Islam: A fighting, manly faith

Derbyshire nails it here: "Many of the noisiest Islamophobes are committed Christians of one kind or another, usually of the angry kind"

But misses it bigtime here: "Keep ’em out; fence ’em off; send Muslim visitors home." That wouldn't be a good idea even if we could do it. We are in bed with Islam because of all the oil underneath land where Muslims live. Even the Biggest Islamaphobe of all, George Bush, has been seen holding hands and making nice-nice with Prince Bandar. And that little farce is indeed about oil and dollars. It would be nice if we could fence ourselves off from oil from Islamic countries, but even that plan will only leave more oil for our economic rivals China and Russia.

Sure, we can maintain 'jihad watch' in the blogosphere, keep Islam at virtual arm's length so to speak, but this ongoing, snitty war of 'us vs them' rhetoric only keeps the pot boiling, it doesn't remove any threats real or imagined. The only real solution is dialog between Islam and the West.

"Keep him, O Lord, ever a warrior invincible..." - 2nd prayer at tonsuring, Baptismal Service of the Orthodox Church

If Islam is masculine then the faith of the atheist/agnostic is cowardly. And both are bullies. Not one atheist/agnostic will attack Islam like they do Christianity. In fact, it looks like two demonic book ends when looking at the two sides "Atheism and Islam" coming at Christians.

Though I'd say the word "sociopathic" describes both more accurately.

"Islam is Judaism and Chrisitianity without the baptism of modernity. That's the only difference, the only one."

This is often said, but I don't think it's true. Declaration time: I'm not a theist, or at least not an Abrahamist.

The three main Abrahamic religions differ, at scriptural level, in the church-state relationship, and thus the relationship between secular and religious law, i.e. theocracy versus non-theocracy.

In the OT, there is no distinction between secular and religious. However, as Jews have usually been powerless for the past 2,000+ years, they have learned to ignore or hide their theocratic nature. There are theocratic elements in Israeli law, and there are fringe groups that are honest about the Jewish need to enslave non-Jews, but, simply for reasons of numbers, the Jews really are nothing to worry about. Much as I dislike Judaism, I think that all that Protocols-of-the-Elders stuff is basically nonsense.

Early Christians were mostly fairly powerless, although rarely slaves or peasants - they were artisans, rich and poor merchants, and a few professionals. Therefore, the NT is not about ruling the country - it is pretty emphatically non-theocratic. From the 5th to the 18th centuries Christianity was semi-theocratic (read Augustine about the Donatists, if you don't believe me), and there are fringe, theocratic strains today, but that is contrary to the plain teaching.

The Koran is much more like the OT, the difference being that there are far more Muslims than Jews. I would like to see honest, open discussion about whether Islam is capable of church vs. state separation. Are Muslims allowed to live indefinitely under non-Sharia law, with Muslim moral values being restricted to personal and family life? I don't know the answer, and I would like to see these things debated.

The Koran is much more like the OT, the difference being that there are far more Muslims than Jews. I would like to see honest, open discussion about whether Islam is capable of church vs. state separation. Are Muslims allowed to live indefinitely under non-Sharia law, with Muslim moral values being restricted to personal and family life? I don't know the answer, and I would like to see these things debated.

Posted by: Rombald

We keep confusing the source of the faith is with it's sources. The source of course is the Koran or Bible. The sources is remedy for conflict. The reason for embracing an Abrahamic faith is to find a remedy for the conflict in one's life. If the conflict is political one will embrace the political remedy. If the conflict is loss then one searches for solace. Where it gets really interesting is invariably the conflict/remedy is embraced and the balance of the good book is ignored.

Our view of Islam in the west right now is distorted because it's being embraced as a political remedy. The allure for the adherents is it simplifies conflict, makes things black and white and therefore more manageable, think Rod and his search for community.

But if we look at communities in other parts of the world that are predominately Muslim and politically stable we see a different Islam, one not unlike western communities that are predominately Christian.

