Does God Make the Man?

Media, Religion, and the Crisis of Masculinity

Stewart M. Hoover, Curtis D. Coats

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781479813308
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Many believe that religion plays a positive role in men’s identity development, with religion promoting good behavior, and morality. In contrast, we often assume that the media is a negative influence for men, teaching them to be rough and violent, and to ignore their emotions. In Does God Make the Man?, Stewart M. Hoover and Curtis D. Coats draw on extensive interviews and participant observation with both Evangelical and non-Evangelical men, including Catholics as well as Protestants, to argue that neither of these assumptions is correct. Dismissing the easy notion that media encourages toxic masculinity and religion is always a positive influence, Hoover and Coats argue that not only are the linkages between religion, media, and masculinity not as strong and substantive as has been assumed, but the ways in which these relations actually play out may contradict received views. Over the course of this fascinating book they examine crises, contradictions, and contestations: crises about the meaning of masculinity and about the lack of direction men experience from their faith communities; contradictions between men’s religious lives and media lives, and contestations among men’s ideas about what it means to be a man. The book counters common discussions about a “crisis of masculinity,” showing that actual men do not see the world the way the “crisis talk” has portrayed it—and interestingly, even Evangelical men often do not see religion as part of the solution.

1

The New Christian Patriarchs

In the Introduction, we laid out the overall agenda of this book. We will explore longstanding and emerging issues of white masculinity, manhood, fatherhood, and men’s roles in society, relating them to resources and influences found in religion and in the media sphere. We have met two men, Glenn Donegal and Denton Calhoun, who expressed ideals and values related to their roles as men, which they saw as rooted in an elementalist, patriarchal masculinity. These roles—provision, protection, and purpose. We also noted that these men implicated religion and media culture in these elemental roles and values. In reflecting on media culture and religion, we observed that the situation is far more complex than is often appreciated.

In this chapter, we consider the role of religion—particularly white American Evangelical Protestantism and “Liberal” or “Ecumenical” Protestantism1—in men’s lives. We explore the extent to which men’s religious beliefs and faith communities provide them with salient resources for masculinity, both at a normative and a practical level. There is strong evidence that Evangelical communities provide a normative discourse, articulated under the general category of “headship,” but religion may provide fewer resources for how to live or even talk about being a man within a broader, more egalitarian cultural discourse about gender. This gap may seem surprising given the patriarchal nature of Evangelical religious spaces and the flourishing religious publishing industry focused on patriarchal manhood. Yet, as we will see, Evangelical men are ambivalent about the role of religion in supporting their senses of masculine selves.

The ambivalence for Ecumenical Protestant men is even more pronounced. A strong majority of these men noted and celebrated the more egalitarian gender commitments of their faith communities yet lamented that these institutional commitments had left them without the normative scaffolding for masculine identity or the spaces within which to develop such an identity. For them, religion had very little to offer at all for “being” men, except to challenge conservative notions of patriarchy. While this situation suggests the gains of feminism in these communities (again, something they generally embraced), these men also expressed a sense of loss that their religious communities simply didn’t know what to do with men. This lament was especially strong in the men who held to elementalist notions of masculinity.2

At this point, we’d like to expand on these findings and reserve a more summative and detailed account of them (and of other emergent issues) for later in the book. Much of the discussion will focus on Evangelical men, beginning with further exploration of Glenn Donegal and Denton Calhoun. We focus on Evangelicals because these are the men for whom religion is said to play a powerful role in masculine identity. And, in fact, religion does seem to play such a role, but not in clear-cut ways suggested by neo-traditionalist commentators.

First, many conservative masculinist observers anticipate that religion should work to provide important theologically or doctrinally rooted ideas to men and women about how they should live their lives.3 We expected, then, that both Evangelical and Ecumenical Protestant men would have heard focused discourses of masculinity from the pulpit, at least. As we noted in the Introduction, men like Glenn and Denton had difficulty remembering such direct teaching about masculinity. This deficit is surprising given their commitment to and involvement in their faith communities. It is also surprising given that their beliefs coincided very clearly with widely understood Evangelical beliefs. Both of these men, for example, reflected on the prerogatives and roles men should enjoy in the Christian home. For both of them, these prerogatives and roles were in line with the notion of “headship.” But the sources of these ideas were less clear, and the exact application of these ideas was not clear. More important, there didn’t seem to be a clear connection between fundamental religious teachings and specific attitudes and behaviors that necessarily followed. Both could paraphrase the standard Biblical “proof text” on headship in Ephesians 5, but neither could point to sermons about it or even remember reading it recently. Thus, for both Glenn and Denton, what Don Eberly called “God-centered masculinity” is not drawn directly from religious teaching so much as it is seen and practiced through a set of behaviors and relations defined in the contexts of their domestic lives. Observing that masculinity is grounded there does not deny that religious authority or power is in play. In fact, following Bourdieu’s ideas about doxa,4 it may point to an even more powerful religious field precisely because this “natural” gender order “goes without saying and therefore goes unquestioned.”5 It is thus notable that church leadership seems to be giving little rhetorical or theological effort.6 The mythology of headship is still so pervasive in Evangelical circles that talking about male authority is deemed largely unnecessary, but it is clear that some of these men long for this type of discussion from the pulpit, which suggests that, for these men, the presumed natural gender order no longer “goes without saying.” The lack of such discussions plays a role in the critiques of religion levied by men against their faith communities. In sum, while headship seems to exist in the realm of doxa in Evangelical church leadership, some Evangelical men are anxious about what they see as the creeping kudzu of feminist heterodoxy, which causes them to long for a practical gender orthodoxy about how to navigate gender dynamics in their modern lives.

