Masculinity and religion

Amy has a post up linking to a Religion News Service report about the gender imbalance in today's churches. Amy's right: this isn't new news. Amy's also right: what might be new news to most people is to learn that this is not a recent phenomenon. In fact, Lee Podles wrote a whole book on the topic a few years ago, "The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity," in which he pointed out that this has been a fact of Western Christianity for centuries -- possibly stemming from the medieval cult of the Virgin and chivalry, with its exaggerations of the feminine.

I dunno. While the story Amy linked to is about Protestant churches, with which I have little experience, I do know that I know lots of Catholic men -- I seem to recall that SiliconValleySteve, a frequent commenter on this blog, among them -- who are faithful to the Church, but who feel that the atmosphere in their parishes is anti-masculine. By which they mean, in general, an atmosphere that downplays or even denigrates the virtues associated with manliness: courage, honor, physical bravery, and so forth. I know, I know, women can be and are brave, honorable, yadda yadda; but you know what I'm talking about here: many parishes honor the virtues typically associated with women and nurture. I think when you have a religion that puts too much value on one or the other, you get something very much out of balance (is there a more masculine religion than Islam?). Anyway, this is the kind of thing that I was talking about in my previous post, about why something snapped in me in my former Catholic parish on the Ash Wednesday when the pastor told the congregation he wasn't going to talk about sin and repentance (his actual homily, I forgot to mention, was about how we all need to be better to ourselves). I am sick to death of this wimpy American middle-class approach to religion, in which we are challenged to do little more than feel better about ourselves and be nice to everybody. I don't think most men relate to that at all. We look for challenge, for something to overcome (evil in ourselves, evil in the world), we look for something to defend.

(For my view on the wussification of Catholic men as observed in their reaction to the Scandal, see here; in it, I make use of this quote from Teddy Roosevelt: "I loathe cruelty and injustice. To see a boy or man torture something helpless whether in the shape of a small boy or little girl or dumb animal makes me rage." It's fine to be conventionally virtuous, Roosevelt said, but if these qualities are unsupported by "something more virile, they may tend to evil rather than good."

"The man who merely possesses these traits, and in addition is timid and shirks effort, attracts and deserves a good deal of contempt," wrote Mr. Roosevelt.)

I know that a lot of Catholic guys I've talked to over the years have this sense that the Church either doesn't want to encourage or actually wants to discourage the kinds of things we bring to the Church as men, as part of our nature. The Church, to be blunt, wants emasculates. Or that, generally speaking, is how it has seemed to me -- and why Mel Gibson's Christ in "The Passion" was such an inspiration. That was the first time I really understood how manful it was -- that is, how fulfilling of his nature as a male -- for the Saviour to suffer and die as a willing victim.

When I first started attending liturgy at St. Seraphim's Orthodox cathedral in Dallas, I was astonished by how masculine the atmosphere was (this is something I also observed at the Maronite cathedral in Brooklyn, where church attendance was 50 percent male, 50 percent female -- is there something particular to Eastern Christianity, whether Catholic or Orthodox, at work here?). It was a serious place, not a place where the standard American therapeutic gospel was going to be preached. In the Orthodox parish, you have a strong sense of spiritual fatherhood there. The feminine is honored too, but you really understand what a patriarchal religion Christianity is when its comes down to you through Orthodox worship. I think Frederica Mathewes-Green wrote in one of her books that she was initially put off by the rigor of Orthodox life -- the fasting, the long liturgies, and so forth -- but that she found men really rallied to it, because it asked something difficult of them. It presented a challenge, and it honored as saints spiritual athletes who had overcome themselves. Anyway, I should say that I find in Orthodoxy a much more balanced approach to faith in terms of the masculine and feminine. It looks heavily masculine to people who have grown up in American culture, I think, but to me, as someone who has long had a particular devotion to the Blessed Mother, I find Orthodoxy more balanced.

Before I open comments on this thread, I would ask readers to keep the discussion focused on the topic of the masculine and the feminine as experienced in various churches, and not to make my own spiritual life the focus of discussion. I don't think readers care to read what the usual suspects have to say about whether or not Rod Dreher is going to stay Catholic or become Orthodox. Boring, boring, boring. Let's talk about masculinity and religion, the good and the bad, okay? I hate to have to point this out, but it gets awfully tiresome to have these threads hijacked.