Militarized masculinity permeates ordinary evangelical congregational life, not just elite theology

Evidence

Many of the new orthodoxies are subtler than this. Masculine authority, militarism, and the sexual and spiritual subordination of women have simply been part of the air evangelicals breathe for decades. In Sunday schools and Vacation Bible Schools boys learn to be superheroes for Christ, and girls to be beautiful princesses. Children sing “I’m in the Lord’s Army” while marching in formation. In church youth groups, boys train to use guns and bows, girls to apply makeup, shop, and decorate cakes. Churches host special Mother’s Day services, handing out flowers or sweet pastries and poems to women in the congregation. On Father’s Day, they grill wild game, or host “dad contests” where men toss footballs, click TV remotes, and compete in simulated hunting games, the winner taking home a box of steaks. One Kansas church hosts an annual Smoking Barrel event, where men and boys shoot guns and eat smoked meat. Church deer-hunting events are common, sometimes involving the smearing of blood as a masculine rite of passage. Christian schools, often boasting mascots like Knights, Eagles, or Crusaders, host chapel services featuring weightlifters for Jesus or local groups of WWF look-alikes who tear apart phone books and jump through walls of ice, all in the name of Christ. National men’s conferences bring men together with their favorite Christian authors for worship and ax throwing. Churches host Fight Club ministries, or they come up with their own homegrown versions of manly men’s groups. One church rebranded their men’s retreat as a “men’s advance”—because “men don’t retreat.” To study the Bible, men come together as “Knights of the Round Table,” women as “Handmaidens of the Lord.” — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 673

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: The gendered artifacts woven through church life (Mother’s Day flowers vs. Father’s Day game-grilling and dad contests) echo the ‘Complaints About Immodesty’ piece’s attention to how dress/ritual norms signal identity.
• CANDY: The men’s retreat rebranded as a ‘men’s advance’ — because men don’t retreat — is a tweetable, lightweight detail.
• XREF: Directly serves the reader’s stated purpose: this is the concrete texture of the consumer-cultural apparatus that transmitted militant masculinity beyond the pulpit.