The Masculinity Crisis and How the Church Must Respond
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- Опубліковано 1 жов 2024
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This is a discussion of the recent book Of Boys and Men by Richard Reeves, and how the church must respond to the crisis faced by men in the Western world tody.
"They castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful." --CS Lewis
Exactly.
Who of us don't want to be needed? I am saddened by what is happening with our beautiful men...O' Lord, please teach us women that our husband's, sons, male friends need us to encourage them!!
24:25 THANK YOU!!! We need more people to stand up for boys in school and find a way to help them burn off their energy instead of medicate them.
then those same people will lose their jobs, on top of being called either racist or sexist or whatever new hip woke term is making the waves in msm
My wife was a pre-school teacher for many years. Give a boy and a girl the same toys: a large dinosaur and a small one. 9 times out of 10, if the kid is a girl they become mommy dino and baby dino. If a boy, the large one eats the small one.
Excellent sir. I know we started off on the wrong foot with me misunderstanding your content ( I mistook you for a Marxist Apologist) but yours is among the best available on YT. I'm grateful for your posts. Highly Educational and RELEVENT. Keep up the good work. Christ needs more intellectuals like you to teach reasonable faith IMO.
please continue this conversation it is so important in the modern church
I think that more pastors should talk in church about the biblical headship, and woman submitting to their husbands. I think that most christian women don’t have any idea about what that means, and get their definitions for submission from our society and the feminist movement. Watching Mike Winger’s women in ministry series really opened my eyes to everything I was not understanding. Saying this as a stay at home mom of 4 who homeschools.
This is a very important topic which needs to be addressed! I would have loved to speak with you about it. I spent a great deal of time in my twenties feeling inadequate, seeking meaning, battling depression, etc. That emptiness drove me straight into organizations outside the Church that were more than happy to accept me and provide me with meaning. Since finding Christ & the Church, and leaving those things behind, I've spent most of my ministry focused on engaging men.
I'm a grad student and in my department there are so many events to support the success of women and quite literally nothing for men. Women in stem night, female achievement night, things like that. But the issue is at least in our department we already have more female faculty than male faculty. The department chair is female, the dean of the college is female. All their salaries are public so no one is getting underpaid for being female. Whatever issue there may have been historically with female underrepresentation has been dealt with and overcome, and yet there's still this attitude as if its still way harder to be a woman working in higher education than a man.
that scenario is everywhere. doesn't Hollywood now mandate that studios hire transgender actors with some female blacks and so on, and NOT white males? I can go on with city and state jobs where women are invited to apply or any freak like a trans non-cis this or that.
Today young people live in absolute nihilism
No family no money no purpose no goal no religion no culture no nothing
Absolute nihilism
It is as though Nietzsche was a prophet!
they have a goal. to be masculine and dominant but they are not allowed to do so as they will lose their jobs or be publicly shamed on social media for toxic masculinity. you of course won't see this with muslim men because at that point, whoever says that is denigrating the prophet and the Quran (who the men are emulating as a top to bottom prescribe life) who is off limits in that religion.
Augustine in book XII of De Trinitate has the best discussion of male and female I've read, even though it's not even his main topic:
"If, then, we are renewed in the spirit of our mind, and he is the new man who is renewed to the knowledge of God after the image of Him that created him; no one can doubt, that man was made after the image of Him that created him, not according to the body, nor indiscriminately according to any part of the mind, but according to the rational mind, wherein the knowledge of God can exist. And it is according to this renewal, also, that we are made sons of God by the baptism of Christ ... Who is there, then, who will hold women to be alien from this fellowship, whereas they are fellow-heirs of grace with us? ... Why, then, is the man on that account not bound to cover his head, because he is the image and glory of God, while the woman is bound to do so, because she is the glory of the man; as though the woman were not renewed in the spirit of her mind, which spirit is renewed to the knowledge of God after the image of Him who created him? But because she differs from the man in bodily sex, it was possible rightly to represent under her bodily covering that part of the reason which is diverted to the government of temporal things; so that the image of God may remain on that side of the mind of man on which it cleaves to the beholding or the consulting of the eternal reasons of things."
