“Our pastor makes all the husbands get down on one knee and beg their wives to forgive them for being such bad husbands and fathers.” 

I've often complained about anti-male bias among Christian conservatives, supposedly defenders of fatherhood and families. Christian writer Paul Coughlin, author of No More Christian Nice Guy: When Being Nice--Instead of Good--Hurts Men, Women, and Children, is one of the few Christian writers willing to take the Christian establishment to task for this. In his co-authored follow-up book Married but Not Engaged he has an interesting segment which deals with this, which is excerpted below:

Married but Not Engaged
By Paul & Sandy Coughlin

Recently, on TBN, a female host told a stage full of family men, sitting next to their wives, that one reason men don’t communicate as effectively as women is that they “are a little brain dead.” Clearly she has an inaccurate grasp of how testosterone, specifically, influences brain activity. However, if a male host said women’s brains don’t function right, you can bet you’d have heard a protest and perhaps an apology. Dehumanizing prejudice against men is so pervasive that her cutting remark was accompanied not by correction but by laughter.

On Father’s Day, at your church, are husbands and fathers honored and encouraged, or is the theme more about their male quirkiness and their goofy habits? Are they celebrated? Praised? Told that they matter, that they’re irreplaceable?

After reading Paul’s article on Crosswalk.com entitled “Pastors, Don’t Use Mother’s Day to Bash Dads,” a reader wrote, “Your article was so wonderful and encouraging to us fathers. We no longer go to church on Mother’s Day or Father’s Day because of what is said about men.” But it was mostly women who thanked him. “Thank you for your timely article. I couldn’t agree more. It’s about time someone gave Christian men the support they need.”

Numerous men have told Paul that they no longer want to go to church on Mother’s Day because they’re herded into one all-inclusive category—deadbeat, or thereabouts—and told how insufficient and inadequate they are. One recalls, “Our pastor makes all the husbands get down on one knee and beg their wives to forgive them for being such bad husbands and fathers.”

Many have been shamed in church for years with the unbiblical idea that women are more moral and spiritual, that men are intrinsically less so, simply by being male. They have also been given the ridiculous message that if there is anything wrong with their marriage, it’s up to the man to fix it, and if the problem persists, it’s his fault because he has been unable and/or unwilling to be the spiritual leader of his home. One popular Christian counselor claims that in more than thirty years of counseling, he has never seen a marriage problem where the husband didn’t bear most if not all of the responsibility!

Talk show host and columnist Glenn Sacks says that churches and parachurch organizations unfairly blame men. Sacks, not a Christian, says:

"A Christian advice show on one of the stations owned by my former network here in Los Angeles is a good example—whatever the problem or situation, the two Christian male hosts always fall all over each other to assure the woman caller and the audience that the guy is wrong. The evil Christian patriarchs of the feminists’ imagination sound more like Women’s Studies professors—in fact, they’re often worse."

What has happened to men in general and to Christian men in particular for generations hasn’t been a feminization: Men have been dehumanized and denatured. Note, though, that being told to take on feminine characteristics. This anti-male message isn’t making us like women but something other than truly human as made in God’s image. We women too have been encouraged, sometimes with good but misguided intentions, to strip ourselves of a compelling personality and true womanhood. In whatever direction, it is not of God that any person should undergo destructive transformation. God made us male and female; fully embracing and living out our masculinity and femininity glorifies him in us and through us.

Dehumanization estranges us from our individuality, uniqueness, creativity, passion, and personality. Our lives become routine and mechanical, which tears at the fabric and saps the lifeblood of marriage. We lose vital sensitivity, inwardly and outwardly. We are less able to enhance each other’s lives because we have stripped ourselves of the ability to share and receive a truly redemptive power. All this is opposed to creating the intimacy we really want. Intimacy is a mourned casualty of our not being who we are meant to be.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 9th, 2007 at 1:08 pm and is filed under Fatherhood, Marriage, Sexism, Misandry, Gender Issues (Misc.), Christian Conservatives, Catholics, Christians, Men, Women and Work. You can trackback from your own site.