My friend Shane Morris recently posted a series of Tweets that articulate an idea I’ve seen circulating a lot recently: That evangelical Christian culture implicitly (or explicitly) blames men too much for the state of the church and the wider world. Contrary to what you might guess at first glance, this isn’t an especially parochial or “manosphere” take; you can find figures ranging from Dr. Anthony Bradley to Aaron Renn asking the same questions, and frequently coming to the same answer.
Shane’s thread does a good job clarifying the specific presenting issues. I would summarize them this way:
Evangelical theology (especially preaching and teaching) uses its beliefs about gender roles to put men in a position where they receive blame not only for their own spiritual failures, but for the failures of those around them (especially women).
Evangelicals have a saintly view of female nature that predisposes them to assume that in any given familial, ecclesial, or cultural crisis, the men must be corrected first, and corrected most firmly.
Because they grossly underestimate the moral agency and corruption of modern Western women, evangelicals have a difficult time helping contemporary men navigate the obstacles—many of which are highly gendered obstacles—that exist between them and a faithful, fruitful life.
These dynamics are constantly reinforced within evangelical churches and institutions because pastors and leaders fear offending women.
What lay beneath such a train of thought? For starters, it’s worth pointing out that many people—including liberals and secularists—take it for granted that Western men are being ill-served by the trajectory of contemporary education, economics, and politics. This group includes more than a few women, some of whom are even expressing doubts about the sexual revolution. Books like Of Boys and Men by
are zooming in on the growing “gender gap” in which women are doing significantly better on nearly every material front than their male peers: Better at school, better at university, better at getting careers, and (somewhat) at being happy and satisfied with their lives.The personal flourishing gap is not the only current divergence between men and women, though. As I’ve mentioned in this space before, men, at least in many first world nations, seem to be skewing toward the right, while emerging women are decisively breaking for the left. This data is inflecting how many are understanding contemporary life, especially the Great Awokening and how progressive sensibilities on everything from transgenderism to Donald Trump seem “female-coded.” Throw in pop culture—the top movie in 2023 was the transparently feminist fable Barbie, and the top celebrity in the world is Taylor Swift—and the #MeToo movement (either a genuinely just reckoning or an exercise in feminist power politics, depending on whom you ask), and you have what looks like a feminine mystique that is both commercially compelling and politically powerful.
I’m pointing all this out to simply observe that against these societal trends, many of the conservative evangelicals that Shane and I know tend to operate with patriarchal assumptions. I don’t mean this in the pejorative sense of the word, but literally: Many conservative evangelicals (myself included) retain a theology of gender and society that puts men at positions of leadership, not only in marriage but in the wider world. It’s an argument from natural law, following the logic of Paul’s appeal to creation, to explain why it is that God has appointed men, and not women, to absorb the responsibility for the church and community.
The complementarian view of gender supplies the foundation of what Shane is lamenting in his thread. My point is not that Shane is wrong or that any consistent complementarian will freely yell “Who the hell do you think you are” at men. Rather, the mantle of leadership naturally entails the burden of accountability. No complementarian I know of disputes this. But the question that Shane and others are asking is: Has evangelical church culture encouraged and emboldened men to wield this leadership and receive the accountability, or has it treated the accountability itself as an end-game? In other words, do men in evangelical churches get treated more often as potential leaders, or as potential problems?
My own perspective is complicated. For one, I actually don’t think that most evangelical churches are characterized by an unwillingness to preach directly and forcefully to women. This critique seems to conflate what rises to the surface in evangelical subculture—magazines, blogs, books, etc.—with what actually goes on in typical churches. It would not be a shocking take to suggest that much evangelical content is functionally egalitarian. That’s Richard Reeves’ entire point in Of Boys and Men: American culture’s default setting currently accelerates women and is indifferent (or worse) to boys. I have seen enough to believe that what is true of higher ed, big business, and pop culture in this regard is also generally true of many evangelical hubs.
This doesn’t mean, however, that most conservative evangelical churches are afraid of preaching against abortion, or premarital sex, or gossip, or immodesty, etc—sins that most would intuitively think of as “female-coded” sins. What I have found is that, while Christian blogs and podcasts rage about purity culture, most of the people who are willing to be members of confessional churches take it for granted that God cares what they do with their bodies and accept, at least at a superficial level, that sex is for marriage. One of the observations of David Ayers’ sobering book on changing evangelical sex habits is that evangelical women are still more likely to hold the line on fornication, adultery, and cohabitation than men are. Granted that Ayers’ book reveals some astonishing lenience toward these things in emerging evangelicals, but the gendered disparity does not point toward women’s being especially “un-discipled” in churches.
But this still doesn’t answer the question of how evangelical churches treat men. To that end, let me offer three points rooted in personal observation, biblical doctrine, and measurable data:
1. Men need more than “tough love,” and conservative churches often struggle at giving more than this.
I’ve observed before that I have seen a dynamic in evangelical churches wherein the keyword for women’s ministry tends to be “encouragement” or “friendship,” and the keyword for men’s ministry tends to be “accountability.” Men’s gatherings are often inflected by the expectation that simply enjoying one another isn’t enough. There needs to be some explicit mention of “doing better,” especially as a husband or father.
