The Masculine Mystique
Men at the Crossroads,by Jack Balswick (InterVarsity, 218 pp.; $9.99, paper);The Real Man Inside, by Verne Becker (Zondervan, 206 pp.; $15.99, hardcover);Father and Son, by Gordon Dalbey (Nelson, 208 pp.; $14.99, hardcover);Men Under Construction, by Donald M. Joy (Victor, 204 pp.; $8.99, paper);The Hidden Value of a Man,by Gary Smalley and John Trent (Focus on the Family, 180 pp.; $17.00, hardcover). Reviewed by John Wilson, an editor and writer in Pasadena, California.
Here are the titles of books either just or soon-to-be released by secular publishing houses: American Manhood, Being a Man, Fatherhood in America, In a Time of Fallen Heroes: The Re-Creation of Masculinity, In the Company of Men, Men and the Water of Life, Reinventing Fatherhood. Publishers know a good thing when they see it. But this mere recitation of titles—a sampling only, not an exhaustive list—provides a surprisingly accurate outline of the recurring themes that have brought men’s issues to national prominence.
Foremost is the unsettling discovery that masculinity—what it means to be a man—is not an unchanging essence. If manhood is (at least in part) historically and culturally conditioned, how do we distinguish between discardable roles and vital imperatives that we violate only at great cost? While some of the titles listed above hint at the anxiety provoked by such questions, there is a prevailing tone of utopian optimism: masculinity is being re-created, no less.
Evangelicals have been quick to respond to the growing interest in men’s issues; the five books under review here are a representative selection. Jack Balswick’s Men at the Crossroads: Beyond Traditional Roles and modern Options is the best starting point. With clarity and balance, Balswick provides the context necessary for understanding the current debates over gender roles. Offering a critique of traditional conceptions of masculinity as well as contemporary secular alternatives, he seeks a distinctively Christian perspective that synthesizes the best from these divergent viewpoints.
“Imagine the anxiety of an actor who walks out on the stage and discovers that he cannot remember vital lines that belong to his role. Changing definitions of masculinity [and femininity, Balswick would add] have brought many men a similar anxiety in their daily lives.” In fact, the problem is not so much that men have forgotten their lines but rather that they have become self-conscious and uncertain about what they are saying.
The “early men’s movement,” as Balswick calls it, writing from the perspective of a participant, developed in the 1970s as a sympathetic response to feminism. The men who took part in this movement—which was small, and largely restricted to academia—were burdened with guilt. In repudiating the oppression of women and the self-destructive behaviors that were built into traditional definitions of masculinity, they “unfortunately failed to see the strengths and positive qualities in the traditional male.” Moreover, they accepted the notion, then dominant in the social sciences, that gender roles are almost entirely socially constructed. (Much of the current academic work on men’s issues is governed by this paradigm.)
In contrast, the “new men’s movement”—in today’s parlance, simply the men’s movement—strongly emphasized the reality of “fundamental deep structures of the human self, both masculine and feminine,” according to Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette in King, Warrior, Magician, Lover. While the new men’s movement, which developed in the 1980s independently of the early men’s movement, was rooted in Jungian depth psychology, it found corroborating evidence in studies that suggested a biological basis for many of the differences between men and women.
In 1989, the Bill Moyers/Robert Bly PBS production, “A Gathering of Men,” introduced the men’s movement to millions of viewers. This was followed by the 1990 publication of Bly’s Iron John: A Book About Men, which enjoyed a long run on the best-seller list and spawned a host of imitations, parodies, and lengthy analyses, pro and con. With his books, videos, and audiotapes, in addition to men’s gatherings conducted throughout the United States, Bly has done more than anyone else to bring men’s issues to the surface and to frame the terms of the discussion.
Wounded and passive
Verne Becker’s The Real Man Inside makes it clear why Bly’s message struck a chord. A firsthand account of pain, confusion, and healing, Real Man combines an autobiographical narrative with an exposition of the teachings of Bly, Moore and Gillette, Joseph Campbell, and others. Like Balswick, Becker seeks to adapt and Christianize the masculine “archetypes” popularized by the men’s movement.
Becker was a self-described “passive man” (in Bly’s terms, a “soft man”) until his first wife unexpectedly left him, a shock that ultimately prompted him to re-evaluate his life. In his thirties at the time, Becker had been a sensitive, caring husband and a good provider. What was wrong with him?
