we should seek to provide some degree of protection for those emotionally incapable of participating in such challenging discourse from its combat.

Full article here.

My people—infants are their oppressors, and women rule over them.
O my people, your guides mislead you and they have swallowed up the course of your paths.
(Isaiah 3:12)

Doug Wilson has a great little book with the title, Why Ministers Must Be Men. He demonstrates from Scripture that ministers must be not only male but manly, that is, courageous and self-sacrificial, ruling out both misogyny and machismo in the process. I believe we can also find evidence for his case in the very structure of the Bible. The proof boils down to the question, “What is a man in the created order?” That is, what is a man physically, and what is he to be in the very process of things?

The answer is this: A man is a Covenant. He not only has a mission, he is a mission. Men are designed to draw near to God and be “hollowed out” as a safe, holy place, a shelter, for others. This is the case whether a man is married or not. The authority of any man is authority to serve, and it is delegated by God.

Now, some object using the many cases of women in authority found in the Bible: women are queens, prophets, judges and apostles. However, one swift swing of a Bible Matrix cycle cuts these objections to shreds. It shows that these roles for women in the Covenantal order reflect the nature of Woman in the created order. Every kind of authority given to women in the Bible follows, and never precedes, the authority of the man. This is because the authority of the man is first and foremost sacrificial, that is, priestly.

There are queens and prophetesses and saintesses and judgesses, but no priestesses. A grain of wheat, the firstfruits, must fall alone into the ground and die. A priest must be raw, elemental, “stoicheic”: a man emptied of all that others might be full. Paul, like Jesus was a single man, emptied out for the apostolic witness. Paul was also given the gift of singleness for the sake of the fullness of the Firstfruits Church. The saints became his glory.

The woman’s authority originates in, and “fills up,” that of the man. She advises him as wisdom–“sophia”–but priestly knowledge always precedes kingly wisdom and prophetic authority. Based on later antitypes, it seems Eve would have been invited by Adam to stand on the neck of the crushed serpent and identify with his victory. And then, most likely, she would have advised him to kill it (Joshua 10:24, Romans 16:20). A woman’s uncanny intuition needs a lawful framework to function effectively or she becomes Jezebel, Athaliah and Sapphira.

Without an Adam on the throne, any female authority will be short-lived, especially in the Church. Patriarchy works just fine when all men are fatherly. The serpent is crushed and the sanctuary is now safe for women and children. But a sanctuary usurped by women and children is no longer safe. When Adam abdicates his priestly role, the very sanctuary becomes a bitter spring, a source of deception that poisons the entire culture.

Forming by the Word is what brings the Filling of the Church and the Future of the World (entering into God’s rest). A Church which rejects male priesthood is easily deceived, becomes effeminate (a parody of glory), and is finally rendered sterile. And the culture under such “ministry” follows in its wake. Fatherhood is deconstructed. We are a nation of widows and orphans under the shelter of the state. Yet, in their need, those women and children rule over us.

The invisible Christ is to be first and foremost made visible in men. Because men have failed in their priestly role, even godly masculinity is eyed with suspicion. The man is removed, and the True God is removed. The mother and child are exalted, rather than cherished, protected and provided for. True Kings, Prophets and Advocates are disempowered, cut down and slandered at every opportunity. The created distinctions that image the authority, integrity and glory of the Triune God are melted down in the name of the Goddess Equality.

“We do not want this man to reign over us.” (Luke 19:14)

“…in her heart she says, ‘I sit as a queen, I am no widow, and mourning I shall never see.’” (Revelation 18:7)

____________________________________________
[1] This point in the structure is also where I would locate the apostolic witness of Andronicus and Junia. The name can be masculine or feminine. Chrysostom (c. 347–407) refers to this person as a woman. Bauckham suggests that Junia was a transliteration of the Hebrew name Joanna. If this is the case, her authority was an important advisory role sourced in a priesthood of men. Of course, under the New Covenant, all saints are witnesses, reflecting the bridal nature of the Church.

See also Liturgical Man, Liturgical Woman, A Titanic Reality and Sex and the City.