Heck, we only have to look here at home in the United States to see what can happen in six short years when a faith is embraced as a political remedy.

Harvey says:

Sometimes the only reaction I can have is a good head shake when is people demonize Islam. Islam is Judaism and Chrisitianity without the baptism of modernity. That's the only difference, the only one.

I say: No, not really. Although Christians have done a poor job showing it, Christianity is ultimately about Love, Divine Love for God's creation. Not submission to God, not a legalist way of living our daily life.

Erin says: I am SO tired of the tired old canard that Catholicism is "less masculine" than other forms of Christianity. Who do you think defeated Islam the first time around?

I say: But the RCC is not the same now as it was 700 years ago. The feminization of the RCC is rather recent, in the grand scheme of things. I think HH Pope Benedict could really change that, if he weren't so elderly, and perhaps he will. I don't think Catholicism is inherently feminine, but, especially since V2, very subject to our prevailing touchy feely way of approaching Christianity here in the west. The Muslims are correct in one way: Being faithful is the same as being a warrior. The war, however, is spiritual in nature, and not temporal.

I am SO tired of the tired old canard that Catholicism is "less masculine" than other forms of Christianity. Who do you think defeated Islam the first time around?

True, but AmChurch is nothing like that one, eh?

"Keep him, O Lord, ever a warrior invincible..." - 2nd prayer at tonsuring, Baptismal Service of the Orthodox Church

The problem with the Orthodox against Muslims has always been population base. That's why they have lost every time, and things don't look good in Russia now. It's all demographics, not sword.

Real masculine religion must still have lots of children. The Muslims have this one figured out; the Orthodox, not so much.

Why does "real masculine religion" like Islam seem to always involve the subjection and often the abuse of women? If that's what being a "real man" is all about, what's wrong with men?

While they sort out their problems, though, I do think we should keep Islam at arm’s length, for our own safety.

Poor Derb. He really is lost, and is so biased toward Westernism he can't see what's in front of his nose.

Exactly why does Islam have "problems"? What should they "sort out"? Islamic folk are only people not having problems these days. They are doing quite nicely, thank you Derb, growing faster than any other faith, and certainly doing better than declining secularists like Derb.

Already 1/5 the world's population, Islam is expanding rapidly in nearly every culture worldwide. They experience no real challenge from either secular modernism or Christianity, and are invading those lands, one family at a time. As Steyn writes, 10 ot of 17 councilmen in Europe's capital government are right now Muslim.

The ego of the Westerner. He is so sure of his own superiority he simply ignores the reality of his dwindling population and cultural ennui. Heck, he says, I live in luxury and enjoy sexual decadence while those ignorant fools can barely feed themselves and shroud their women. QED.

What we forget is that for a culture to grow and remain it has to seek more than comfort and leisure and the soft life. It must have the desire to believe in something bigger than itself.

So we are ripe for the picking. Islam is going to do very well in the West (like it does now in prisons here) as a foil against feminism and the weakened male culture of the West. And Islam will not be as at risk of secularisation as Christians are due to their militant expression that mixes faith and culture.

Anne, I don't believe that feminine = bad any more than I believe masculine = bad. The issue as I see it is that emphasizing one more than the other is the problem, or mis-assigning the roles themselves.

>Derb's an atheist/agnostic

Derb's not an atheist, he's a Mysterian. Search "new mysterianism" in Wikipedia. He explains the evolution of his beliefs in his Faith FAQ www.olimu.com/WebJournalism/2006/

Anne,

It's not that "feminine spirituality" is bad per se. Feminine spirituality is fine, for women. But men need something . . . well, masculine. Leon Podles in his "The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity," says "The masculine is a pattern of initial union, separation, and reunion, while the feminine is a maintenance of unity."