True masculinity is to be found in reason, and using rationality with self-restraint, patience, and humility. Rationality is how one becomes a good leader. Unfortunately juvenile notions of "toughness" have replaced reason as our primary concept of masculinity.
30:00 i totally agree, men need that.
I felt needed and disciplined once i joined the marine corps, not before.
Thank you for your service sir. My brother was/is a marine.
51:13 Dr. Cooper, have you observed the trend of Western men marrying Eastern women (not necessarily Christian ones), especially those from East and Southeast Asian societies? Eastern women tend to be more conservative than modern day liberal western women. They are more willing to stay at home, raise and nurture their children and care for their husbands. This was actually a big deal in Sweden a few years ago when Swedish men started marrying Thai women in increasingly large numbers.
This may be slightly off-topic, but I found this video essay on Masculinity in the character of Aragorn from LOTR a helpful naunce to the whole question of a Christian approach to the topic vis-à-vis Far-Right Neopaganism on the one hand and emasculated Progressivist views on men, on the other.
Effectively, we need a restoration of "gentle-manliness" as an ideal (knighthood, etc).
ua-cam.com/video/FFiv4w6y_u0/v-deo.html
It is my desire to recapture the notion of the gentleman.
Not off topic at all. Both your and Dr Cooper's interest to reclaim the gentleman as the valorous archetype is a noble one. I heartily agree and support these efforts.
Pilgrim’s Pass is a fount of much based and wise commentary. I highly recommend him!
Totally agree about re-creating classic men’s clubs in the model of the clubs in London. I have been thinking about this and trying to figure out how to make one work here in Dallas.
1st Baptist church has plenty of resources...maybe they could start one!
15% of men have no close friends? According to a UK study it's 50% for men over 35!
That sounds more accurate.
That's because married men pretty much give up on socializing. I've seen it happen. It wasn't always that way but it happens often.
@@KennyBare yeah. All my friends are atheists. Church people never do stuff. And all people who do stuff (go to sports events, concerts, play sports, hiking and running groups) seem to be atheists. Even on Bumble all the girls that swipe back are not Christian. It's really hopeless here. Date atheist girls or wait til you can travel to Philippines
Thank you Dr Cooper. Awesome discussion. Your voice is important in this cultural moment. Thank you 🙏
One reason men are not performing as well in education, mentioned in this video, may be the implicit and explicit accusation of men as toxic and the blaming of them for historic wrongs and contemporary social ills. I received a steady stream of open condemnation and got through graduate school by keeping my head down and knuckling it; similar experiences have been shared with me by men at the undergraduate level. As the open complaint against men forms a core component of the ideology of academia today, it's likely men will continue to underperform in educational institutions.
I got all my degrees before the feminist wave really started, I think, so am blessed by that. But it must be hard for young men today when they are unjustly denigrated endlessly. One woman I've come across on You Tube really bats for men: Bettina Arndt, from memry. She sees the problem and understand the price women and society will pay long term for devaluing men.
We, as a long-married couple, have been talking about this lately. Husband here is 70, wife is 60 and we've been married for 40 years. 3 children. For the first time in our family generations, the husband and wife were essentially co-equal earners. We are realizing the traditional (Biblical?) family structure would probably have been better. We see it in our children. What not having a full-time home parent (mom) has done and is continuing to do in their generation, and to our grandchildren. Certainly, financially, we live far better off than our parents but at a huge cost to our children and even blurring our marital roles. Fortunately, our strength has been that we are still family-oriented and couple-oriented, and don't belong to outside groups other than church.
Feeling useful is so important. I am so blessed to have my kids. My marriage my not have lasted, but I have three beautiful kids.
From what I've seen, many pastors and elders talk the talk but don't want the walk. They don't disciple men and don't train their flock to engage and redeem culture. They really seem to have quite low expectations of Christians, Christian communities and perhaps the power of God.
