Earlier this year I was in Sydney, Australia over a weekend. I wanted to go to church of course, so visited TGC’s site to scour its handy church directory. I found that within walking distance was a little Anglican church that worshipped in a nearby college of the arts. I arrived to find that the church was welcoming a guest speaker that day—one who was formerly a priest and bishop in the Anglican Church but was now director of a fellowship of independent churches. I thoroughly enjoyed the sermon he preached that morning and benefited from it. Then church was over and I went my way and that was that.

I didn’t think much more about it until recently when I was browsing new books, saw an author’s photo, and found myself racking my brain to try to figure out why he looked familiar. Then I remembered: it was the guy who preached that morning in Sydney. Al Stewart’s The Manual is a book to men, for men, and about men—a book about masculinity. And it’s a really good one.
It is well-documented that masculinity has fallen on hard times. In fact, when we hear it spoken of at all, it is most often with the word “toxic” preceding it. If not that, it is presenting a new form of masculinity that looks suspiciously like femininity. Society has many ways of disparaging masculinity but almost no good or healthy vision for it. Little wonder, then, that men are confused about what it means to be a man, to be manly, to be masculine.
Into this void steps Stewart with his attempt to bring his self-described “crusty-old-bloke perspectives.” And, better, his drawn-from-the-Bible and good-old-fashioned-common-sense perspectives.

Wading into the gender wars between progressives and conservatives, between feminists and men’s rights groups, is about as inviting as sticking your head into a bag full of angry cats. But my goal isn’t to fight that battle, or to resolve the gender, transgender, and no-gender problems. My goal is more concrete than that and, I think, more achievable. I want to talk to you, the man reading this book, about what it means to live a life that is spiritually healthy, filled with strength and power and purpose. I want to talk about what it means to ‘man up’.

When he speaks of “power” he means “the ability or opportunity to care for those around you,” which means he calls upon men to be aware of the power they have and then to use it to be a blessing to others. When he speaks of “manning up” he means “to be brave and strong” but in a way that is loving and self-sacrificial. “Real love involves caring for the people around you, and that takes effort. It will cost you time, money, sleep and a thousand other things. It will require discipline, self-control and self-denial. Yet it will be a life in which you know who you are, and what matters to you. You’ll live like a man who’s worked out what matters and who matters, and you’ll put that knowledge into practice in well-thought-out ways every day.” As for “purpose,” he simply wants men to live in the way God wishes for them to live.
The Manual is comprised of 12 chapters or, better, two pairs of six chapters that together are meant to provide a picture of healthy masculinity and to shape men into people “who understand God’s idea of manhood as presented in the Bible, and to help [them] grab hold of God’s wisdom for living as men.” In the first six chapters he looks at masculinity, first to show how society offers a broken form of it, and then to show how the Bible redeems it. He leads his readers toward a distinctly healthy form of it. In the following six chapters he looks at the specifics of living out a healthy masculinity through a man’s different roles: son, husband, workmate, single man, husband, and father. A concluding chapter is evangelistic in tone, calling upon men to follow the greatest man who ever lived.
The book has many strengths and few weaknesses. Stewart writes from a seasoned perspective as one who has plenty of life experience and ministry experience to draw from. He pulls from a wide variety of sources, some of which are fellow Christians and some of which are not. He helpfully distinguishes between edict and advice, between what God commands for all people in all places and what he, as the author, merely recommends based on his own wisdom and understanding. He writes with a tone that varies appropriately between humorous and serious, between gentle pats on the back and swift kicks in the backside (for men need a good measure of both). He writes always with an evident love for God and a sincere, compassionate desire to help men live lives of meaning and purpose.
Stewart’s call to men is to live in a truly masculine way—a way shaped by the Bible. He is convinced that “when men behave badly, it isn’t their masculinity that’s toxic; it’s their humanity.” And so “we need men who are not less masculine, but who are properly masculine; the sort of men who will step up to protect the vulnerable,” for “healthy masculinity is a willingness to take responsibility and use the power you have to care for and nurture those around you.” The Manual is an excellent book and I hope many men will read it (individually or, maybe even better, in groups) and apply its wisdom to their lives. The world, the church, and their families will be better for it.
(It’s a bit difficult to purchase the book in North America. You can try Westminster Books or Amazon; you’ll definitely find it at Matthias Media.)

Buy from Amazon

The French language has an endearing little phrase that could almost have been drawn from the Bible’s wisdom literature. “Plus ça change,” they say, “plus c’est la même chose.” The more things change, the more they stay the same. Though I live in the 21st century, I read in the 19th, which is to say, the great majority of the material I read recreationally is sermons written in the 1800s. Because a preacher will usually apply a text to the specific needs and concerns of his congregation, sermons provide an interesting way of understanding the pressing issues of the day.

As I have read, I have become fascinated by how many of today’s concerns were also the concerns of our forebears. Many of today’s issues have already been discussed, debated, and even resolved and we have much to learn from those who have gone before us. French has it right: The more things change, the more they stay the same. Here are a few examples.

Congregational singing. Pastors were concerned about dwindling congregational participation in singing. Many churches had begun to put singing in the hands of professionals—typically small but highly-trained choirs. Today we may be concerned that worship bands drown out the congregation and sing in ways that amateurs find difficult to emulate. But then pastors were concerned that choirs had supplanted the “one another” ministry of singing that the Bible describes in Colossians 3. They lamented that in many churches it was frowned upon for the congregation to sing along lest it taint the professionalism of the church’s ministry in music.