Us guys, we're actually very fragile. The psychological differentiation of the male from the female (i.e. of the young boy from his mother) is a complex process. To love any woman as an adult the boy must "reject" his mother. Then, he must complete his masculine identity by identifying with a man, especially his father. This drive to differentiate sets us on a life-long path of proving ourselves. The proving is a good thing, because a man learns to direct that energy towards loving his wife, providing for his family, and towards the betterment of society. To quote Podles again, "A boy finds an endless source of psychic energy in the space between himself and his mother, as well as an opportunity for a strong sense of agency, of acting on the world to change it, rather than simply accepting it."

Men take hold of their identities as men through participation in rites of passage, rituals, contests, etc. that have elements of separation and return. Whereas, women take hold of their identities as women by identifying with those of their own sex, particularly their mothers. It's a more natural process, if you will, for a young girl to become a woman, than for a young boy to become a man. A girl does not have to separate from the feminine. A boy does.

The problem with an overly-feminized Church is that it drives men away. The human spirit will not be denied in either its feminine, or masculine, forms. And if the masculine spirit is not cultivated and given expression in the Church, then men will go elsewhere in attempts to take hold of their identities as men. There are several avenues, many of them quite destructive, through which young men all over the world seek to become men. Just open the paper or watch the evening news.

Men have disproportionately abandoned Christianity as a legitimate avenue for masculine expression since the Middle Ages. The bridal mysticism of the Middle Ages, in which the individual soul of the mystic becomes the bride of Christ (rather than the Church collective being the bride of Christ) is a watershed moment in the history of spirituality in the Church. Since this time, increasingly, to be Christian (in the West, anyways) is to be feminine-like. So masculinity, in this view, is now an obstacle to union with God.

Podles again: "What is lacking in the West is a language of intimacy that expresses the closeness that men feel with men." YES. As a man, this really resonates. I just happened to be flipping channels tonight and came across Saving Private Ryan on TNT. I sat and watched the scene where the small unit of men took a respite from the fighting, holed up in a darkened church just trying to rest a bit, smoke, drink coffee, write letters, etc. There is a comradeship among men who have fought a common enemy side-by-side, bleeding for one another, dying for one another, that is rarely talked about but completely understood by men who have experienced it. This, I submit, is a way forward for the Church in the West. Recover the masculine motifs of fraternity, comradeship, sacrifice, initiation, struggle, brotherly love, etc. (which are prominent in the Gospels) and you restore the masculine soul. Otherwise, if the feminization of the Church continues, men will continue to seek their spiritual sustenance outside of the Church, with highly damaging consequences for the Church and society.

Wow . . . it's hard to know just where to start with Matt. For the time being, I think I'll simply call upon the guardian spirit of the great Wolfgang Pauli, as channeled through wikipedia:

He could be scathing in his dismissal of any theory he found lacking, often labelling it ganz falsch, utterly false. . . . However, this was not his most severe criticism, which he reserved for theories or theses so unclearly presented as to be untestable or unevaluatable, and thus not properly belonging within the realm of science, even though posing as such. They were worse than wrong because they could not be proven wrong. Famously, he once said of such an unclear paper: "It is not even wrong."

"Wow . . . it's hard to know just where to start with Matt."

I took it as a masculine dilemma with a non-predatory, non-martial Christianity (where "Onward Christian Soldiers" remains a wistful longing), but it reads like "The Lumberjack Song" sung in Sunday-go-to-meetin' clothes.

The reason I don't bother to read Derb anymore is that the man clearly hates everybody other than his patient wife and children. Dinner with him would probably be very amusing for about 20 minutes and then a huge headache.

Islam is Judaism and Chrisitianity without the baptism of modernity.

That's too glib (and I don't mean that in a hostile way) by half. There is a superficial truth to it, but it is far more complicated. Yes, there is a common root-stock of theological concepts. But the way the concepts were developed, appropriated and applied are much different in Islam. The question of sources cannot be avoided, especially given the place of the Quran in Islam, and the secondary, but still essential, role of the ahadith.

The critical question is whether Islam can reach any kind of accommodation with modernity. The way the Quran and ahadith have been traditionally understood, "interpreted" and applied across the Islamic world ensures conflict between Islam and modernity. What is needed is some kind of breakthrough that catches fire. There have been some fits and starts along those lines, but it is a long way from critical mass.