In a somewhat densely written post, Mike Bull suggests that the remedy for feminised men in churches is not more testosterone and martial arts etc, but a knowledge of the call of God on their lives – in other words to be on mission. Talking about the men and women of our great evangelical past, the Wilberforces and Newtons etc, he cites:

“This evangelical generation changed the world, or major parts of it at least: they broke the international economic system of the day because it was unjust; they reformed prisons, factories, poor laws, and anything else they could think of; they saw major revivals, and huge numbers of conversions; when it came to gender politics, they taught men to be gentle, and women to be active in ministry.”

But it would appear that as the church retreated from public life, this expression of gender politics has gone into hyperdrive. The movement lost sight of the mission and instead focussed on personal, private moral reformation.

“[The feminisation of men in the church] seems to me to arise primarily out of particular set of historical circumstances in which the interests of clergy and women aligned against a dysfunctional masculinity, and men were increasingly expected to conform and submit themselves to a cultural form of femininity, rather than to Scripture.”

In short, it would appear that it is not so much a recovery of biblical masculinity that is needed, as a recovery of biblical mission. True (gospel) masculinity finds it’s place in the upward call of God and doesn’t need to justify itself or be politically assertive and self-aware. Men and women can then work together under the direction of the Holy Spirit for the reformation of the church, the transformation of culture and the renewal of the whole creation!

What man (or woman for that matter) is up for a mission as big as that??!

“Men of power and prestige sacrificed their lives for women and children of the lower class, many of whom were indentured servants, day laborers, and domestic workers. On this flotilla of self-absorption, self-sacrifice became a prevailing virtue during a crisis moment, and the powerful chose death that the powerless might receive life.”

The era of such brave sacrifice is gone, along with the Christian worldview that sustained it. Progressives accuse conservatives of nostalgia for a culture that is past, a time we cannot recreate. They are half right. It is gone forever, but the future (or “eternal utopian present”) imagined by progressives is unsustainable, if not downright destructive. We agree on the death of the old culture, but have very different ideas about the future.

A future “godly culture” will come, but it will be nothing like any of the old ones because that’s not how God works. His process is death and resurrection, self-sacrifice and Spirit-increase—first the natural, then the spiritual. Masculinity has been beaten to death, and many Christians (and even secularists) have woken up to the consequences. Many are attempting to revive it, but Rich Bledsoe believes, like progressives, that the old, domineering masculinity was bad:

Along with everything else, masculinity in its original natural form is dying. I don’t know about any of you, but when one is virtually anywhere in the “third world” it is amazing to me as an American, the extent and degree of masculine control over everything. As an American, and one who lives in a particularly liberal town, this kind of unthinking, effortless, control, which is as natural as a fish in water, is almost incomprehensible. I recently read an account of a missionary kid who was American by birth, but reared in Japan for most of his youth, being especially amazed upon returning to America at the degree of rudeness and “yelling” that went on here from women to their men in public. But he said what amazed him the most, was that the men “took it like whipped puppies”. Indeed.

I think the natural power of the male is over. He can rebel against it all he wants, but it is struggling in quick sand. The more struggle there is, the faster he sinks. The patriarchal head of household church movement is completely artificial and is NOT a return to something spiritual, but something natural, and it is nature that is dying.

The only way forward for masculinity is to die. Jesus was the first man to give up his natural masculine powers. The Kenotic poem of Philippians is the essential telling of this story. It has now caught up with the world. It is only in dying to what is natural that masculine authority and headship can be raised again and come back in a new “final” form that is shorn of nature.

Now, I know everyone will want details on what this means. All I know is that every man I have ever seen who tried to revive nature ends up being an ass. I have seen cases of the most macho masculine and by nature controlling men, with what are undoubtedly very high male hormone levels, just rendered helpless by the current culture. They thrive no better than an Apache warrior in modern Arizona. And in fact, the reality is exactly the same as for the warrior. He can only die, and be raised as a Christian, which looks very different and does not exist by humiliating and degrading women and children.

I think everything in the natural world exists by rivalry. In the natural world, the man is the man is the man by overpowering rivalry over against the female and the children. In God’s world, this is undone. In reality, it may well be that large elements of all of this death have only come to pass as late as the 20th century.

