Tea at Trianon: The Manosphere and the Church

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, September 15, 2020

The Manosphere and the Church

From Theopolis:

I was asked to write here about the attraction of the collection of online men’s blogs known as the “manosphere” and its successors, but that needs to first be put in context of the church’s lack of attractiveness to men.

It’s long been noted that Christian practice in America skews female, particularly among singles. “Where have all the good men gone?” is a familiar refrain in churches. Economist Lyman Stone at the Institute for Family Studies looked at various surveys and found that indeed there are fewer single men than women in most American denominations. This imbalance is particularly acute in black and mainline churches, but also affects evangelical congregations. (Data from Barna suggests this gap may be closing, but only because more women are now abandoning the faith).

Why are young men so often turning away from the church and to these largely secular men’s gurus?

It can be tempting to blame the church for this state of affairs. Yet remember John 3:19: This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. The real thing that needs to be explained is not why people reject Christ but why anyone accepts Him. The answer being that only through the grace of God can anyone come to faith in Christ at all.

Because salvation is by God’s grace, I don’t blame the church for people who reject Christ. But I do hold the church accountable for its own faults. So let’s look at the church’s lack of appeal to men on that basis.

Various books have been written on this topic including David Murrow’s Why Men Hate Going to Church and Leon Podles’ The Church Impotent. But British academic Callum Brown puts forth the most compelling view in his book The Death of Christian Britain. In it Brown notes a shift in public perception of piety around 1800 from a male register to a female register. He points out, for example, how angels shifted from being portrayed as primarily male to being portrayed mostly as female around that time.
Brown surveyed the evangelical literature of that era, finding that men and masculinity came to be seen as acute threats to holiness and the home, while women and femininity became associated with godliness. (Read more.)