I'm not entirely sure what "butching it up" would look like . . . I'm simply saying men don't go to church because, by and large, they regard involvement in religion as unmasculine. Since men continue to want to be masculine, they will continue to avoid church and seek their masculinity through other avenues. Yet, the Church has within it the resources, the spirituality, the theology, the devotional practices, etc. that allow it to appeal to men - to show them that Christianity actually fulfills their masculinity, rather than undermining it. However, a peculiar preoccupation with feminism and homosexuality dominates several of the Western Christian traditions, and this keeps heterosexual men away.

In the early church, a theology of martyrdom developed as persecution of Christians continued under the empire. The martyr was seen as the new athlete, the new soldier. Martyrdom, properly speaking, was seen as a masculine activity. It's that pattern of initial union, separation, and reunion. Martyrdom by the way, was something that women as well as men "participated" in. All Christians, whether men or women, are called to be athletes of Christ, actively engaged in battle against the passions of the flesh. Women can participate in this "masculine activity" of battling in the spiritual realm just as much as men.

I'm not saying no women allowed. I'm simply advocating for the Church to recapture these masculine motifs.

I'm not saying no women allowed. I'm simply advocating for the Church to recapture these masculine motifs.

Snicker. Fat chance of that! Matt, in my parish we have:

Parish administrator: woman
RE teachers: ALL women (men have been turned away)
Choir: majority women
Parish council: majority women
Lectors/EM: majority women

Male priests and bishops (only possible by law!): they feel your pain...God is your unconditional lover...don't offend anyone...be nice to animals...sorry, don't mean to bring back bad memories Rod...

We even bring nuns in to perform weddings and run psudo-masses. They pull in almost as good attendence as a priest-led mass.

The RE texbooks are so lovey-dovey they might as well have flowers on them.

The music?

Kumbya, my Lord, Kumbya...

Oh, and before I forget: we have experienced a membership implosion. When I was a kid, my First Communion class was like 20 kids. Today, it is 8. Oh, and the population of the area has increased by about 30% since then.

M-David, my comments regarding East/Orthodox=manly and good vs. West=feminine and BAD were more in response to the post just above yours from james gold and to a lesser extent the one from Rdr. Joseph, where the west and Catholicism get slammed for being feminized. Sorry if I was unclear in who I was addressing.

I think the overall tone here, and in Derbyshire's article, though, is that somehow feminine=weak and inferior to the big, burly, masculine aspect, that proves its superiority by begetting as many children as possible, and, according to james gold, having beards and chandeliers (w..t..f..?). That there's something scary about having women administer parishes (would you feel less threatened, object as loudly, if the parish administrator were a lay man?), women teach RE, women do the readings. You do realize that these are volunteer roles, right? Why are you men not stepping forward? Are women so icky that you're scared away from volunteering just because the other folks already doing it are... women? What are you guys afraid of, cooties? For heaven's sake, you all need to grow up and stop blaming women for your own deficiencies. Sigilaris nails this in her last paragraph above where she says:

I also find it peculiar that things men don't like about their fellow men are referred to as "feminine." If they think another man is weak, deluded, flabby, and creepy, why not say so? Why refer to him as "feminized" and thus devalue women rather than putting the blame where it belongs--on male failure?

Moving on, sure, liturgy sucks since Vatican II. I had to sing Kum Bah Yah at my first Communion, and I'm still scarred by it today. I fully agree with you there. There's days where I am truly tempted to present myself down at the local ECUSA joint and bang on their door to let me in, because at least they regularly offer a dignified liturgy that imparts a sense of God's majesty. Of course I am much too ethnic to leave the Church and join the WASPs, even if their music is so much better than ours. ;)

But that is not a result of some satanic womanly influence on the Church or the liturgy. If I recall correctly, all the changes to the liturgy post-Vatican II were dreamed up by... men. All the changes were implemented by...men. All the guitar-and-tamborine choirs I've run across were led by... men. All the crap folk songs and guitar masses were allowed by... men. So tell me: why are we women to blame for your failure, or lack of action?