Rich Blesdoe, The Death of the Masculine

So, don’t panic. Our cultural ship is going down, but it has to. A resurrected manhood and womanhood will soon rise out of the current tragic confusion.

In his post You Will Never Guess Who Is Really Responsible For The Softening of Males In The Church, Mark Sayers shifts the blame for the current “sea of passivity” in modern males from feminism to men like John Newton.

To rescue masculinity in the West we must remember that we stand on the shoulders of giants. One such giant was John Newton, a man whose debauched life as a slave trader ensured that he had inhabited the old world of male violence. Yet Newton was thoroughly transformed by his encounter with the truth of the gospel. Newton operated as a template for the new evangelical mode of masculinity. He chose to champion others rather than simply build his own empire. A committed calvinist, he collaborated with and encouraged other believers who thought differently to him, maintaining a warm friendship and working relationship with John Wesley.Newton was not a prim and proper Georgian dandy, often he was described as uncouth. Newton was passionate and dedicated, his communication of the gospel was uncomprimising. Yet what entranced his contemporaries was that his gospel communication was described as having an almost ‘womanly tenderness’.  Newton was pointing the way forward to a new mode of being male, one shaped by the Gospel not the code of honour and violence. Newton would act as a father figure to a whole generation of evangelical leaders who would not just transform culture’s idea of masculinity but culture itself.

So what are we to do with our current crisis of masculinity? What advice should be given to young men who find themselves looking for male role models, who wonder what it is to be a Christian man in today’s culture of passivity and indecision. I think that if you want to be a man, stop trying so hard. Instead look to Newton’s advice, understand that you are a wretch who has been transformed by a grace that is amazing. Allow yourself to daily mediate upon and live out of that reality and one day you will get up to shave and the face in the mirror looking back at you will be the face of a man.

Great advice. But Newton and those of his time understood that men need a mission, something to construct and some to conquer. With the rejection of Christianity by our culture, that mission was replaced first with the empty quest for wealth, but now has been lost altogether. People, men in particular, are rebels without a cause. With everything else now shown to offer false hopes, the only real cause left is the New Covenant. [1]

Two Women for Every Man

In his post Old style evangelical gender politics, Steve Holmes tries to shore up the gender imbalance with some history of great evangelical women who followed this “transformation of masculinity.”

This evangelical generation changed the world, or major parts of it at least: they broke the international economic system of the day because it was unjust; they reformed prisons, factories, poor laws, and anything else they could think of; they saw major revivals, and huge numbers of conversions; when it came to gender politics, they taught men to be gentle, and women to be active in ministry.

Besides the few radicals he mentions, a lot of good was most certainly done, but how did that lead to the situation we are now in, where many men wouldn’t be found dead in a mainline Western church. Or, in reality, they might only be found in such a church if they were actually dead. Here’s a clue:

Methodist and holiness movements provided a particular intensification of this theme, as a woman who could lay claim to the experience of entire sanctification was in a demonstrable position of spiritual superiority to men who could not, a situation creating a significant pressure to reverse cultural-normative gender roles. Phoebe Palmer’s astonishing evangelistic ministry is the most obvious example of this, but there are many others (Hannah Whitall Smith’s entry in the Biographical Dictionary of Evangelicals notes that, at the Brighton Convention for the Promotion of Christian Holiness in 1875, ‘[t]he most popular sessions … were those in which Hannah preached her practical secrets of the happy Christian life to audiences of 5000 or more, mostly clergymen who were theologically opposed to the preaching ministry of women’).

There was a deep-seated structural problem in this “transformation.” We might say that well-meaning evangelicals fell off the other side of the horse.

The Stigmatization of Male Traits

My friend Alastair Roberts’ comments after this post are the reason why I am posting this at all. He’s very familiar with the “liturgical” roles for men and women laid down in Genesis. [2] Modern evangelicals either don’t believe Genesis, or don’t know how to apply the Bible’s types, and so are left bumping around in the dark regarding gender roles in the Church, and in the interpretation of their history. Roberts makes a lot of sense, so I’ll post it in full. He writes:

It seems to me that the picture is rather one-sided. More probably needs to be said about the manner in which disempowered women and disempowered clergy joined forces to bring about the reformation of men’s morals, epitomized by such things as the temperance movements of the 19th century. This alliance between women and the clergy was coupled with a sentimentalization and feminization of religion, as in many quarters religion became conformed to dominant forms of cultural sentimental femininity, operating on the assumption that women had a greater affinity with religion and according to the narrative of the woman who reforms wayward men by making them see things more like them.

