What Would Jesus Do? Negotiating Hegemonic Masculinity in Religious Organizations (original) (raw)
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In the Image of God: The Case for Re-Asserting Masculinity in the Church
2006
A recent book has captured the attention of many pastors who are struggling with the issue of growing their churches. That book, written by David Murrow, is entitled "Why Men Hate Going to Church." Why do men hate going to church? It is such an accepted reality that I doubt anyone would offer many objections to this assertion. This situation has profound effects on the broader society and history itself. Robert Bly writes of this loss of masculinity in his best-selling book, Iron John: In our time, when the father shows up as an object of ridicule (as he does, as we've noted, on television), or a fit field for suspicion (as he does in Star Wars), or a bad-tempered fool (when he comes home from the office with no teaching), or a weak puddle of indecision (as he stops inheriting kingly radiance), the son has a problem. How does he imagine his own life as a man? 1 Modern attempts by Christians to recapture some sense of the masculine can at times spin off into the infantile and the absurd. The Promise Keepers for example, have the feel of earlier fraternal organizations with their boyish activities as is demonstrated by this incident from a Promise Keepers event: "Later in the evening, Gary Smalley, another well-known author and speaker, hilariously made his entrance on a kiddiesized Big Wheel bike, again to the boisterous crowing of the crowd." 2 But this is not the masculinity that has fueled the church through its most precarious hours. This paper
“It’s Not Macho, Is It?”: Contemporary British Christian Men’s Constructions of Masculinity
The Journal of Men’s Studies
Religion is a key site for constructions of masculinity, and visions of a gender equal society must include religious men. This study examines how a group of British white, heterosexual, middle-class, lay Anglican men construct masculinities via discourses on church-going, worship styles, and godly submission. The interviewed men express a hybrid form of masculinity, informed by religious faith, that embraces typically “feminine” characteristics such as love, humility, and vulnerability. At the same time, they articulate ideals of heteronormativity and essentialized gender differences that support hegemonic masculinity. The participants engage simultaneously in a selective, “discursive distancing” from, and a discursive alignment with, hegemonic masculinity norms, thus revealing tensions between competing masculinity norms.
Becoming a real man: evangelical discourses on masculinity
Dutch evangelicalism has always been institutionally dominated by men, and has always known various forms of male brotherhoods. However, the past years 'the problem with men' has come to be defined in a particular way, and a whole genre of books has emerged defining and explaining this problem and proposing solutions. The books are part of a broader evangelical men’s movement that focuses on the body and on physical endurance as a test for manhood. Surprisingly, the sources and legitimisations for the essentialising gender ideologies proposed in this movement lean on popularized forms of evolutionary theory and biology, popular culture such as movies and music and spiritual or mythopoetical ideas from books such as Iron John by Robert Bly. We found that the perceived problems of men can be summarized as circulating around three key themes: the absent man, the feminisation of men and the blurring of gender roles. These problematizations furthermore suggest particular remedies that should lead to becoming a ‘real man’.