To Matt Redard, you said:

Recover the masculine motifs of fraternity, comradeship, sacrifice, initiation, struggle, brotherly love, etc. (which are prominent in the Gospels) and you restore the masculine soul.

Do you truly think that fraternity, comradeship, sacrifice, initiation, struggle, and brotherly (sisterly?) are characteristics solely found among men? What do you think women are up to, when they're taking a role in the Church. Is it all some nefarious plot to shut out the men? Are they not sacrificing their time and talents, are they not offering fraternity, are they not undergoing struggle, when they take positions in the Church and running outreach programs and the like? Or in daily life, do you think women don't ever have feelings of fraternity towards their fellow human beings? They don't sacrifice? You must not know any mothers, then, for one easy example. There is not a single woman I know who wouldn't give all, including her life, for her children or family. Don't kid yourself that there's a conspiracy of women out there who want to do away with fraternity, sacrifice, and struggle. We're living it, whether we're involved in the Church or not. And how dare you suggest that our presence rules out your acting on these virtues. Your sex's failure to act on them is YOUR fault.

I am so baffled by the male attitudes on this thread, honestly. As if these qualities are the sole domain of men, and everything is going to hell because women aren't just sitting on their own side of the congregation (like those eastern orthodox folks that james gold spoke of) with their covered heads bowed, busy incubating the next generation of dutiful women (and I say this as a mom of four who DOES follow the Church's guidance on family planning). You all, and Derbyshire included, sound like a bunch of first grade boys yelling about girl cooties. Get out your drums and thump your chests, then, maybe that will save the west, huh?

And you know, it occurs to me, that all this talk about "feminization of the Church" is really just a "nicer" way of saying that "we don't like all those fag priests, and we're not gonna lift a finger until the Church gets rid of them all".

Maybe that's just me, though.

There is really a much simpler explanation for the relative absence of men in churches than any kind of reference to spirituality. Men, in general, do what is advantageous to themselves. In the days when the Church was closely aligned with the powers of this world and could exert credible threats of punishment for not belonging--death or banishment in the old days, social stigma in more recent times--then it was to men's advantage to attend. It was also advantageous to attend because you might be able to network with other men who were in a social position to help you--identifying as an Irish Catholic might make you eligible for political favors, for instance, or identifying as an Episcopalian could give you the right cachet to rise in your law firm. Church doesn't offer men much benefit any more, so they aren't going. It's very pragmatic.

For similar reasons, more men were drawn to the priesthood back in the days when education was harder to get. Becoming a priest was a way to attend college, perhaps travel to Rome, and get social status in the community. You'd always have a residence and housekeeper, food and shelter, and respect. You'd be taken care of. That was not something the average man from a working class family could expect. For some, this bargain was worth the sacrifice of wife and family. Now that it's so much easier to get education and privilege without giving up marriage and independence, fewer men want to make that deal.

Given the structure of our culture, in which men are defined as the sex that dominates, the only coin that would bribe them back into the Church would be license to dominate, masked as spirituality. The Church has been working on this for 2000 years now--trying to unite the recorded words and acts of Jesus with the culturally more acceptable dominator-warrior persona. Much text twisting and hijacking is required to make this plausible. It will be tried again, no doubt. The problem is that to dominate, you need a class of persons who can be dominated. Again, the choices available in the modern world make that more difficult. Fewer women choose that option when they can escape it even to a limited extent.

For this reason, Muslims are a godsend. Conservatively minded men can threaten women by proxy with the Scourge of Islam. "Let us own everything and run everything, or the Muslims will take over! Then you'll be sorry!" Blackmail has never been a really attractive position.

M_David's assertions--Large families = growth = masculine culture. Feminine spirituality is not bad, just not worth paying attention to for the future--would be more relevant if men could give birth. Since they can't, they're faced with the task of finding women who want to serve this function on their behalf. They may be forced to pay at least some attention to feminine spirituality if they need to get more women on their side.

