A Christian Vision for Masculinity in a Polarized Age
Releasing today: Men of Virtue – How the Fruit of the Spirit Forms Male Character in the Modern World
In 2026, manhood and masculinity are as contentious as any cultural issue of the day. A key reason is the central role men played in getting President Trump elected twice. The exit polls from those elections have even mainstream outlets like The Atlantic, New York Times, and Washington Post publishing op-eds about American men every few days. Last year’s hit Netflix series Adolescence explored themes related to malformed boyhood culminating in egregious acts violence. Podcasts and YouTube channels targeting male audiences and men’s interests boast audiences of thousands and millions. Masculinity has gone mainstream.
The broader conversation has been running (perhaps better, raging) for years now. If you can believe it, the #MeToo movement was almost a decade ago. In many ways, this movement launched the modern masculinity discourse – and it started the conversation on a deeply critical note. #MeToo, of course, sought to highlight the prevalence of abuse and sexual violence perpetrated by men against women. For Christians, the parallel #churchtoo hashtag highlighted far too many similar stories in churches and Christian organizations.1 Cultural conservatives responded with their own #notallmen counter discourse, and a new front clearly emerged in the broader culture war.
In the years since #MeToo, however, it has become increasingly clear that we shouldn’t and indeed cannot afford to focus our attention only on men’s sins. We must also think together and face the reality of men’s suffering. Because the men and boys are not alright, it turns out. Boys’ educational outcomes are down. Fatherlessness is a generational scourge on our communities (particularly poor communities and those of racial minorities). Depression, unemployment, and so-called deaths of despair have skyrocketed among men in the past couple decades.2
Are men misbehaving because they’re struggling to succeed or are they struggling to succeed because they’re misbehaving? Probably some of both. In any case, when thinking about masculinity, we need to hold together our conversations about how men are failing, on the one hand, with how men are struggling, on the other. Our discourse cannot be reduced only to calling men (and boys) out. The data show it must be every bit as much about lifting men (and boys) up.
The Twin Ditches of Modern Masculinity
Today’s political and algorithmic media landscape heavily disincentivizes such mature and nuanced conversations. We are constantly being pushed into one of two opposing and polarized views. We scroll on our phones and listen to our favorite podcasts, not realizing our entire media environment has become an echo chamber. You’ll always be able to find someone to tell you exactly what you want to hear (or what you already think or what you’ll be inclined to already agree with) about men or Christian masculinity. If we’re not careful, once we’ve been sorted into a given cultural “bucket,” we can then be pushed further towards more extreme viewpoints and ideologies with less and less nuance, compassion, or decency towards those holding different views.
But the way of wisdom is often found in a balance between extremes, and this, it seems to me, is clearly the case when it comes to our attitudes towards maleness and masculinity. In our polarized culture, the Christian tradition uniquely helps us in finding a virtuous balance between these opposing extremes of modern manhood, the twin ditches of masculinity.
Ditch One: Suppression
The first is a ditch of suppression. This is the ditch on the “left” side of the road, if you will. When it comes to men and masculinity, there’s a common approach that denies or downplays the differences between girls and boys, men and women, even going so far as to denigrate the things that make boys and men unique. For people on this side of the road, it feels unhelpful or even scandalous to prescribe that there’s anything different in the first place. If we believe in equality, so the argument goes, we should treat everyone the same.
First, this perspective is reaching toward an important truth. We’re all human. We all have equal dignity (at least in theory) in our society and before God. And it also true that much of what we think about gender is a function of our upbringing and environment. In the evergreen nature-vs.-nurture debate, there’s at least some aspect of our ideas about manhood and masculinity that are “caught” and “taught” from our environment rather than flowing out of our biology.3
But not all the data support this conclusion. Please allows for some generalizations in what follows. To give a slightly silly and cliche example, a meaningful majority of boys will gravitate towards trucks while a meaningful majority of girls will gravitate toward dolls when given the choice. Boys tend to sword fight with sticks, and girls tend to play school. Study after study bears this out.4 To give another example, my six-year-old son recently broke his arm playing outside during recess. This got me wondering: What percentage of kids’ bone breaks are boys v. girls. It turns out boys account for 61%.
Importantly there are exceptions. It’s not as if everything my kids are interested in perfectly correspond to gender stereotypes. And when stereotypes become prescriptive rather than descriptive, we can get into trouble. But if acknowledging this distinct biological and behavioral patterns of boys and men makes you uncomfortable, let me suggest that this is the ditch you lean towards––a tendency to flatten out and suppress the reality of male distinctiveness.