Does Masculinity Thwart Being Religious? An Examination of Older Men'sReligiousness
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 2002
Previous work shows a significant relationship between gender orientation and being religious in samples of college-age and adult men. Before entering later life, men with a feminine orientation have greater religious involvement than other men. In a sample of older men from three Massachusetts counties, this study assessed the bearing of men's gender orientation and gender ideology on their religious involvement. Gender orientation more than masculinity ideology was found to be a reliable predictor of older men's religiousness. Similar to studies of younger men, a feminine orientation was a significant determinant of the older men's religious participation, commitment, and intrinsic orientation. Older men who define self in very masculine terms, however, engaged in a quest religiosity. When the masculinity ideology contains norms that prescribe the virtues of a traditional masculinity and acquiring status, men's religious orientation was extrinsic (or means) oriented. These important findings are discussed in terms of how masculinity is at times a barrier to men's private devotion and at other times can be a trigger to questing. Research studies often observe gender differences in religious practice and belief. Men participate in religious ritual and worship less often, espouse different religious motivations for their participation, profess less devout beliefs, testify that religious faith is not always germane to their everyday activities, and identify less with "being religious" than do women (cf. Batson, Schoenrade, and Ventis 1993). This gender difference is a reliable one. But the observed gender difference does not translate to mean that men are not religious. As a group there is great variation among men's religious involvement and spirituality. What determines the variation has not been thoroughly investigated, but studies have begun to identify masculinity as an important determinant of men's religiosity. The pattern that emerges from a wide range of studies is that masculinity thwarts people from embracing spirituality, whereas femininity promotes religious experience. The way that masculinity has been conceptualized differs across prior work. Psychologists argued that men are expected to internalize a sex-appropriate gender orientation and live with masculinity expectations to avoid all things feminine, which includes being religious (Brannon 1976). Similarly, earlier sociological studies proposed that men's lesser religiousness was guided by the gendered division of labor. This separate-spheres conceptualization emphasized that because men were to take on the provider role (Lenski 1953), they encountered a socialization track that placed them on a nonreligious path (de Vaus and McAllister 1987). Participation in church activities was viewed as incongruent with workforce participation and men's everyday provider roles (Luckmann 1967; Roof 1978). A recent discussion exemplifying these traditions was presented in Miller and Hoffman (1995). Men's irreligiousness was defined as another type of masculine risk-taking behavior. Their thesis is directly related to the blueprint of a traditional masculinity that urges men to avoid "sissy stuff" and to "give 'em hell" when necessary (Brannon 1976; Thompson and Pleck 1986). Brannon stressed that the masculinity standards in our culture encouraged men to seek adventure,
Introduction: Religion and Masculinities – Continuities and Change
Religion and Gender, 2012
(USA) and Endowed Professor of Religious Studies in the Department of Comparative Cultural Studies. His field of expertise is religion and gender, (post)-Holocaust studies, and reconciliation studies. He is the recipient of the Norton Dodge Award for Scholarly and Creative Achievements. Publications include Male Confessions: Intimate Revelations and the Religious Imagination (Stanford), Men and Masculinities in Christianity and Judaism (London), and Remembrance and Reconciliation (Yale).
IMAGES OF MEN AND MASCULINITIES WITHIN CULTURAL CONTEXTS: A PASTORAL ASSESSMENT
Doctoral Dissertation - Stellenbosch University, Faculty of Theology, 2007
This study is an endeavour on the cutting edge of the field of practical theology. It engages in a pastoral assessment of contemporary men and masculinities in their manifold representations and embodiments. An in-depth assessment of current schemata of interpretation (on the issue of masculinity), is done within different cultural contexts, aiming to hermeneutically put this into dialogue with a pastoral-anthropological view on masculinity. This dialogue is initiated in order to gain deeper insight into diverse masculinities and the challenges they face in their search for meaning, intimacy and vitality. The point of the dialogue here is rather to describe than to prescribe. The dissertation analyses ‘masculinities as experienced and enacted’ in life and ‘masculinities as represented’ in the mass media as well as in other forms of pop culture, through a multidisciplinary perspective. It is further aimed at the contextual, theological deconstruction of these cultural representations and the establishment and furthering of meaningful connections between male identity, human dignity and Christian spirituality. The focus in contemporary (sociological and psychological) research on masculinity is on enactment of masculinities or ‘doing’ masculinities rather than ‘being’ masculine. The dominant cultural images of masculinity within a globalising life-order suggest and promote materialistic values such as efficiency, performance, mechanisation and functionality. These images are assessed and the interplay between it (the cultural images) and conceptualisations of God (God-images) are explored. This study asserts that men’s identity, self-understanding and spirituality is shaped in many ways by these images, but that the image of the crucified and risen Christ can indeed serve as a meaningful and normative-critical counter-image to the macho-images portrayed by most postmodern masculinities (which many men presently experience as confusing). This counter-image of Christ can transcend the abuse of power, the focus on performance and the commodification of male embodiment, in men’s lives, as they engage in a spirituality of vulnerable courage. A pastoral-anthropological perspective is employed in order to shift the emphasis on male identity in terms of gender and sexuality, towards a spiritual understanding of male identity in terms of human dignity and human destiny (i.e. the quest for meaning). The important question of the relationship between power, masculinity and male embodiment is addressed. Essentialist ideas about masculinity are deconstructed, and a re-interpretation thereof is introduced within a view of reality that affirms and embraces an earth-centred and embodied spirituality. Masculinity and male identity is in that sense “saved” from a commercial reduction by means of an eschatological and pneumatological perspective. This theological re-interpretation of masculinity presents a critical factor on the cultural notion that manhood is something that must be validated by means of performance (especially on the terrain of sexuality). Masculinity, viewed from an eschatological perspective, is thus more than virility that has to be manifested by doing functions. The culturally-determined understanding of masculinity - in terms of brutal power and control – is in this sense ‘emasculated’ in this study. In the light of Christ’s resurrection, there is new hope for the re-interpretation of masculinity. The postmodern man’s resurrection is therefore not guaranteed by the “Viagra-magic blue pill”, but in actual fact by the resurrection of Christ who daily unleashes and affirms new meaningful dimensions of hope in the globalised life-matrix. The power of masculinity thus lies in embodying vulnerability and mutual relationality, contesting unilateral and hierarchical relations. Within this context manhood is not equal to the size of achievement or success, nor performances or powerful penetration, but it rather denotes the capacity for lovingly hospitable relationships and the measure of the soul’s depth of character, i.e. its capacity to embody and affirm the courage to be.