Even before the separation and divorce, Becker had been aware of a seemingly unaccountable dissatisfaction, a sense that he had been “sleepwalking” for years. Inspired by a broadcast of “A Gathering of Men,” and guided by his therapist, he began to dig deeper. He saw that he was alienated from his body (“From an early age I learned to live in my head”), from his deepest feelings, and from other men.
How did this come about? Becker repeats the standard men’s-movement diagnosis (shared in essentials by Balswick, Dalbey, and Joy). Gradual changes in Western society have progressively weakened the transmission of masculine identity from generation to generation. The father is distant, off at work most of the time (or out of the picture entirely), leaving sons vulnerable to excessive mothering. The breakdown in community has left boys without clear markers as they move into adulthood. Finally, the women’s movement, while necessary and long overdue, has nevertheless further eroded men’s sense of identity.
For Becker, recovering his masculine identity meant opening himself to risk—in his case, the risks entailed by forgoing the security of a regular pay-check for the life of a freelance writer.
Becker’s book is weakest when he is trying to put his experience in a Christian context. Arguing that “the unconscious houses our spiritual side, or our soul, including the stamp of God’s image”—an astonishing statement, which unwittingly reveals the overweening authority of psychology in the evangelical community—Becker implies that only through therapy and the introspective “work” encouraged by the men’s movement can we “bring our inner and outer selves into harmony with each other and with God.”
More serious confusions are afoot in Gordon Dalbey’s Father and Son: The Wound, the Healing, the Call to Manhood. Dalbey’s point of departure is the masculine “wound,” a key theme of the men’s movement: “That wound is caused by an epidemic alienation from the father, who is every man’s masculine root in this world.” This “epidemic” is a product of specific historical circumstances; here Dalbey’s summary parallels Becker’s.
Dalbey’s next move, however, is to take this specific problem of contemporary American society and theologize it to the limit. Suddenly he is asserting that the “need for healing the father-son wound is the key to understanding the biblical faith.”
There are more problems with that claim than can be sorted out here. It ignores the fact that centuries ago, long before the onset of “epidemic alienation from the [human] father,” men and women needed God just as much as they do today; by the same token, sons today who are not alienated from their fathers nonetheless need God just as much as any of their wounded contemporaries. And what of daughters?
Dalbey provides an interesting twist for explaining why men are not as active in church as women: “Men avoid and often ridicule church because they want true and not false religion. Men want relationship with the Father, not a list of do’s and don’ts among pompous leaders and mindless underlings.” In other words, real men don’t heed the Ten Commandments.
Captains and kings
It is refreshing to turn from Dalbey to Donald Joy’s Men Under Construction, a revised and expanded edition of his 1989 book Unfinished Business. True, Joy repeats an error that seems to be endemic to the genre—inflating the influence of fathers to near-omnipotence. (Yes, fathers are important in shaping the lives of their children, but so are many other factors.) When Joy asserts that “both our culture and our genes combine to give us a sense that our fathers make and control our destinies,” some readers may be moved to respond: “Speak for yourself!”
Despite this reductionism, Joy provides an energizing and insightful guide to issues that men are grappling with: father-son relationships, sexuality, the need for intimacy and trust in friendships with other men. A gifted storyteller, Joy draws frequently on his own experience as a therapist and marshals an impressive range of sources, from studies of fetal development to the pioneering work of Carol Gilligan. Each chapter comes equipped with “Do-It-Yourself Notes” (to facilitate individual study) and “Contractor’s Crew Notes” (for use in a men’s support group). In addition to source notes, Joy has included a useful annotated bibliography of men’s resources.
Gary Smalley and John Trent’s The Hidden Value of a Man stands a bit apart from the other books reviewed here; unlike them, it is not significantly influenced by Bly and the men’s movement. Through their work with the men’s organization Promise Keepers, Smalley and Trent have sought to address the crisis in fatherhood that contributes to so many of the problems we face as a nation.
The Hidden Value of a Man is written in a maddeningly simplistic style. The authors are excessively fond of military metaphors; not surprisingly, they present a strongly hierarchical model of male headship in marriage. Since “the absence of clear goals is one of the biggest problems … in families around the world,” Smalley and Trent advise couples to “write out their goals in a family constitution.” Hidden Value of a Man also includes checklists, questions, and other workbooklike material.
