Farley, Blake
(2023)
Redemptive Christian Masculinity: Faith-Based Civil Society Challenges to Intractable Ideologies in U.S. Evangelicalism.
Master thesis, Master Religion Conflict and Globalisation.
Abstract
The construction of Christian masculinities through social and cultural gender projects has taken place since the birth of Christianity in Ancient Rome.1 Historical and sociological study on the construction of gender identity and performance show that intentional efforts to define masculinity often attempt to reshape popular gender norms in light of specific social shifts, such as the convergence of civilizations and diverse ethnic groups.2 Historical anthropology details the sociopolitical impacts of such gender projects unto the blending of religious and national identities in modern Western statecraft and beyond, exemplified in nationalistic religious moralities and gendered patriotic ideals in Western Christian traditions.3 Whether undertaken by states, ethnic groups, or religious communities, these gender projects negotiate, challenge, or strengthen particular gender ideologies that exist in societies through cultural, political and religious discourses. Though recent cultural discourses often appeal to the rhetoric of ‘a crisis of masculinity,’ dedicated scholarship reveals that with the timeless trial to define what it means to be a man, “masculinity is ‘always already in crisis.’
Building upon decades of historical and anthropological study on Christian gender projects, this qualitative study compares global religious masculinity discourses and masculinity “transformation” projects to new and original initiatives being facilitated in the United States by faith-based ventures utilizing novel platforms and modalities to convene North American Christian men around the topic of “redemptive” religious masculinity performance in U.S. culture and society. Contextualized within recent interpretations of U.S. Christianity and politics, the discourses created by these new faith-based actors demonstrate intentional challenges to historic attitudes and ideologies in U.S. Christianity on cultural engagement and pluralism that have exacerbated sociopolitical tensions in the civil sphere. U.S. evangelicalism has particularly symbolized social order in terms of a “militant masculinity” ideology that has idealized social exclusion and combativity in its ‘glocal’ religious ideals, co-constituted by these ideological and political conditions.5
The case provided of the faith-based venture Myth Quest in its pilot run demonstrates the capabilities of religious masculinity transformation projects to counter authoritative and exclusionary social attitudes in terms of local and national social change intentionally directed towards positive, other-oriented action and ethics. This analysis will proceed to interrogate Myth Quest’s “redemptive” Christian masculinity (Chapter 7) for measurable social change in gender relations (Chapter 8) and large-scale movements for social repair (Chapter 9), first reviewing the extensive literature on global Christian masculinity construction projects and the intractable ideological approaches that have come to define their religious communities (Chapters 2, 3 & 4).
| Type: |
Thesis
(Master)
|
| Supervisors (RUG): |
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| Degree programme: |
Master Religion Conflict and Globalisation |
| Academic year: |
2022-2023 |
| Date of delivery: |
23 Nov 2023 08:53 |
| Last modified: |
23 Nov 2023 08:54 |
| URI: |
https://rcs.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/759 |
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