The new church environment has evolved into something of a woman’s members club. It has the character of a well organised chama, a sisterhood with established rules of engagement. I recently heard a conversation with my 15-year-old nephew about the importance of developing spiritual discipline.
He does not go to church even though he was quite regular in his pre-teen years. I was curious as to why he stopped. When we broke down the reasons, he kept it frank. He was looking for testosterone in church and it was missing. Flowers all over, humility in the air and all. He did not want to be a typical church guy, the do-gooder Christian Union model.
As a young man entering his manhood stage and he demanded less restrictive nice guy role models, even in church. He wanted to be competitive and aggressive and how was that need to be married with the image of the peaceful Jesus?
The typical church male profile is modelled on the character of Jesus and sadly reduced almost to docility as the expression of commitment to faith. The other type of regular man who is a Christian on Sabbath and a sinner for most of the week is missing, mostly he thinks he does not belong.
Part of the challenge is that Jesus is presented through the female gaze. The popular image donning walls of rural households is a soft featured Caucasian, long haired and gentle soul hugging children. Jesus is the meek lamb.
There is a school of thought interested in re-imagining Jesus through the male gaze and giving him a masculine makeover. In America, offshoots have emerged in what is termed as Muscular Christianity, off the back the original YMCA (Young Men’s Christian Association) that put an emphasis on sports as the first base in the journey towards knowing God.
