In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
Roughly eight years ago now, I watched a couple of Mark Driscoll videos and commented on them here. Driscoll, once dubbed “one of the nation’s most prominent and celebrated pastors” by no less than Forbes magazine, took a tumble about a decade back, resigning from his pastorate at Mars Hill Church in Seattle over accusations of arrogance and a “domineering style of leadership”. He reappeared in Phoenix around 2016, after which I lost track of him.
Driscoll’s sermons were edgy and frank, his style ultra-modern. Immanuel Can sent me a link to one of his more recent videos this week, and not much about the man has changed in the last decade, except maybe the addition of a beard and the affectation of some “manly man” stage gear: faded jeans, boots and an outdoor work jacket.
Tom: I’m not sure if you are aware of this, IC, but a decade ago Driscoll’s favorite schtick was to trash the Christian men in his audience while lauding the women and feminists, especially single mothers. He seems to have done a complete about-face, and is now encouraging Christian males to be “traditional men”, and pointing out ways in which the church has been regrettably feminized.
Dropping the Dime on the Feminized Church
I’ve never thought much of the guy, but let’s try to get past the man to the message and see if there’s any “there” there in what he’s saying today. What, if anything, do you like about this new incarnation of Driscoll, IC?
Immanuel Can: Frankly, I have spent no time at all plunging into the past of Mark Driscoll, nor do I think that, for me, it’s very relevant to do so. It’s his latest idea that interests me, rather than the man speaking it.
Tom: Well, I didn’t have to plunge. I was already familiar. To me, he’s established a history that gives him all the personal credibility of your average grifter. But truth is truth wherever you find it, and “the one who is not against us is for us”, so I’m game to take what he has to say at face value until the evidence shows otherwise.
IC: You mention Driscoll’s switch from feminist advocate to men’s rights advocate. I can’t speak to his past stances, and probably wouldn’t back them if I did. But I do find much of the current talk among theologians, philosophers and sociologists about the decline of male values rather important. Driscoll is clearly chipping in now on this larger debate.
The WW2 Theory
Tom: Maybe give us a brief summary of what he’s saying in the video. I did find that interesting.
IC: His argument goes like this: during WW2, all the healthy, young men got taken out of the churches and sent to war. The churches reshaped themselves to serve women and children. In the war, young men got “strong male leadership and brotherhood”. After the war, the men came back and found churches they didn’t want to be in … feminized churches run by weak, older men. So, Driscoll thinks, it’s WW2 that’s put us where we are today, when young, single men find nothing they can relate to, and no use for them, in the churches. That, in a nutshell, is his story. And, he insists, “Nobody is talking about this.”
Questions?
Tom: Sure. Driscoll says, “They never came back.” I don’t think that’s true. We’re now 79 years downstream from D-Day. Anybody who came back from the war and lost interest in church because of WW2 feminization is long dead. The churches I grew up in were about the usual 50/50 split between the sexes. Lots of men did come back to church in 1945, and many of them stayed into the sixties and seventies. So I don’t think the narrative he’s created entirely holds up, especially the part where he says women introduced feminized “worship leaders” in skinny jeans with high voices. That whole concept of worship and special music owes more to the eighties than the forties.
Still, leaving all that aside, the one place he’s definitely not wrong is that today’s evangelical churches are profoundly feminized compared to those of the last two millennia, and that young men in 2024 have indeed lost interest in attending church or participating in large numbers.
The Search for Strong Male Leadership and Brotherhood
I’m guessing if you did a survey of evangelical churches today, you’d find the ratio of women to men over 60:40 in favor of the ladies, and far fewer young men than young women. Moreover, the evangelical men who remain have largely taken on the role of women, sitting quietly in the pews rather than participating in the life of the Body of Christ during gatherings. Today’s church focus is on personal development and fulfillment, home life and the practical aspects of the faith, as opposed to serious doctrinal issues or abstractions. These all cater to a feminized perspective. That’s not to say they are all wrong, but there is a notable absence of “strong male leadership and brotherhood” in today’s churches. Something masculine is missing, and I think that is a reflection of our broader, feminized culture. The church has taken its cue from the world.
IC: I agree. And it’s not true that nobody is talking about this. Recently, lots of people are: Peterson, Gray, Farrell, Prager, Benatar, Hoff Summers, many academic journals, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, the CBC, countless online pundits … it’s a hot topic. What none of them is proposing, though, is what Driscoll thinks: that WW2 is the cause of any of this. I agree with you: he’s going back way, way too early to try to explain this, and actually ending up long before it really happened. You’re right, I think, to peg the Sexual Revolution period as key to the transition toward anti-masculine churches. Clericalism plays a role, too: because churches dominated by the controlling leadership of one man seem to “need” no more men, and make provision for none. It’s more multifaceted and more recent than Driscoll realizes.