Second, Glenn’s and Denton’s domestic lives were central to the way they thought about themselves as men. The fact that they were husbands and fathers was profoundly definitive. They articulated compelling narratives of moral and spiritual purpose in the context of the home. While these narratives appeared concrete, they seemed also to be more aspirational than realizable. More importantly, perhaps, Glenn and Denton pointed us to the domestic sphere as a normative sphere of action. For example, Denton’s view of fatherhood and of his own father was modulated by his sense that he wanted to do things differently. In particular, he wanted to spend more time with his family and devote less attention to career than his father had to his. Yet he was also driven in his work, aspiring to more purposeful work, thereby leading to a tension. Again, such expressions are not surprising and are so commonplace in the culture that they hardly seem notable. However, neither of these men articulated much of an aspiration to action outside the home (beyond paid labor or involvement in church). There was little call to (nonreligious) service in communities, for example, which would be of concern to voices across the political spectrum. Further, to the extent that this attitude exhibits some crisis in or of the public sphere, it is as much a religious attitude and commitment as it is anything else. It appears that these men see the home and a domestic ideal as their primary fields of action. In important ways, this commitment follows the “subjective turn”7 in Western religion and spirituality. Heelas and Woodhead suggested a turn inward toward the self as the locus of authority. We suggest a complementary turn inward toward the domestic as the location for gendered self-formation. Evangelicals are not alone in this turn (nor is the turn universal among Evangelicals), but it is more pronounced in men like Denton than in his Ecumenical Protestant counterparts.

Third, both Denton and Glenn held the view that there is something essential—even elemental—about masculinity and manhood. Each of them articulated a view of gender clearly modulated by two important conditions. The first condition was the framework of their own lives and their own marital relationships. That is, each spent much time discussing their roles in the home and the tensions therein depending upon that role, for example as the primary wage earner (and thus pulled from the home) or as part of a dual-income family (and thus unable to be the sole financial provider). The second condition, of almost equal importance, was a self-conscious reference to broader social discourses of gender. Each very much wanted to avoid appearing to fall into stereotypes of sexism. Each was clearly conscious of the ways their ideas might be viewed through the conceptual and discursive standards of the feminist movement. For each of them, this concern with sexism was mitigated by the assumption that some essential characteristics of manhood and masculinity are now in negotiation with feminism and with the realities of their own domestic arrangements.

Finally, for each of them, the idea of work or career took on special meaning. As we’ve noted, domestic life was of primary concern for both Glenn and Denton. In Denton’s case, in fact, the domestic could be seen to be in conflict with work and career, both in his account of his father and in his own case. Work was secondary for Denton but was vital in at least one important way: work was the way in which Denton could be a provider. For both Glenn and Denton, this idea of provision was central. And, as we shall see, they are not alone in this idea. If there is one elemental dimension to masculinity that is shared across the voices in this book, it is this idea of provision. The home and the domestic sphere might be at the normative center of life, but work is important because it is the means by which the home and the family are supported financially. The men in this study are driven by this idea, and it is an idea that extends into the realm of purpose. Men—even Denton—want their work to be purposeful, but for most, the purpose is primarily to provide for their families.

From the neo-traditionalist point of view, men like Denton and Glen—committed Christian fathers and husbands—are models for normative masculinity and the good society. The idea that religion is an important framework for their identities as men, that they draw from religion clear and focused senses of who they should be as men, and that this framing should lead to a kind of engaged masculinity fits with the normative domestic ideals we considered earlier. Talking with Glenn and Denton raised some questions about this easy definition of the situation. Our conversation with a group of men at a large “emerging church” from the western United States raised even more.

In this group, we found a number of themes that are significant to our study and with which we found ourselves contending in many of our other interviews as well. Like Glenn and Denton, these men subscribed to elementalist manhood. There are, simply, taken-for-granted characteristics of what it means to be a man. Defining the extents and limits of masculinity, though, is also subtle, complex, and shifting. There also seems to be a taken-for-granted sense of what religion has to provide masculine identity. Such provisions are also subtle, complex, and shifting. And, as we shall see, essential characteristics of masculinity and essential demands of religion—or at least religion as expressed through churches—may well exist in a tense relationship with many men’s experiences. This tension stands in contrast to the received idea that traditional religion might well be a settled contributor to traditional masculinity.