This wasn’t the only thing that was going on at the time, of course. There was also the ‘muscular Christianity’ of such as Kingsley, with its commitment to an imperial model of masculinity, and the refined and aesthetic masculinity of the Oxford movement. However, this ‘feminization’ and ‘sentimentalization’ trend has had a significant effect upon the worship, piety, theology, image, and demographics of the Church in many quarters.

It led to a stigmatization of many stereotypically male traits, along with a celebration of many stereotypically female traits. Within such a context, Christian spirituality was increasingly colonized by the sort of sentiments that are usually reserved for cheap romantic paperbacks. The agonistic and martial language of much biblical piety was increasingly abandoned in favour of a rather sickly emotionalism.

The problem is that, in the process evangelical spirituality drifted further away from the sort of biblical patterns of spirituality that one finds in the psalms, which do not exalt sentiment and sentimentality to the position of dominance that it often possesses. Churches also lost contact with men, as churches increasingly ordered themselves around disempowered women and children and their forms of piety (in a related movement, Christian piety started to disconnect from the wider world of society, life, and work to focus ever more narrowly on the individual soul and its private spirituality). The expectation that men conform themselves to a culturally feminine sentimental model of spirituality (rather than the expectation that both men and women conform themselves to a biblical model of spirituality) encouraged men to view the Church as emasculating and irrelevant to their lives, or as an unwelcome imposition upon them to be borne grudgingly and passively.

If the full story of the evangelical transformation of masculinity is to be told, we need to take this part of the picture into account. The evangelical church has often tended to neuter its men in order to empower its women. Its celebration and empowerment of women within its walls has gone hand in hand with its cultural marginalization and disempowerment. It has also fallen prey to a gross distortion of biblical piety in the form of sentimental piety, which still prevails in many quarters. This sentimentalized evangelical church has proved more effective at producing milquetoasts, who are culturally ineffective, than it has at producing men and women of firm character who make a powerful impact in the wider society.

The ‘masculinization’ of the church championed by Driscoll and others is obviously not the answer, but the Church is generally ‘feminized’ in a profoundly unhealthy manner, and something needs to be done to address this. What we have at the moment is a culturally marginal or irrelevant institution where there are almost twice as many women as men, where men are more inclined to be passive, and where piety is overly fixated on sentiment and emotion. I hardly think that this this qualifies as a success in terms of the transformation of gender norms and the shape of society…

[I will] explain in more detail what I mean by the ‘feminization’ of the Church here. Gender identities are indeed largely socially constructed (which perhaps should not surprise us if our most fundamental identity as human persons is a symbolic one, rather than one of biological essence, as we are created images of God). The problem comes when a particular social construction of one gender, which has little to do with Scripture and is at odds with it at various points, becomes a norm that is increasingly imposed upon all within the Church. For instance, I think that it is fair to say that Mark Driscoll is attempting a ‘masculinization’ of the Church, without suggesting that the gender norms that he is working in terms of are anything but ones contingent upon the surrounding culture.

I believe that the last couple of centuries witnessed just such a conforming of the evangelical church to norms of a particular cultural gender identity, in the form of sentimental femininity. I don’t see this particular development in piety as having much to do with an attempt to conform to biblical patterns of piety. Rather, it seems to me to arise primarily out of particular set of historical circumstances in which the interests of clergy and women aligned against a dysfunctional masculinity, and men were increasingly expected to conform and submit themselves to a cultural form of femininity, rather than to Scripture.

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[1] If you don’t understand Covenant-as-cause, please read my book, Bible Matrix II: The Covenant Key.
[2] See Liturgical Man, Liturgical Woman.

Grace Agenda Conference Trailer from Canon Wired on Vimeo.