Missing ingredients
While these five books on men’s issues represent diverse viewpoints from within the evangelical community, they nevertheless have much in common. What they omit or take for granted is in some instances as important as what they say.
In these books countless assertions are made about manhood and masculinity, and so it is striking to note the almost complete dominance of psychological perspectives and the virtually complete absense of anthropological, cross-cultural perspectives. (There are piquant exceptions; Joy, for example, devotes a page or so to penis rituals around the world.) At a time when race and ethnicity are factored into every conceivable discussion, even to the point of obsession, it is strange to read five books about men and men’s issues without encountering an extended reflection on the intersection between masculinity and race and ethnicity. (Balswick, to his credit, acknowledges the issue, though he does not pursue it.)
Another pattern is even more striking. If earlier writings about manhood are epitomized by the excesses of Norman Mailer, with his lurid fantasies of violence and abasement, these books go to the opposite extreme. Joy tells us that the “macho façade is a thin disguise of toughness that many men wear to protect themselves and keep others from discovering what empty and hurting people they really are.” In a chapter titled “Competition, Aggression and War,” Balswick castigates the “warped vision of manhood” reflected in the gala “victory celebrations” after the Gulf War. Fine, but what about violence that cannot be reduced to Ram-boesque posturing? Violence in these books, when it is not ignored altogether, is treated as a subject to be psychologically and sociologically analyzed and deplored, rather than as an unpredictable reality that always lies just beneath the surface of civility.
Historically and cross-culturally, one of the fundamental tests of manhood has been the capacity and willingness to defend oneself and one’s family—even at the cost of one’s own life. How does that play in the 1990s? Where does violence fit in with what Joy calls “full-spectrum masculinity”? In his conclusion, Joy approvingly recalls Bruce Barton’s revisionist portrait of a virile Jesus, The Man Nobody Knows, but then observes that Jesus became the supreme exemplar of nonviolent resistance to evil. That leaves the question of violence and Christian manhood in the here and now very much up in the air: a worthy subject for another book.
The Politics Of Dominion
Heaven on Earth? The Social and Political Agendas of Dominion Theology, by Bruce Barron (Zondervan, 238 pp.; $10.99, paper). Reviewed by Doug Bandow, author of Beyond Good Intentions.
Bruce Barron’s Heaven on Earth? explores one of the more important, yet controversial, influences on Christian political activists: Dominion theology. Robert Billings, a leader of Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority, reportedly said that “if it weren’t for [Rousas John Rushdoony’s] books, none of us would be here.”
Although Rushdoony is largely unknown not only to the general public but also to most churchgoers, he, along with his estranged son-in-law, Gary North, and a handful of other so-called Reconstructionists, represent an important theological current. Most simply, Dominion theology posits the duty of Christians to capture every institution for Jesus Christ. Among the more controversial applications of Reconstructionism is that today’s nominally secular state should enforce Old Testament law.
However, the movement is more divided than has been commonly thought. Barron, the author of The Health and Wealth Gospel and currently a congressional aide, provides concise, understandable explanations of the roots of Dominion theology and related perspectives-particularly Pat Robertson’s Regent University and the Kingdom-Now Pentecostal movement.
What makes Barron’s book so valuable is its objectivity. Not all Reconstructionists take criticism well, and some of its critics have been equally uncivil. Barron presents a fair description of the movement, followed by his own critique. He rightly disagrees with Dominion presuppositions: Reconstructionism can, he writes, “at times go overboard in its unyielding antagonism to non-Christian cultural forces” as well as evidence “a discomforting triumphalism.” Still, he argues, “these two defining dominionist characteristics, cultural distinctiveness and optimism, also offer a positive contrast to the inconsistency and passivity that mark so much of both Christian and secular thought.”
Barron advocates a larger government than most Reconstructionists-and I-would like, but he nevertheless does a good job of eliciting some general biblical principles to be applied in the public sphere. Heaven on Earth? is a rarity amongst the literature on Dominion theology-an objective, informative account of a controversial subject. It belongs in the library of anyone interested in assessing the prqper role of Christians in politics.
