Man Up!

"By the Power of Grayskull!" Sorry, just had a flashback to my youth... I mean, back then I considered He-Man to be the quintessential masculine hero with a name that's as manly as can be. He-Man. You know, as opposed to She-Man...

These few words are in fact a short follow-up on yesterday's post, Trump Prophecy, and an expansion on the "rugged Christianity" I briefly described as being the main reason for the massive support for Trump among white evangelicals. If there's one characteristic that defines Christian conservatism in 2021, it's the constant focus on the classical binary split between the sexes; in this world there's room only for real men and real subordinate women. And their panicking as they realize they're on the losing side in the culture war. As they see it, and I'll just quote Pastor John F. MacArthur from the linked video, "the only hope for stability and the only hope for sanity, the only hope for peace in a society, is masculine, virtuous men." Another speaker in the video talks about how men must strife to become better spiritual leaders for their wives. It's clear how their belief in the "natural hierarchy," with straight white Christian men at the top, is threatened in a world that openly recognizes the difference between sex and gender, the love between same sex partners and the negative effects, on society and men themselves, of toxic masculinity.

I'd very much like to welcome these people into the 21st century, but looking at fervor they display in their fight against anything and anyone opposing their archaic view in the "natural order" of things, I have little hope. When I see and hear ministers and pastors preach about "alpha males" as a fundamental feature of their faith, that hope diminishes even more; their view on masculinity and the relationship between men and women then becomes little more than that of a pick-up artist. Who knew that the "glass ceiling" women are unable to break is made of the stained glass that's so closely related to western religious imagery? Seeing and hearing these preachers makes me wonder how they're able to criticize Islam for repressing women with a straight face. Just listen to John MacArthur decry feminism, if you can stomach it. Maybe we should introduce a new term, just for this out-dated variant of the Christian experience: "toxic Christianity." Or maybe not; you decide.

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