Muscular Christianity
Muscular Christianity
Introduction:
This page is meant for men. If you're anything like me, as a man you have at one time or another questioned the Christian religion in thinking that it was not manly nor helps you in real life. At least that is a phase I went through. Having read through much of Nietzsche I considered Christianity to be in many ways emasculating and disempowering. I had read Progressive Christians who did not help either, in that they tended to see Christianity as a way to make men more domesticated and generate more egalitarianism. There was little talk of power, control, competition, etc. There was no talk of being manly or making money or focusing on a career or succeeding in sports or dating within the Progressive Christian literature I read. Instead there was a focus on spreading a political message aimed at a utopian existence through the teachings of Jesus. Fast forward a few year years, and as time passed and I expanded my studies of the Bible to include works like When Christianity Was Muscular by Brett and Kate Mckay and the book No More Christian Nice Guy, I began to realize that Christianity was a manly religion.
I learned that Christian men of the first century, were truly manly men. These were Men who even if they were shy in personality learned to speak up with confidence in imitation of Paul or in imitating the masculine voice of Jesus in the Gospels. These were men who no longer were willing to cower and be afraid of bullies and religious leaders who dominated them. They had the courage to speak up and engage in nonviolent resistance even if it meant them dying for a just cause. As Frank Viola covers in his book Insurgence, they were on a mission to overturn the current systems of power. When they faced adversity the best of them did not whimper in a corner and cower in terror, but with confidence in their promised immortality, were courageous and stoic in the face of death. So much so that their bravery intrigued pagan onlookers. These were not the actions of unmanly men.
I began to see that the New Testament texts were the ultimate masculine power texts. I mean let's be honest, yes Christianity is about being more other-centered and focusing on creating a brotherhood and sisterhood of Christ-apprentices, but at the end of the day we are at our core selfish beings, right? After all that's why it says ‘love thy neighbour as thyself.’ (Mark 12:31, KJV). The text assumes we are naturally selfish. So I began to ask myself, is there a practical value to the New Testament from a thyself perspective? Can it inspire me to be more manly and courageous and exercise the masculine virtues? That is what this section of my website focuses on. For me, the answer to that question is yes, the New Testament does inspire me to be more manly and courageous and exercise the masculine virtues.
I explore this in the articles linked below ...
The Counter-Intuitive Power of Christianity: Transforming Anger & Anxiety into Antifragile Christpower through "Christ OS" (Link to my blog)