The downstream effect of this flattening out is that there tends to be very little we can concretely commend to men about how they ought to live in the world. The rejection of an overly prescriptive vision for manliness results in there being no vision at all. Is it any wonder then that boys and men are wallowing and wandering?
The suppression of masculinity isn’t merely a philosophical perspective imposed on boys and men from this outside. The ditch is also one we men can fall into ourselves. We can become afraid of or despise our maleness for all sorts of reasons. When we fall into this ditch, everything we associate with masculinity or testosterone must be suppressed and held at bay. We become uncomfortable with and fearful of any aggression or competitiveness. Rather than doing the hard work of learning how to virtuously engage the world as our true selves, we decide to hide our true selves or not engage the world at all. The suppression ditch can manifest in male passivity, something men and women alike often bemoan looking at younger generations of men today. There is, however, an opposite and no less dangerous ditch on the other side of the road.
Ditch Two: Indulgence
The second ditch of polarization in cultural moment is one of masculine indulgence. This one is on the “right” side of the road. If the first ditch can manifest as male passivity, this one manifests as male aggression.
For some guys, if you say masculinity is toxic, they just say “I’m just going to masculine even harder.” Anything that feels manly or strong or dominant is good. Do it. Indulge in your wild side. You are, as a man, “wild at heart,” after all.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with taking a trip to the Northwest and doing some camping or mountain climbing or catching a fish or two. But in a more extreme mode, the call to embrace your bodily drives and urges becomes unhealthy, even dangerous. And an overly narrow vision of what it means to be a man can be profoundly alienating to men who don’t feel that they fit the mold. (A young man once told me he wept after finishing John Eldredge’s Wild at Heart because “I could never see myself being the type of man who enjoyed doing the things he described in that book.”)
Beyond its Christian manifestations, the ditch of indulgence characterizes much of the so-called “manosphere,” including a wide variety of folks from Nick Fuentes to Andrew Tate to Jordan Peterson. True masculinity becomes doubling down on traditionalism for its own sake, a hyper focus on virility and strength and “looksmaxxing,” as the most recent trend puts it. To be male is to be, in some sense untamed, out of control, and dangerous – that’s a good thing. It’s also somehow a matter of being maximally disciplined and putting the world around you (including women) under your power and control.
As I’ve already suggested, some on this side of the road think they’re defending Christian or traditional values when they’re in fact jumping all the way over the Christian tradition to the “Bronze Age” world that preceded it. A vision of masculinity focused on power, authority and domination is not Christian, it’s pagan. But today millions of young men are being sold a vision of masculinity that views both liberal feminism and soft Christianity as scourges on society. So, what does the New Testament and the way of Jesus offer in response to these opposing perspectives?
Diagonalizing the Ditches
Our conversations around masculinity and manhood have become polarized, forcing us to choose between the extremes of suppression, on the one hand, or indulgence, on the other. Men and adolescent boys are often presented with a false choice: Indulge your supposedly natural urges and risk being labeled “toxic,” “problematic,” or “patriarchal,” or suppress those same urges and be called “passive,” “wimp,” or “soy boy.”
I believe that the Bible, the gospel, and the Christian tradition offer us a way forward that rejects this false binary, and it does so by pushing back on both extremes.
First, the Christian tradition affirms the goodness of male embodiment. We believe that all people, women and men, are created in the image of God. A clear implication of this is that men and male bodies are good. This created goodness gives us the resources to push back against cultural narratives that wholesale condemn or malign men. The shared dignity (or as Pope Leo has recently put it, magnificence) of humanity means that we should affirm and celebrate men not in spite of their unique maleness but because of it. Maleness is not to be rejected because maleness is a gift. When God created the male body – testosterone and all – he said it was very good. Whatever we say about the challenges or sins or misbehaviors of boys and men, we as Christians should be able to confidently say that maleness is a very good thing and that men are worth supporting and advocating for in our lives, including in public spaces. And by the way, this is not a zero sum game of choosing sides in a culture war or a battle of the sexes. It’s just affirming that men matter, just like women matter.
Second, the Christian tradition offers men a robust and challenging moral vision for for their lives. The gospel and the teaching of Jesus and the apostles reorient our vision from masculinity away from dominance and leadership toward love and service. Jesus taught his (male) disciples that his kingdom would not be characterized by the Gentile/pagan model of greatness, jockeying for power and dominance while “lording it over” others. This, by the way, was the standard view of maleness and masculinity in the Roman Empire. But in Matthew 20, Jesus tells his followers, “not so with you.” For his disciples, Jesus says, whoever would be first must become a servant, just as he did not come to be served but to serve and give his life for others.