This looks like good medicine. Guess I will have to settle for the MP3s again. You know Doug and Mark. Ben preaches at Doug’s church and his messages are simple yet profound. They really stick with you. I’ve read Nate Wilson but not heard him speak. I hear he’s also very good.

THE TALKS

Masculinity and the Gospel | Mark Driscoll
Modern society is in the midst of a fatherhood and masculinity crisis and getting the Gospel right on this point is the only solution to the crisis. To do this we must understand the Gospel as the sort of message that demands that those who receive and present it be people who have a spine and understand its potency. This is a fundamental issue and affects everything from the integrity of our political leaders to the growth of modern atheism to the effectiveness of our evangelistic mission. Not to mention the health of our families.

Pomosexuality | Douglas Wilson
We live in a time when many of the older standards of “traditional morality” have come completely unstuck. Too many Christians think that this is just something that “happened,” that somebody “did,” and that if we get mobilized we can undo it. But this is actually a theological issue, a problem with our worship. There will be no return to biblical sexuality without a return to Jesus Christ.

The World and its Alternatives | N.D. Wilson
The universe is created, which means it is art. It exists in time, which means that it is narrative art. It encompasses every genre, both discovered and undiscovered, but all of it hangs within the frame of Comedy. Philosophers, poets, artists, scientists, and engineers notwithstanding there is only this strange and comic world — here it stands, and it can be no other.

Godlust | Ben Merkle
The flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish. But you are led by the Spirit . . . So act like it.

The Manifesto for the Grace Agenda | Douglas Wilson
It is too easy to think of grace as that “little extra” that gets us over the finish line. We do what we need to do, and God does the rest. But this is not grace at all, it is the heresy of the Galatians. If we want to counter it (as we should), we must learn to see that God’s grace is all of Christ, for all of life, for all the world.

or Desperate Housewives and Accidental Bride-icide

One Good Friday at a Baptist church we used to attend, we were treated to the creepy sight of a mannikin onstage in a wedding dress. [1] The lady speaker (who is not the pastor) told us of a dream she had in which she saw the church as a bride. In the vision, Jesus was brushing the bride’s hair. Ew.

I’m sure all the women thought this was wonderful, particularly those who have been hurt by men. But along with (hopefully) every male in the building, it made me squirm. I was supposed to be imagining Jesus lovingly brushing my hair? For a start, I have no hair. My haircut of choice has been referred to as “The Belsen.”

The church is a bride, but she is a warrior bride. Christians are only the bride corporately, NOT individually. This is extremely important, and it is a factor that went straight over the head of this godly woman. She defended it later with a remark about being tired of the Christian military symbolism she grew up with. But the Bible uses both, and we need to use both and use them appropriately. This problem certainly is the fault of men who are domineering but also of men who are passive. This subtle confusion between the Divine and human needs of women is not the solution.

As individuals we might be insecure and needy, but the church as a body is never these things. The menopausal, lonely divorcee-type believer, stalking Jesus week-to-week (and sometimes from church to church), is not to become the norm. The church is to look after the lonely such as widows so that they too can be warriors secure in God’s love. Even this ministry is a corporate work to be headed by corporate-thinking godly males. See the book of Acts.

At this same church, one Sunday was set aside for testimonies. This is something this church does really well. It was a fantastic time. A couple of men testified about how the men should really be taking the lead in spiritual things, and there were some tears. But then an older, single, vocal, well-meaning and “on-fire” lady got up and thanked God for this new awareness, proclaiming with passion that the women really need to be protecting the men! Now THAT was a cold shower.

Jesus is not a bridegroom to men or to women. David Morrow reports men who feel inadequate because their wives are in love with Jesus, a perfect male who doesn’t even need to use deodorant. [2] This ravishing, bodice-ripping husband-Jesus is a demonic idol.

For individuals and for families, Jesus is the army captain who must be obeyed. This is the imagery men respond to particularly. I don’t swoon at the thought of having my hair brushed. Sure I need comfort from time to time, and the Spirit supplies this (and mostly through the church), but what I need more than that—and fairly frequently—is a good kick in the arse. How is discipleship presented in the New Testament? Boot camp.