I really needed to hear this. Thank you for opening this discussion
I remember becoming more overtly conscious of this issue back in 2020, when I saw one of Paul Maxwell’s video criticizing the demonization of masculinity in evangelicalism. His words have stuck with me. You know there’s a problem when young men can get better advice for being a better man from Jocko Willink, Jordan Peterson or sometimes even Joe Rogan than from their church leadership.
Stop caveating every generalization you make : everyone knows that exceptions exist - you have good points to make but you have to be more assertive.
Politics is not a theology lecture : hammer your arguments through
I don't know... I think we should have plenty of caveats and specifics in this area. We should be bringing more understanding to these areas, and if we aren't clear with our arguments, they get co-opted.
@@alexwr they should be coopted. Thry MUST be co opted. The only way for change to happen is for these ideas to grow out of UA-cam and into the political debate.
Historically, societies with an excess of unmarried men don't last long. To put it bluntly, they usually end up in major wars.
China.
Some of the best camaraderie I've seen is in male voice choirs. The men really look out for one another across generations.
The major problem with more general exclusively male groups is if they function well and produce notable results, the excluded ones want a part of the prestige and worm their way in through men's self-giving nature. But it is quite selfish not to respect others' needs.
That conversation you suggest sounds interesting, this monologue is a bit rambling.
Can you please review wisecrack response to Jordan Peterson claiming he misunderstands Marxism
This discussion and review of Richard Reeve's book called "Of Boys And Men" is very germane to what people should be hearing from the pulpit. I think a good follow-on UA-cam video by Dr. Cooper would be why the job of pastor is a masculine job. I say this because of the strong correlation between religious groups with women pastors and their acceptance of legalized abortion and homosexuality, with a slide towards Unitarian-Universalism. For example, if husbands are denied the legal right to stop the abortion of their offspring, doesn't this mean that men are not to be spiritually responsible, and their opinions are of little consequence? Doesn't the legal right of the husband to stop the abortion interfere with, "It's her body her choice?" Doesn't a woman's unilateral right to abort fit in with the idea of her being the equivalent of conceiving the pregnancy, even though human conception is a masculine role? Why does I Corinthians 11:7 say that men are the image and glory of God, while women are the glory of man? What are the sex roles according to the Bible? I found the Warren Farrell book called, "The Myth of Male Power" very insightful and I recommend this.
The first Cooper video I couldn't sit through. The title is misleading. He spends almost the whole time reviewing comparative statistics between men and women, endlessly reaffirm the trends we already know are occurring. There is almost no time spent on the Church and how it should respond.
This is a great observation. I must speak of the other side we are witnessing and that is the judgement of God on a wicked society.
Now listen to this and also notice the changes in population in the Western societies! There's a reason that our population is plummeting.
I mean it says in the bible that God will create enmity between the man and woman. Are there spiritual dimensions to this development?
Yeah when you shelter kids into expensive private schools, it shields them from a lot that what goes on in reality. Then they are smacked with a reality check which I can only imagine what that does to their psychi.
As for men, the introduction of women and minorities in the workplace and higher centers of education have definitely affected some white populations, our secular individualistic centered society also has had ZERO help too.
Society today is horrible in different ways, globalization can be to blame for a lot of it. The fact the education has been given a half assed approach in this country also doesn't help.
I truly appreciate this topic and agree with most of what you say
Thank you Dr Cooper
I’ve been in student leadership on my college campus with Cru for a while now and hopefully planning on joining staff with them. I really like the way they model their discipleship concept. I find that having older men who impact younger men through intentional spiritual and general conversation do a lot of good. I also feel that the American church at large could do a lot better at discipleship. I would love to sit down and brainstorm ways to impact younger men and give them guidance and stuff to do after I graduate
This was so good and balanced! Spot on! Thank you for this Jordan! This blessed me. This is a real crisis and it has to be adressed much more in this way.
Really good episode! Important topic! Thank you!
I want to point something out that I feel is strongly related to this issue. I believe Satan who is the destroyer of God’s economy of the home, has broken all that is sacred when it comes to family life. Most boys are not raised to know their fathers anymore. My adopted father was a baby boomer and rarely spoke to us ever but was also the sole provider of the house working in a mill and for that I’m now thankful. Learning tasks such as hunting and changing tires from a father is very important for the development of young boys.