In our world, male power and domination are the norm. These are the natural side effects of the fact that men are, on average, 15% larger stronger and faster than women. But, crucially – which, by the way, has the same Latin root as the word for cross – Jesus shows his followers a new model for the use of power and strength. Philippians 2 says that Jesus did not consider equality with God something to be held onto and used for selfish ends but that he made himself nothing and took on the form of a servant. Ephesians 5 channels this same logic when Paul commands husbands not to lead their wives but to love them, giving of themselves for their good just as Jesus did for his bride, the church. These were and are radical ideas in the Ancient Roman world where male domination was simply assumed as a fact of the universe.Third and finally, the Christian tradition reorients our estimation of men away from “manliness” toward their godliness. The highest calling of a Christian boy or man is not to be “manly” according to some cultural definition. It is to be Christlike, to follow Jesus. Manliness and masculinity are, in many ways, external assessments of physical or social value. Whether we see something as manly depends quite a lot on our context, temperament, and culture. But, as scripture teaches, God doesn’t look on the outward appearance but the heart (1 Sam 16:7).
If you’re a boy or a man (or a mother or friend to a boy or a man) who doesn’t feel all that “manly,” the biblical story is good news because Christians are not commanded to attain to some worldly standard of manliness. Nor, by the way, are they forbidden from engaging in or enjoying “manly” activities like playing sports or eating bacon or liking video games or whatever else. When we make Christian virtue the framework, the question of godly masculinity becomes a dialogue between the character traits of Christ-likeness and the values of masculinity taught by our culture (or by the Christian subculture). What is in keeping with the Spirit of God? What practices, habits, and behaviors can we receive as manifestations of the goodness of male embodiment? Which others need to be strongly rejected? How should men live, lead, and love in ways that model Christ-like character?
Where our conversations about Christian masculinity tend to go wrong is when we focus too much on manliness and not enough on godliness. Manliness is a concept that can easily get tied up with all manner of vice, injustice, and “toxic” traits. But the biblical tradition empowers us to push back on the ditch of male indulgence. In Galatians 5, Paul rails against such indulgence when he writes:
Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual sin [porneia, from which we get the word “pornography”], sorcery, hatred, strife, jealousy, angry outbursts, hyper-competitiveness, division, factionalism, envy, drunkenness, late-night drinking parties, and things like these. I’m warning you . . . that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. (my translation)
Pause for a moment and ask yourself if you can think of a better definition of so-called “toxic masculinity” than the vice list Paul provides here. Indulgent, toxic masculinity is simply masculinity characterized by the passions and desires of the flesh. What does Paul contrast this to in Galatians 5? He goes on:
But the fruit of the Spirit, God’s Spirit, the Spirit of Christ. Is Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control.
Virtuous Christian Masculinity
What does it mean to be a Christian man? Well, fundamentally it means being a man indwelled by the Spirit of God and bearing the fruit that corresponds to that indwelling. Moreover, this distinctly Christian vision of virtue will do more than stop men from misbehaving. It will also open up a path to a life of purpose and joyful flourishing.
The world is forcing us and our boys into a false choice regarding the gift of maleness that God has given them. Different voices are telling them to either abuse the gift or reject it altogether. The Christian tradition helps us instead to receive that gift and use it rightly. To the narrative of suppression it says that men were created very good, and to the narrative of indulgence it tells men to put to death the deeds of the flesh and pursue righteousness.
If the fruit of the Spirit sound kinda girly and un-masculine to us – well, that signals to me that our vision of masculinity hasn’t been crucified yet. And by crucified I mean both killed and interpreted through the lens of the cross and the example of Jesus.
That’s what Men of Virtue is about. It is an attempt to offer a scripturally grounded answer for this moment and this context as to how Christian boys and men ought to live. And the short answer is that they should be men full of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
This movement and my own life’s intersection with it were the impetus for write my first book, Non-Toxic Masculinity: Recovering Healthy Male Sexuality.
For the receipts, see Richard Reeves’s Of Boys and Men.
I confess, I used to think more like this than I do now. I used to wonder how much of boys liking trucks and girls likings dolls was simply a function of their social conditioning. Then I had kids. Lo and behold, they gravitated towards their gender stereotyped toys despite our intentionality not to push them towards this.
On this, see Carole Hooven’s fascinating and provocative book, T: The Story of Testosterone, the Hormone that Dominates and Divides Us.