And while his ministry is not to men in particular, Mark Driscoll, pastor of Seattle's Mars Hill Church, nevertheless desires greater testosterone in contemporary Christianity. In Driscoll's opinion, the church has produced "a bunch of nice, soft, tender, chickified church boys. … Sixty percent of Christians are chicks," he explains, "and the forty percent that are dudes are still sort of chicks."Nope, calling men "sort of chicks" isn't offensive, nor intended to shame the men and the women at the same time. Not at all.
The aspect of church that men find least appealing is its conception of Jesus. Driscoll put this bluntly in his sermon "Death by Love" at the 2006 Resurgence theology conference (available at TheResurgence.com). According to Driscoll, "real men" avoid the church because it projects a "Richard Simmons, hippie, queer Christ" that "is no one to live for [and] is no one to die for." Driscoll explains, "Jesus was not a long-haired … effeminate-looking dude"; rather, he had "callused hands and big biceps." This is the sort of Christ men are drawn to—what Driscoll calls "Ultimate Fighting Jesus."Always nice when you can combine more misogyny with a little gay bashing along the way.
Driscoll comes closest to imagining Jesus as the model of maleness when he argues that "latte-sipping Cabriolet drivers" do not represent biblical masculinity, because "real men"—like Jesus, Paul, and John the Baptist— are "dudes: heterosexual, win-a-fight, punch-you-in-the-nose dudes." In other words, because Jesus is not a "limp-wristed, dress-wearing hippie," the men created in his image are not sissified church boys; they are aggressive, assertive, and nonverbal.Because to truly be a Christian man means I need to be willing to punch people in the mouth.
Sigh.
12 comments:
"Driscoll comes closest to imagining Jesus....." I think "imagining" is the operative word here. Talk about creating god in your own image. Religion is the last bastion of acceptable mysogony. You can say what you want from a pulpit and get away with it. What a testimony. I guess the rest of the new testament is to be disregarded, except for the submission parts.
The article you link is pretty good analysis.
In the end, I think this is marketing and sells books and videos. There's going to be plenty of guys that will eat this up.
Later-BB
Oh yeah??!!?? Well, my Jesus can beat up your Jesus!
I think you are both right.
And I think Driscoll is a moron.
Oh, Streak, by the way, Driscoll just wrapped up his recent sermon series on sex...
Sounds like that guy would love the GodMen. I blogged about them a little over a year ago. Guess this won't go away, sigh.
Wow. Driscoll's STILL in the closet?
/snark
Agreed, BB. This is pure religio-economics at work. It's a crowded market; gotta work a niche in there somewhere.
'Wow. Driscoll's STILL in the closet?' Tomorrow's headlines waiting to happen. Too much compensation all around. BB
Wow. I thought I had heard it all until I read this. Unbelievable.
Yeah, real manly men punch people in places where they're as likely to break their hand as do any damage to the other person. Brilliant. Also an indication that Driscoll probably has not been in many (or any) actual fights himself.
Not that that matters, but it's reminiscent of how the loudest bangers of the war drums in this administration never served in the military themselves.
Shh! You guys are going to bring back that fp guy . . .
Sounds like one more way to align religion with the Right Wing. They have God on their side, because they're a bunch of red-blooded, patriotic Americans. Funny that "latte-sipping Cabriolet drivers" is also sometimes used to describe liberals.
Sarah, of course you are right. In both ways.
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