Please do more on this topic.
We're all gonna make it brah that's it 🔱
If regards to worth or usefulness this is apparent just by being in a group that is asked to introduce themselves.
A woman says “Hi everyone, I’m Jane Doeinson, I’m a mother of three and two dogs, their my baby’s too and I’m a regional coordinator for widget incorporated. We make duck rudders, prosthetic hen lips, and are the largest producer of artificial appendices. It’s such a rewarding job that really lends itself to a good work life balance.”
A man says “I’m the regional coordinator of Widget international. My name is John Doeinson. Oh and Jane is my wife so what she said about kids and dogs…same.” Then he sits down.
Men almost always Identify themselves by their jobs. The harder, more complex, dangerous, or exacting the job the more proud of it we are because apparently nobody else could do it. Our complaints about work are actually brags. My job is the most dangerous, mine is the most precise, I work a 160 hour week then spend 8 hours doing laundry, and so on.
They should have boxing classes at the church with actual sparring. There should also be a purpose men go to church. A way to sort of ascend the hierarchy without having to go to seminary. This is harder for lutherans I think because of our doctrine of the ministry. But if men just go to listen to preacher talk, than its the same problem the school system has. Men need to be able to lead.
I object to the word 'hierarchy' because the greatest should be the one who serves the most.
But I see that in church men who have responsibility tend to develop skills related to their tasks. Others learn to trust them over time and it does end up giving a kind of status though without any title or perks.
I'm thinking of people who organize the technical things, maintain the church facilities, teach the Sunday School, lead youth group activities, home Bible study, prayer meetings, men's breakfast, etc.
@@digglerdsrecordings9680 giving men responsibility without authority does nothing to solve the problem. Responsibility without authority is slavery.
Man friend: a neighbor who helped you roof a shed that sometimes comes over and sits almost silently in the shed with you and drinks beer for two hours compares rifle scopes or fishing spots before making future sports plans we will never actually do.
Two men can be best friends for years and not know each others wives names or exactly how many kids we have. We do know each others entire work resume though.
There are, as far as I know, significant differences in IQ, just not at the average. But the variance is quite different in women and men. It's very taboo to talk about, and no one wants to hear it.
A conversation with Rev. Dr. Larson on this issue would be great.
Excellent analysis! Much good sociological insight coming through here. I'm convinced that the highly ideological nature of social studies on college campuses today greatly impedes the analysis, much less the open discussion of these very real problems. My own field of sociology has been monumentally slow in recognizing this gaping problem, so strong is the ideological straight jacket most academic sociologists operate within. Clinical Psychologist Helen Smith really threw a nice opening volley 7 or 8 years ago in raising these issues in her book 'Men on Strike' which was inspired by what she was observing time and again in her professional psychiatry practice.
Would like to hear that conversation with your bishop, digging into this topic deeper and exploring implications and responses.
26:20 yes. We are all acommunist at the family level, socailist and the church level (to some degree and obvi not the same thing) and capitalist at the state level.
I'm an artist and AI already took most art jobs this year
You should absolutely have the Bishop on to talk about this.
Thanks for this. Now, I could write pages of comments, but will resist the temptation.
1. Church and men. As I've moved around I've been in many churches of many denominations, but none had a particular men's ministry. The closest was a 'high' Episcopal church where I found a bunch of guys my own age and we had occasional dinners in one of them's club: we dressed in dinner suits, which was fun. That guy has since become a priest. He had a real feel for ministry. Another church had a men's group that met for 'touchy feeley' discussions: about 'problems'. Not interested. What is simple, and any church can do it, and only perhaps three times a year is to have a men's dinner. Can be on the church premises or at a club somewhere. It's just a time to chat, and get together, and have a guest speaker...on any interesting topic, but always a known Christian man. There needs to be time for unstructured socialising afterwards.
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This group is then the basis for some other ministries: groups to help parishioners who are not able to do work around the house or garden, for example...even for those outside the church family; groups to conduct outings for disadvantaged children, groups to run street outreach stalls...endless possibilities. Then these spring off into Saturday morning breakfast/prayer groups, etc.
