Talking about men – in the media

Ouch!

“The Age of the Wuss,” taunted the headline of Maclean’s cover Oct. 31 over a slightly out-of-focus but still cheerful Canadian Tire Guy. Subheads drilled the insult deeper, with lines like “The sad slump of North American manhood.” Inside, no less than five articles probed at contemporary aspects of being male.

And the bottom line? Society’s faith in a schema of progress that expected men to rise, “from primordial incivility to a more advanced state of being” (so they can function in a world where “gender lines don’t matter”), has ebbed.

Such expectations, says a new cadre of experts, simply cause stress. Men are frustrated by male portrayal in media, fashion industry pressure, conflicting messages from women and lack of solid masculine role models in culture.

Metrosexual is obsolete, trend spotters/makers say; übersexual is here, with a “more nuanced view of gender roles . . . where the notion of reforming the sexes is seen as archaic.”

The original promise keeper

Jesus’ earthly father Joseph has moved from the background of the nativity scene to the foreground in the recent works of two very different but influential writers: Anne Rice’s Christ the Lord and Jerry Jenkins’ (of Left Behind fame) Holding Heaven. A TIME feature Dec. 19, by David Van Biema, looked at Joseph’s portrayal in these books and how Joseph was characterized in church history. (He was seen variously as “chaste caretaker,” “alienated cuckold,” or “adoring protector.”)

Today’s portrait – “the modern-day evangel” – is particularly evangelical Protestant, Van Biema said. The new focus on the relationship between Joseph and Jesus taps into the “search for strong masculine biblical role models and ways to create church-based male bonding.” In this view, Joseph is a model believer (taking God’s Son into his heart and house); he is “the original Promise Keeper.”

Don’t worry

Martin E. Marty, longtime observer of all things religious, opined in a 2005 Sightings column (available online from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School) that worries of a culture awash in sensitivity are probably misplaced.

Any look at sports and entertainment’s interest in “macho,” politicians’ speeches and religion’s drive for “success” reveals which virtues still have priority. The sensitive ones, he said, “do not have much cultural cachet and are rarely prized.”

The Christian virtues, Marty reminded, in reference to those seeking muscular Christianity, are “humility, meekness, patience, prudence, simplicity, obedience and – did we forget? – faith, hope, and love.” And, going after these “demands courage.”

Blessing men

The church “does not know how to invite a man to know and live from his deep heart,” wrote U.S. Mennonite pastor David Boshart in “On men searching for God” in The Mennonite Sept. 20. Growing openness to women in leadership has resulted in “an articulation of the content of feminine spirituality” but perhaps, he said, “it is now time . . . to give attention to a more careful and conscious understanding of male spirituality.”

Boshart urged the church to go deeply into the biblical story to learn what male spirituality looks like. In Jacob’s story, for example, we find “every man’s struggle . . . a struggle for significance in a world that tells a man his life and what his life produces will never measure up.”

The church must also demonstrate to men that “they are needed.” How, practically, can this be done? By older men guiding and blessing the younger. “A man is never too old to bless a young man by looking him in the eye and extending his hand in blessing and welcoming him to live from his deep heart.”

—Compiled by Dora Dueck