This is both a failure of imagination and of biblical discipleship. As many others have observed, evangelicals can struggle to explain the value of things like friendship, community, and companionship, unless the value is downstream from making people “better” at personal Bible reading, church attendance, resisting temptation, etc. In other words, in a good deal of men’s ministry culture there seems to be an assumption that men laughing, playing, and talking together needs to bottom out with some spiritual challenge or correction, or else it’s not really formative. These assumptions do not seem as near to women’s ministry. Simply advertise a women’s fellowship or “Moms Day Out” and the understanding is that you’ve offered a valuable service.
This is probably rooted in dynamics much thicker than just anti-male bias. But it’s a real issue, and evangelical men are not wrong to notice it.
2. Complementarians can overestimate the degree to which happy wives and children reveal a man’s spiritual well-being.
The mantle of leadership comes tethered to the burden of responsibility. Yet it’s not always the responsibility that needs attention. Sometimes a man can be doing well in his marriage and parenting, and yet be in pressing need of spiritual encouragement, wisdom, friendship, etc. There is a tendency I’ve observed to equate a man’s well-being with the perceived happiness of his household, and this not only fails to fully diagnose a man’s spiritual condition, but it communicates to men that family is the only legitimate measure of their identity.
It’s often been said that leaders fall in private long before they fall in public. This isn’t just about adultery, either. Men’s inner lives cannot be measured totally by how little porn they’ve watched or how frequently they hug their children. Underestimating the spiritual value of male friendship means a lot of churches have absolutely no idea what the men in their congregation are thinking or feeling…except, of course, when a wife or child give warning shots. This is a problem, and it’s worth considering how this dynamic might be contributing to the resistance of some younger men toward marriage and children.
3. Christians need to recognize the ways in which modern society makes virtue harder—for men and women.
If “Big Eva” tends to traffic in the first two problems on this list, this one might be the besetting sin of the “redpill” evangelicals. Often, the assumption on evangelicalism’s right flank seems to be that men go bad (either as abusive Andrew Tate types or apathetic lost boys) because they are pushed by cultural forces that act upon them in ways the church does not fight. On the flip side, the assumption is that women go bad (either as feminist girlbosses or empathy-worshiping scolds) because they want to. This framing implicitly makes wayward men cut a more sympathetic figure than the wayward women. The first group is an opportunity; the second group is a threat.
This thinking misses the impact of wider society on the Christian life. The attention around the “tradwife” influencer illustrates just how remote that kind of lifestyle is from modern life, and why people like Allie Beth Stuckey are correct to point out its performative character. Conservative evangelicals make a mistake if they think the only reason men and women aren’t more like they were 100 years ago is because of sinful failure. It’s hard being a stay-at-home mom in 2024, and not just for the reasons it’s always been hard. It’s hard being a chaste, productive man in 2024, and not just for the reasons it’s always been hard. There are social forces at work to make our gender-inflected virtues harder, less instinctive, and the alternatives more attractive and feasible.
Part of the task facing Christians in the near future is to build bridges between the sexes. Moral revolution and technopoly mean that we are likely entering a cultural season in which men and women do not feel their need for each other. To the degree that evangelical churches have swung leftward toward a feminist spirituality, the results will be a loss of truth and flourishing. But overcorrecting for this by modeling Christian theology and culture on the secular, consumptive despair of the modern male is no correction at all. Evangelicals are indeed often too hard on men. And a church culture that fails to effectively and realistically disciple women will likewise be too hard on men, and vice versa. Because men and women need more than for the other group to do right by them. They need each other.
To a certain extent, it's less about "are we too harsh" as much as "are we giving men the tools they need to live up to the high calling they've been given?" You're absolutely spot on that without looking at men holistically, as more than dads and husbands, you'll be missing some of the critical avenues like friendship and community that can help them fulfill their calling(s).
I tend to think of this in light of the qualifications for elders and deacons. Being a husband and father is only a small part of the lists in Titus & 2 Tim; to stop there misses all the other virtues that are cultivated not just in the family context, but in vocation and community and everywhere else. To meet men in those areas with challenge AND support is to push them in the right direction.
“ Because men and women need more than for the other group to do right by them. They need each other.”
Once I got here I finally gave in to the tears. This was so good. My husband and I recently completed counseling - over 6 months. During this time the Lord really taught and guided me in so many things. And much of what you’re speaking about here echos those things.
Pointing out the disparity between men’s and women’s ministries . . . I must repent. How haven’t we seen this? I’ve even heard some of the men complain when there is a men’s group that is just camaraderie and fun.
We’ve know our men need friendships - but we’ve encouraged things that don’t foster that. 🙏🏻