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2. Women and expectations.
My first girl-friend (if that was the right term). I met at a church function. We had things in common and worked near each other. We had lunch many times, I invited her out to a concert: was great; she invited me to her place...then I noticed she invited other single men to a small party. She started being hard to get; so I dropped her a note to recognize this and suggest our friendship decelerate. She rang to deny it...but then decelerated anyway. What on earth did she want? A pet? A 'project'? A trophy? Very frustrating; I wanted a wife. Miss next was 'full on'. I thought I'd landed with The One. But she got cold as soon as I started taking things seriously. It ended...in disaster for me. So, what did *she* want? All unclear to me!! [edit] I forgot to add the point to this: back at church there was unclarity about this and v. little support or understanding, it seemed. Not about roles, but about how (young) men handle rejection; a very important aspect of ministry. There was no group of blokes I could get out and go hunting with, for example. Not that hunting was the point; it could be anything. Hiking, visiting country towns and helping a small church...
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Happily my wife and I have a family and we agreed that I would earn the $$ while she bowed out of her management role and her advertising business. We agreed it was vital to have an at-home mother. And it was wonderful to see the family dynamics...but I still had no church group. All the general ministries were OK, but the church had women's prayer groups, women's clubs (doing things for missions, etc. ), women's lunches, afternoon teas, dinners, outings...Shesh. What were the men? Wallets?
How can dressing up ever be fun? To me it always feels like punishment.
I am sorry to interject here. I am not religious and a supporter of feminism, so clearly not the target audience of this discussion, but just randomly happened upon the channel and decided to listen to some of the various topics he addresses.
Here’s my questions to what you have written above: why did you not directly discuss the situation or your need for understanding why the change in attitude directly with the ladies you had an interest in? If you did and it was still unclear what their goals and expectations were around marriage then maybe it was nothing really to do with you, but with the point at which they were in their lives and what mature decisions they were ready for. From the way you recounted the stories it seems to me you were seeking to get advice from other men - which of course could help, but possibly might also not. Why not go to the source?
As to the other part of not being groups that are oriented for interests that might appeal to men, why not just start something? If the congregation you attended had nice people that you got along with, you could have taken the initiative and organized something others might also have an interest in…
As for the relationship between you and your wife, I wish you all the best. I have views around this subject in general and pertaining to my own relationship which could be the polar opposite to yours, but how others organize their lives is really none of my business.
I hope you are not offended by my questions as that is not my intention. I am genuinely curious about your answers.
I would also like to add that I was raised religious in one of the most religious country in Europe and one that has a very traditional culture around family, but also that we have a very different view on religion than in the US and in society there is not the same disconnect between different denominations or even between believers and non believers. Our culture and traditions are very heavily influenced by our main religion and even as an atheist I am still expected to participate in religious activities with my family - as all of our national celebrations and holidays have some sort of religious component as well as all the milestones in a person’s life, have studied the religious dogma of the 2 major official religions (orthodox and catholic), but also history of religions which is a mandatory class starting in elementary school up though highscool. We are also a former communist country where gender roles have been smudged for over 100 years and even more so during our dictatorship so this crisis that is affecting men in the US does not seem to be an issue in my native country because while there are some “traditional” roles between partners in a relationship, these are superseded by the practicalities of life - both men and women are expected to be equally capable workers and carers for their families and homes, expected to take care of children and older parents. It is not uncommon for a son to take care of elderly parents including hygiene (both my uncle and my father have done this with my grandparents as well as my mother and myself - and I will add - with no shame). Men are also expected to know how to care for their children. While in regular life, women do indeed take care of the home more, the expectation is that either parent should be able to handle any situation that might arise. This was certainly the case in my family and extended family as well as almost all of my parents friends and neighbors. I literally know of no woman that was not employed growing up. In the society I was raised in, whichever parent was at home at any given time was the one making the decisions and handling any needs of the child. This was actually the case irrespective of class or being from a rural/urban background.
This is just to provide some context of what values I hold and how my background influences my view on the world.
Very good presentation!