Is it any wonder statistics show that churches with woministers shrink? Focussed only on compassion and comfort they cease to be furrowed, fertile ground. The end result of this imbalance is always a sterile ward for palliative care. [3]

There is no place for any sort of feminism in the church. It’s time for men to take the lead. It’s also time for the coddling, defensive, scary sisterhood to burn the travelling pants.

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[1] Interestingly, the word ‘mannikin’ is from Middle Dutch, and is a diminutive form of ‘man.’
[2] David Murrow, Why Men Hate Going to Church.
[3] See also, First Church of Sleepy Hollow, How To Grow Your Church and Christian Gangs.

It’s a temptation to water down the Bible to make it palatable for “normal” people (let alone watering it down for ourselves!). Problem is, before we know it, what we are teaching bears little resemblance to the actual Bible. The Bible has odd corners where we think it should be smooth, and it says nothing about many things we moderns deem crucial. So let the hungry eat cake.

Many youth leaders, and even pastors, present the Almighty as being desperate for our company. Although He is not needy, what He desires is more than relationship. He wants “friends,” but His definition of this word is not ours. Even if we don’t go down the track of using the actual phrase “heavenly buddy” in our teaching, we are still further off the biblical mark concerning friendship with God than we might have thought possible.

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“When I began to edit the film, something happened. I found I was being educated. And not just with arguments. I was watching a Christian life. I was seeing a Christian man.” —Darren Doane

Just watched The History Boys, a film based on an entertaining but self-indulgent West End play by Alan Bennett. Despite the fact that under Course Language and Sexual References it should also have a “gay theme” warning (but I guess that’s not politically correct), the film is hysterical is places and unwittingly highlights a fatal flaw in our culture.

I was expecting a sort of British Dead Poets Society, which it is, but from a different angle. In DPS, a heartless military-minded “bully” of a dad led to the suicide of his son who wanted to be an actor. In THB, the teacher again becomes a substitute for a father figure, but in this case there are two teachers, one at the end of his career and one at the beginning. Both are brilliant, but both are what the school’s headmaster might politely refer to as “shrinking violets.” One loves poetry and old movies and the other loves history and “devil’s advocate” debate. The students initially find it difficult to reconcile these two approaches to learning.

The history boys are a deliberately varied bunch. At least in this one there is a token Christian, and he’s not a hypocrite. But his faith is basically ineffectual, of no real benefit. The main focus is on one student who, due to his looks and his brazenness, is always the centre of attention. Every film has a message to preach, and in this picture, it mostly boils down to courage. What is wrong is that his boldness is demonstrated in destructive ways: sleeping with the school secretary and blackmailing the bullying, philandering principal. He also (absurdly) attempts to “reward” the gay teacher whose intellect he admires, with the argument that he should not just debate courageously but live courageously. Just as those Christian films where the “preachy” scene makes you cringe, the gratuitous preaching of perversity in this one is just as artificial and cringeworthy. And the student’s weak-willed “human projects” capitulate in pretty much every case. (The one true victory of the film is when the younger teacher perceives that the central student’s academic mindset is a sublime meld of the strengths of the opposite approaches of the two teachers.)

The only character with any real balls is the female history teacher, who regards history as a sad record of male incompetence. Ian Smith writes:

Francis de la Tour is in many ways the traditionalist amongst the teaching staff, somewhat worn down and disillusioned by the misogynist world she lives and works in. She’s achieved success in getting the boys to the point where they’re being considered for Oxbridge, but there’s a recognition that she can achieve no more because her strict regimen of learning the facts, writing the essays and doing the hard work of learning the basics is not enough in a world that wants original thought and ideas.

Her sharp eyes and measured wit cut through the smokescreens the various males use to excuse their spectacular failures in character, but she knows they won’t listen. In Western Culture, the best man for the job sometimes is a woman, but that’s not how the world is meant to be.

We all need to see films where people, men in particular, are seen to make costly decisions to do what is right, and despite their character flaws. That is true heroism. Courage, like love, is not an end in itself. It must be discerning and selfless. We need father figures who are neither bullies nor shrinking violets nor the cardboard cutout examples of “perfect fatherhood” from old TV shows. We find these true father figures in the Bible, but there are rare examples of this protected species alive today.

