Neutered Christianity

Rod Dreher, Why Don’t Men Come To Church?

Dreher cites Podles, who writes:

"In reading about war, I realized that here was something that men took with deadly (both literally and metaphorically) earnestness. War, and the vicarious experience of war in literature and reenactments, as well as the analogues and substitutes for war in dangerous sports and avocations, provide the real center of the emotional, and I would even say the spiritual, life of most men in the modern world. The ideology of masculinity has replaced Christianity as the true religion of men. We live in a society with a female religion and a male religion: Christianity, of various sorts, for women and non-masculine men; and masculinity, especially in the forms of competition and violence that culminate in war, for men."

So would traditional Ignatian spirituality, for example, be more appealing to men? It invites the Christian to think himself of as a knight choosing between two standards, one standard being that of Christ, the other being...

However, I do not think that what is missing from contemporary Christianity is the lack of thumos -- the emasculation of men goes much deeper than that, to the point that infused fortitude is required at an almost heroic level for the average layman. Or perhaps, it is not the remedy that the frustrated male who feels powerless to live his life as he thinks is appropriate. If we think that men are either on the path of creating or destroying (a simplistic dichotomy, to be sure), it is not enough to tell men that they should abandon themselves to God. Only a few may be given the heavy cross of having no outlet in this world for their energies. Rather, they need to find ways to be men however they can.