Good stuff
hmmm
If men want to feel useful and contribute to the home, then do some housework. It isn’t women’s work, it’s the work that needs to be done to keep a household going.
Luther would agree.
They do. They get through it, then wonder what the fuss was about!
@@dagwould The fus is the 50's americana model suposed biblical. The main question is the economical/social after WWII. Woman were (and are) required to work to the system.
Thank you Dr. Cooper! Excellent discussion and a very important topic to address. Esp if we can come up with some solutions. You mentioned a few times (as is referenced in the book) that we have to help men "feel" like they're useful. If women are both capable of being breadwinners and desirous of being providers for their families then men, in a way, are "redundant" (not in reality, but in perception). Maybe there are other ways that men need to discover their unique offering? As you pointed out, statistics have shown for decades that the happiest people are married men and the unhappiest are married women (with singles being in the middle). How to shift that? How can we help men find their way back to their true masculinity and women into their true femininity without depriving either of the new opportunities that have emerged from new technologies, shifts in mobility, etc. I love your idea of encouraging a renaissance of gentlemen!
I'm curious if you think pornography (both porn proper and porn-adjacent stimulation in all media - movies, tv, ads, social media, etc.) plays into this. The shift in an unhealthy culture where the "empowerment" women feel by controlling men through unrealistic (and removed) sexual promise, and the disempowerment men feel in being subjugated by their own visual field is not insignificant. Could that also be contributing to the rage and anger? In Jordan's terms, men symbolized by order and women by chaos, the reverse seems true with porn, women in control and men in chaos and out of control, both losing their true natures.
I hope we can elevate a culture of dignity such that we honour the beautiful complementarity of men and women in their irreplaceable distinctions. Vive la différence!
I remember a church in pansacola florida, reformed baptist church, called foundation.
And we partnered with the cross church also located in the area and on the lay leverl, with consent of the elders and pastor, would hand out tracks and have conversations downtown when people were out.
I gotta say, i didn’t get my validation from my job so much as from that, loving people being spit on but also having great conversations, and doing this with my brothers in Christ who i knew had my back and i had theirs.
I was a marine and yes there was military at this church, but it was also i believe an outworking of proper discipling, not in general required classes, or “hey we’re gonna watch an Andy Stanley video for church membership” as my run of the mill arminian church had done growing up, instead my wife and i had a home with this church.
Nothing was forced but when we met to do NT survey on a Wednesday, or we were just chatting, the men would naturally discuss amongst ourselves how to better witness to the cults, or the finer points of theology, or “was is morally right for the women to lie to pharoah even though they accomplished Gods purposes?” And such things.
And the women would also split off, and discuss how to better care for family, theology as well, and there wasn’t any weird relationships between men and women wither.
Everyone just knew what they were, everyone knew they were needed, and wanted.
Never have i been to a church like that again, other than the only other reformed baptist church i’ve been too.
Imagine not recognizing the irony in Dr. Cooper addressing issues of masculinity.
@CameronGaylor It takes surprisingly little time.
He's a pastor, professor, husband, dad, business owner, Christian leader, fighting the good fight against the growing darkness of atheism and spreading the Gospel and teaching the word of God. And he's confident and comfortable with who he is and doesn't pretend to be someone he's not.
That checks all the big boxes as far as I tell. What's your faith and whom do you think is more suitable? And please don't evade or run away. Real men don't evade or run away.
@@lkae4 I've never known a pastor to register very high on any test of masculinity.
Most pastors are not respected by their wives or any of the men in the Church. They tend to be drafted from that cohort of sensitive boys who sit with the girls at lunch, but never have a date to the prom.
I'm a Catholic. When I think of masculinity, I think of Cortez, or Constantine.
@@Catholic-Perennialist You had to go back before the Roman Catholic church to find Constantine and you picked Cortez, a murderous, greedy conquistador? That says it all. You have no clue what a real man is.
Here's a tip for 2023. Real men don't slander or gossip. We leave that to the womenfolk, the insecure womenfolk, not the mature and faithful women. Thanks for the chat. Take care.
@@lkae4 It's only slander if it isn't true.