Horton on "masculine Christianity"

Michael Horton pushes back against the current craze for masculine Christianity:

In the drive to make churches more guy-friendly, we risk confusing cultural (especially American) customs with biblical discipleship. One noted pastor has said that God gave Christianity a "masculine feel." Another contrasted "latte-sipping Cabriolet drivers" with "real men." Jesus and his buddies were "dudes: heterosexual, win-a-fight, punch-you-in-the-nose dudes." Real Christian men like Jesus and Paul "are aggressive, assertive, and nonverbal." Seriously?

The back story on all of this is the rise of the "masculine Christianity movement" in Victorian England, especially with Charles Kingsley's fictional stories in Two Years Ago (1857). D. L. Moody popularized the movement in the United States and baseball-player-turned-evangelist Billy Sunday preached it as he pretended to hit a home run against the devil. For those of us raised on testimonies from recently converted football players in youth group, Tim Tebow is hardly a new phenomenon. Reacting against the safe deity, John Eldredge's Wild at Heart (2001) offered a God who is wild and unpredictable. Neither image is grounded adequately in Scripture. With good intentions, the Promise Keepers movement apparently did not have a significant lasting impact. Nor, I predict, will the call of New Calvinists to a Jesus with "callused hands and big biceps," "the Ultimate Fighting Jesus."

Are these really the images we have of men in the Scriptures? Furthermore, are these the characteristics that the New Testament highlights as "the fruit of the Spirit"—which, apparently, is not gender-specific? "Gentleness, meekness, self-control," "growing in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ," "submitting to your leaders," and the like? Officers are to be "apt to teach," "preaching the truth in love," not quenching a bruised reed or putting out a smoldering candle, and the like. There is nothing about beating people up or belonging to a biker club.

And what about the fact that women as well as men are identified as "disciples" in the New Testament—something that was quite unusual for Second Temple Jews? Or Paul's expressions of gratitude and greeting to the women who assisted him in his work? Not to mention that "there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 3:28). It was Dorothy Sayers who castigated the pale curates of England for serving up a thin soup of moralism instead of the serious, dramatic, and counterintuitive message of the gospel: "the greatest story ever told." She wasn't trying to "masculinize" or "feminize" the gospel, but to join the throng of Zion's worshippers in all times and places. "In Christ," not "in manhood" or "in womanhood," is our ultimate location. One Lord, one faith, one baptism.

Mark Driscoll are you listening?