Act Like Men: Social Engagement and Evangelical Masculinity
Journal of Contemporary Religion, 2014
This article contributes to ongoing public and scholarly debates about evangelical social engagement in the United States. I illustrate that, for some conservative evangelical men, activism is fused to the cultural construction of masculinity. My central argument is that, despite becoming invested in 'new' acts of social engagement, these conservative evangelicals continue to rely on a familiar cultural script that uses individualist logics, rather than structural logics, to address social problems. My primary example is a relatively recent men's movement, Acts29, and its commitment to anti-human trafficking campaigns.
“Men never cry”: Teaching Mormon Manhood in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Sociological Focus, 2017
We examine the ways Mormon leaders establish "what it means to be a man" for their followers. Based on content analysis of over 40 years of archival material, we analyze how Mormon leaders represent manhood as the ability to signify control over self and others as well as an inability to be controlled. Specifically, we demonstrate how these representations stress controlling the self, emotional and sexual expression, and others while emphasizing the development of self-reliance and independence from others' control. We draw out implications for understanding (1) how religious leaders create ideal notions of manhood, (2) what the religious interpretations of secular constructions of manhood are, and (3) how these relate to the reproduction of gender inequalities. In recent years, scholars have begun to direct more attention to the interrelation of gender and religion as well as to the ways religious males establish and signify masculine selves (see, e.g., Aune 2010; Gerber 2015; Heath 2003). These studies imply that religious males draw upon the symbolic resources provided by religious representations of what it means to be a man in a wide variety of ways to signify "Godly" manhood 1 (McQueeney 2009; Sumerau 2012). Further, these studies reveal that religious males often construct manhood in ways that symbolically and structurally subordinate women (Bush 2010; Sumerau, Padavic, and Schrock 2015) and transgender people (Sumerau, Cragun, and Mathers 2016). While these studies have invigorated sociological understandings of the interrelation between religion and gender, as well as the ways religious men individually and collectively fashion masculine selves, they have, thus far, left unexplored the religious representations males respond to in their daily lives (however, one exception is Sumerau, Barringer, and Cragun 2015). How do religious leaders construct manhood in their official representations of what it means to be a man in God's eyes? What consequences might these constructions have for the reproduction of gender inequalities? Understanding official or dominant constructions of manhood by religious leaders, however, requires shifting our focus away from the ways individual males interpret religious doctrine to the ways religious leaders and their chosen representatives (intentionally or otherwise) embed notions of manhood into the institutional structure of a given faith (see Sumerau, Barringer, and Cragun 2015;
Gender & Society, 2019
Drawing on in-depth interviews with individuals in current and former plural Mormon fundamentalist families, I demonstrate how gender is structured relationally in plural marriage, dependent on noncoercive power relations. Men perform a “conciliatory masculinity” based on their position as head of the family that requires constant consensus-building skills and emotional labor to maintain family harmony. This masculinity is shaped in relation to women’s performance of “homosocial femininity” that curbs men’s power by building strong bonds among wives to deflect jealousies and negotiate household duties. I argue for the importance of studying masculinities and femininities together as a relational structure to better understand specific religious and family contexts.