Darren Doane made some helpful comments in an article for Epistula, after making Collision with Doug Wilson and Christopher Hitchens.

…I came to Christ about six years after I graduated high school. I was a budding young filmmaker fully steeped in the ways of the world—Hollywood to be specific. That means I was a very bad man. Through God’s grace He grabbed me one day, threw me to the ground and claimed me as His own, and commissioned me to keep making films and talk about Him. (For those of you already assessing my potential run-on sentence, I would appeal to the Pauline epistles for my defense.)

Within the first few months of my Christian life I was given an audio debate between Greg Bahnsen, a Christian apologist, and noted atheist Gordon Stein. I was amazed at what I heard. Greg’s defense of the Christian faith was just music to my ears. I loved it. Some people love football or gardening or Halo3. I just loved hearing people argue. A mentor later in my life would say arguing is a virtue when done with respect and kindness. So back to that audio tape. Over and over I listened to it. It became my new Christian Led Zeppelin. This was my “Stairway to Heaven.” I would imagine what it would have been like to film the debate. How I would have done it. The music, the angles, the back-story. As the years rolled on I began to think about recreating the debate with actors. They do it with those Lincoln/Douglas debate things, why not this?

Fast forward.

About a year and a half ago I was having dinner with David Hagopian. I had met David at a memorial dinner for Greg Bahnsen. We were at the same table. David was the moderator for the Bahnsen-Stein debate. So that put him in the rock star category for me. I knew his voice from those tapes, and now I knew his face. Around that time my wife and I began to have children. This led quickly to books on children, marriage, education, church, etc. I ran into Doug Wilson’s books and had my life shattered. But that’s another story. Then education. I knew David Hagopian had experience in this area and was the closest guy I could get some advice from. We met and started talking debates and how boring they are. I had suggested that a pure cross examination debate style would be really what people want. Get to the good stuff. See people defend their positions.

Jump Ahead a Few Months.

David and I keep talking about filming debates. We start talking about Doug Wilson and his online debate with Christopher Hitchens, and before we know it, we are all talking about making a film. Wilson, Hagopian, Gary Demar, Aaron Rench, and Nate Wilson quickly became the players. Aaron Rench had set up the original debate with Doug and Christopher and was continuing to develop a relationship with Hitchens. Aaron lays it out, and Hitchens agrees to spend three days with Wilson, debating, hanging out, eating, and traveling. So the film is ready to be made, and the players are lined up.

When I began to edit the film, something happened. I found I was being educated. And not just with arguments. I was watching a Christian life. I was seeing a Christian man. I was experiencing interaction with ungodly men who want to see Christianity destroyed and exposed as ancient Stone Age myths. I could see Doug’s reactions, his temperament, his smile, his grace, his picking and choosing, and the outcome of what he did. I was being educated in a way that a book had never done. It was like meat being applied to bones. I did not have a Christian upbringing. A godly man to imitate was hard to find.

The triune Christian life is earthy and dirty. It is action. It moves and gets involved. It engages. And it takes dominion. I have spent more time with Doug Wilson by way of an editing bay and looking at footage of him living the Christian life than I have in person. But what has been captured in the film is Doug Wilson loving anti-theist Christopher Hitchens and looking to win the man, not the argument. And that is something I needed to learn—something I needed to be educated on how to do and what it looks like.

It is interesting that Doug Wilson has not only been accused of being a bully, but also of not dealing with certain situations harshly enough. He’s a leader without being a militaristic bully and he’s a man of letters without being a shrinking violet. He lives, writes and debates boldly, and sings and laughs just as boldly. He’s the full picture. Our culture really hates him sometimes, but he shrugs off criticism that would keep lesser men (like certain Democrat Presidents) up at night. I think he’s a great example of what they are looking for, a signpost to the only real Man, Jesus Christ, the perfect image of the Father.

Someone should take the ideas in Wilson’s wonderful book, Future Men, and make a movie. Imagine the West revived by godly fatherhood, where the problems in sad films like these are not just communicated in confused rhetoric but also seen to be solvable. As “old movies” they will be the history of a broken culture that had no future and is truly dead.