As an aside, I'm genuinely puzzled by the "Kumbaya" meme. It seems everybody hates this song, and it is a symbol of all that is bad in liturgy and spirituality. Frankly, I don't like it either. I was once a very conservative young person, and I was revolted by "Kumbaya" when it first showed up at Mass. But I must say, I've very rarely encountered it any time in the last 30 years. I remember singing it in Girl Scout camp, but that's about it. I truly feel for the rest of you who apparently are hearing it on every street corner, but I think you must have some very old and tattered songbooks in your parish. Maybe you could solve the whole problem by taking up a collection for better hymnals.

Rod, I don't think anyone was "jeering" at Matt Redard. I certainly wasn't. I give him props, in fact, for behaving courteously. I was, however, objecting strenuously to the idea that whatever men feel is wrong with them can be the fault of women. I have no objection at all to men running their spiritual lives in whatever way seems helpful to them. However, if they tell me that I have to run my life according to their specifications, or else be responsible for the downfall of Western civilization, I'm not buying it. If that means they don't want to come to church any more, well . . . shrug. That would be their problem. I'm not exactly standing in the door begging them not to go, since male bad behavior has already made it impossible for me to attend Mass any more.

I cannot take Leon Podles seriously. But that should not be a problem for him, as he takes himself quite seriously enough.

I guess the question is whether the church can respond to the masculinity crisis without hurting women in the process. The "masculine" churches are not exactly known as comfortable places to be women. So is it possible to reach a balance.

As for Podles, he's either a genius or a crackpot depending on your viewpoint. My vote is for crackpot, with much of his scholarship just thinly-veiled, poorly-sourced attacks on feminism and homosexuality. But your mileage will vary.

FYI: "creative destruction" actually comes from Schumpeter, source of much Conservative economic philosophy (at the least, Forbes mag used to be quite keen on it once upon a time):

http://transcriptions.english.ucsb.edu/archive/courses/liu/english25/materials/schumpeter.html

Where this fits into your complaint can be wherever you wish it to be, of course.

I guess the question is whether the church can respond to the masculinity crisis without hurting women in the process. The "masculine" churches are not exactly known as comfortable places to be women. So is it possible to reach a balance.

I like that formulation a lot better, I'll say that. It's not a zero sum game. There is a middle ground between hardline feminism and old-time patriarchy. At a minimum, the church (however defined) can speak to men and offer programs and outlets.

As to "uncomfortable," that's a question of definition. In a very true and real sense, following Christ isn't supposed to be comfortable. The endless-affirmation approach has its own destructive perils, for both men and women.

As to "hurting women," again that depends on how one defines hurt. Sure, some do--I'm reminded of the woman in Ohio who was pulled over for driving in the carpool lane while nursing her infant. Her tyrant-husband claimed that their allegedly Christian religious beliefs prevented her from testifying without his permission. That's a harmful spirituality for women, no argument.

But some women claim that the refusal to ordain females is hurtful. Well...no.

"Second was the idea of not allowing Muslims to enter the country. This strikes me as very sound thinking. But of course is an impossibility in a land where there are no absolutes."

Yeah, right. The Saudis have the right idea--no Jews, no practice of Christianity, none of the wrong kind of Muslims. By george, THEY'VE got a sense of absolutes!

Responding to Marian,

Just because the Saudi's do something does not invalidate the idea. They, the Saudi people have a right to build a society as they see fit and to adapt to change as they choose. The Iraelis have the same right, so to for the U.S. and others. One of the flaws of diversity ideology is that it leads in the end to sameness. If cultures morph into similarities as a result of dispersion of all cultures into one then what becomes of choices. For my preference I would rather engage Saudis and all on economic terms and as trading peoples then to war and kill even though there may be times when these are necessary. Let each develop according to its philosophic principle and be open to those of similar beleif. In this way we get real difference and a world of greater interest.

Hey, the Jews were there first!