In the following excerpt, the interviewer has been discussing the popular literature of masculinity represented by John Eldredge’s Wild at Heart. Sources like Eldredge, in fact, convey religion’s relationship to manhood as ambiguous and contested. In pursuing this issue, the interviewer introduced the idea—present in many of these sources and in wider discourses—that the church might well be too “feminized.” The men generally agreed with this notion but elaborated on it in significant ways:

Colin: I think women relate more emotionally with the faith than a lot of guys do. Like my grandmother goes to church every Sunday, and my grandfather stays at home. My aunts are more inclined to go to church than their husbands are. And, you know, the husbands will go—it’s not to say they don’t believe; it’s just that they don’t—they’re not as emotionally invested.

Davis: I wonder though if this feminization of the church is not part of social trends. I wonder if like—because you look at the church in the old times, it’s a very patriarchal institution, just like anything else. And I wonder if we just have that [missed] role of men in the church, or if there is a role of men in the church, is it a reaction to the feminist movement? And maybe males internalize the notion that we’ve, you know, we’ve gotta become, we’ve gotta become wimps because we can’t be a traditional male anymore because that’s not going to work in this certain new viewpoint that we have.

What we call “elemental masculinity” is clear here. It is expressed along two lines. First, it is something that is simply empirically experienced in the way men and women behave differently regarding church. Second, it is something that is more generically in conflict with the goals and expectations of church and religion. This point is even more clear in the following, also from this group interview:

Harrison: If you think about how church is set up, I don’t even sometimes understand why guys go to church. Because you come into this building, and you sit and then you sing songs together, and then you have some guy telling you what to do—or telling you what [not] to do—but a lot of times it is telling you what to do or what to think. And then you have to sit there very silently and very spiritually and reverently. And then they’ll pray, and maybe you’ll need to go do an altar call—

Greg: And then you pay for it—

Harrison: And then you pay for it. Exactly. These are not manly things to do. If you look at what Christ did, he gathered along some friends, and he [and they] went out and did things together.

The last comment combines elementalism with something else that is thought to be an essential male characteristic: that men are bound together by purpose. They get on with it. We see this theme surfacing again and again in our interviews. But the larger theme throughout is the way religion is directly in conflict with this sense of purposive action. Religion, this thinking goes, is fundamentally about domesticating men, about subverting their elemental impulses in service of normative ideals of belief and behavior. As one man put it, church is like a “lady heaven” where all dress up, sit quietly, and focus on what others are wearing.

The male ideal contrasts with this for these men. They saw aspects of Jesus’s ministry as a model:

Harrison: And he’d teach along the way. . . . If church was like that all the time, it would be more of a manly type thing. You know, if [the pastor] took a couple of us, and was like, “Hey, let’s do church in the mountains for a couple of days.” We’d be like, “Yeah, let’s do it!” And, you know, we’d get more out of that.

And these men were pretty clear that some basic characteristics are essential to what it means to be a man, characteristics that are contradicted—even actively subverted—by church.

Greg: But for guys, think about what you give up in the church—your natural instinct to conquer, right? We’re “outties.” And the natural instinct for man is to have sex with as many people as possible. And all of the sudden it’s like, no, don’t do that.

Francis: [whispers] one woman.

Greg: And it’s—don’t be loud, don’t be obnoxious, don’t go hike on a Sunday morning and play sports. Come sit here on a little uncomfortable seat and sing songs. I think guys have to give up a lot more to be a part of religion in the church aspect.

It was not just church per se that was the problem for these men. Para-church activities and ministries focused on men have emerged in both Evangelical and Ecumenical Protestant churches. These were not satisfactory, either, in that they conflict with elemental characteristics. One interviewee here noted these trends in megachurches in particular, where “. . . it’s become an encounter group. Where it’s like bang a drum and I cry about it, and do all this ridiculous stuff. . . .” Using rather crude traditional language (he called men who are drawn to this type of religiosity “pussies”), he underscored a dynamic that we will continue to see, in less strident form, in the men we will talk with in this and later chapters. Whatever the successes of the feminist movement in encouraging a careful rethinking of the immutability of so-called natural differences between men and women, clear and fixed beliefs remain,8 and these beliefs, to greater and lesser degrees, are significant in the way men think about religion and church. However, as we will see, as men have more domestic responsibilities, this critique of church becomes considerably softened.

This group interview was significant both for what it revealed about the persistence of elementalism, which is in seeming conflict with the domesticating project of religion and the church (but not of Jesus’s “true” message, in the view of these men) and for the details of this elementalism it revealed. Again, while these themes were put in particularly unequivocal terms here, they continued to reveal themselves as we moved into our conversations with couples, in households, and indeed with Ecumenical Protestant men as well. Not surprisingly, these men articulated some familiar ideas about essential differences between men and women.

When the interviewer returned to the question of “encounter”-...