Tom: I think so. If the feminization of churches took place every time young men went to war in large numbers, it would have happened dozens of times over the history of the church, and it didn’t. This is a modern phenomenon. What I will say about it is that we men enabled it. There is very little will in the modern evangelical church setting to confront feminization as a problem. It’s just been accepted as “the way things are”, and the young men who have lost interest and wandered away as a result are simply labeled unspiritual.
In Search of a Balanced Church
IC: Yes, I think that’s the case. Well, Tom, can we fix Driscoll’s error a little? What sort of things do you think might have to happen, or be done, in order for the church to become properly masculine again? We can’t reverse WW2, obviously.
Tom: No, and I don’t think we need to. But before we talk about solutions, maybe we should talk a little bit about what a properly balanced church looks like, one where the interests of both godly men and women are represented and the interests of the Lord are paramount. I have one suggestion to start: we could afford to lose at least 50% of the sloppy sentimentality rampant in evangelicalism. The early church showed evidence of a lot of love, but the believers did not gather primarily to stoke up one another’s emotions.
IC: Oh, gosh, yes … lose the sentimentalism! It’s so evident in our current hymnology. And with that, let’s lose the rampant individualism, the “I” that goes before “I feel”. Let’s talk about what “we know” or “we believe” a whole lot more than we do now. And let’s reintroduce standing for the truth, instead of just pleasing our society.
Tom: That’s good. Here’s another: a properly masculine church prizes the right kind of women. Its men praise them, encourage others to emulate them, marry them and raise them. By that, I mean women who recognize their biblical role in the home and church and embrace it, and who show themselves devout, reliable and committed to the service of God’s people rather than always pushing to run the show, and to “self-actualize” rather than support their husbands. Let’s raise our daughters to value marriage to a godly man and children over a career, and our sons to look for and value women like their sisters. If that means we all have to marry Christian women from other cultures to avoid getting saddled with pampered little evangelical divas for a generation, so be it. My secular coworkers have already figured that one out. Maybe the church needs to get with it. As a man, you get more of whatever you put up with. So stop putting up with it.
The Church as Counterculture
IC: Yes. And we’ve got to stop taking our cue from society around us. The reason that feminism, for example, got into the church in the first place is because the church wondered if it couldn’t accommodate that spirit just a little; and once it got in, it took a lot. We need to revive our awareness that the church needs to be countercultural in the most basic ways: in its worldview, more Christian than the world; in its theology, more committed to absolute truth; in its practices, uninterested in political correctness and devoted to biblical obedience; and in its service, more disciplined, sacrificial and unselfish than the world can hope to be. In short, we need much more of the male go-to-war mentality, and a whole lot less of the what-will-the-neighbors-say mentality.
Tom: A properly balanced church prioritizes worship and the use of spiritual gifts. That means we need to get back to more men participating in the services rather than sitting in the pews and leaving all the Bible study, evangelism, expository teaching and prayer leadership to the church’s paid employees. Show me a church that “needs” a paid pastor, and I’ll show you a church where the men are not sufficiently aware of their biblical role, or are simply unwilling to fulfill it. If so, they are insufficiently masculine in every way that matters.
IC: I agree. And now I’m going to say something far too hot to handle: I don’t observe a high level of testosterone among those who call themselves “pastors”.
Tom: That’s just pattern recognition …
Soft Young Men in Skinny Jeans
IC: There’s a reason Driscoll identifies them with soft young men in skinny jeans: today, that’s very often what they are. You won’t find a lot of scars on them or much dirt under their nails. Most of them went more-or-less straight out of high school into Bible College or seminary, and never earned a paycheque. They don’t know the 9-5. They haven’t yet successfully raised a family. They’ve built nothing. Their skills are academic, not real-world. And they are hired by popular acclaim, most of which is female. Is it any wonder that real young men don’t want to become them? They are not the models a young man needs.
Tom: Do you really mean we might need to get back to looking for qualified elders who are “apt to teach”? That IS too hot to handle …
IC: Yes, “apt to teach”, but not just that. “Proving themselves to be examples to the flock.” Manly men. Men not afraid to be men. Men you could point to as examples of what men should be. Men who never apologize for being the ones who make the world go. Men who lead in their marriages and families, and their jobs and communities, and above all, spiritually. And it doesn’t matter a whit what area of life they have their career in, or whether or not they have credentials; men who know and love God above all.
That’s what we need, and what our young men want to see and aspire to become.
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