Political villainization and exaggeration. One American preacher expressed his dismay that every presidential election was deemed the most important and the most consequential of all time. He lamented that every candidate made it sound as if the future of the Republic was at stake—that if the people chose his opponent, America would inevitably crumble and fall. This is certainly still the case today not only in the United States but in other nations as well. It’s fascinating to know that so little has changed—that even then, every issue was deemed unprecedented and every election proclaimed the most important in history.

Explicit nudity. Christians in that era were dismayed at declining morals, especially as it pertained to art. Though movies did not yet exist, it was becoming acceptable for people of good standing to have nude art in their homes. As today pastors may encourage their congregations to keep a wary eye on their media consumption, in that day pastors encouraged their congregations to keep a wary eye on the art they permitted themselves to own or to view. They especially fretted about young men corrupting themselves by looking at what was essentially that era’s pornography.

Biblical authority. In that day, an increasing number of skeptics were pouring contempt on the Bible and especially its claims of miracles and supernatural occurrences. As Darwin solidified and propagated his theories, others were embracing forms of theistic evolution in favor of the Bible’s account of creation. Even some who considered themselves Christian were explaining away these matters for the sake of societal respectability. Pastors had to insist on the authority and reliability of Scripture from its first word to its last.

Polyamory and polygamy. In the past few years, we have seen many headlines about the rise of polyamory—the practice of engaging in multiple simultaneous sexual relationships. In the late 1800s, polygamy was a pressing concern, especially in America as it witnessed the growth of Mormonism and its fixation with plural marriage. Pastors had to teach their congregants what the Bible says about the purpose and sanctity of marriage and insist that marriage was to be a lifelong covenantal relationship between one man and one woman. They had to teach about the terrible consequences to wives and children in polygamous contexts. They did so in ways that were appropriately discreet for that era, but they did so nonetheless.

An epidemic of addiction. In the 1800s there was an epidemic of addiction that swept the nations. Where today we may be concerned with opiates, in that day Christians were concerned with alcohol in general and rum in particular. Rum was a cheap and widely available form of alcohol that was consumed and over-consumed by the masses, leading to poverty, premature death, the abandonment of children, and so on. Many pastors became staunch prohibitionists and encouraged their congregants not only to abstain but to formalize their decision through a pledge. While the specific substances have changed, those who pastored congregations more than a century ago were grieved to see addiction within and around their churches.

The character of politicians. Christians had to consider whether they should vote exclusively for politicians who were demonstrably believers and of upright character or whether they ought to elect politicians on more pragmatic grounds. Christians disputed whether the Bible permitted them to vote someone into office who stood for good policies even as he rejected Christ. And even today Christians disagree among themselves about the necessity of faith and good character in their politicians.

Tariffs. A significant political matter toward the close of the 1800s was tariffs and their role in global politics and economics. While the policies were outside the jurisdiction of pastors, they still mentioned them in their points of application, often because their congregants were being financially impacted by them. The fortunes of the people they shepherded often rose and fell with the decisions of politicians.

One reason I find such enjoyment in the sermons of this era is that many of the preachers were optimistic. In America, the Civil War was now decades behind them and in Europe, the wars that had roiled the continent earlier in the century had largely ceased. People allowed themselves to believe humanity had entered into an era of great progress. Many pastors, perhaps especially in the United States, adopted a postmillennial eschatology, convinced that the United States represented the source and dawning of the millennium. They saw America’s Christian influence sweeping across the world, changing hearts and transforming nations until Christ returned. This optimism suffused their preaching, giving it a joyful and hopeful tone—a tone that could not survive the two world wars that, unbeknownst to them, lay in the not-too-distant future.

I will leave the closing words to a pastor from Brooklyn who, despite often preaching about many of the concerns I have listed above, remained unflaggingly optimistic as he considered the future of his nation and the world.

At the south, Mexico will follow Texas into the Union, and Christianity and civilization will stand in the halls of the Montezumas, and if not in our day, then in the day of our children, Yucatan and Central America will wheel into line of dominion. On the north, Canada will be ours, not by conquest, for English and American swords may never clash blades, but we will simply woo the fair neighbor of the north, and she will be ours, and England will say to Canada, “You are old enough now for the marriage day. Giant of the West, go take your bride.” Then from Baffin’s Bay to the Caribbean there shall be one republic, under one banner and with one destiny—a free, undisputed, Christianized American continent. God grant it. Amen!1

More specifically, American Presbyterian preachers from the latter half of the century. ↩

There have been some amazing Kindle deals over the past couple of days, so if you weren’t around over the weekend, be sure to scroll down to September 1 and 2. As for today, we’ve got the entire “Blessings of the Faith” series along with several other interesting titles. On the general market side, Malcolm Gladwell’s David and Goliath is a fun and interesting read—just one of many there.
(Yesterday on the blog: I Know It Broke Her Heart)

Jacob explains why it’s a bad thing when old men stop planting trees. Or as his dad says, “When old men stop planting trees that they’ll never sit under, we’ve got a real problem.”

Rebekah Matt: “Statistically, my life ought to be a serious mess right about now.” Yet by the grace of God it isn’t.

“If you are rolling your eyes about whether or not we even need this article, you may be losing touch with the current cultural climate and the effects of the internet-age.” I quite agree.

Matthew considers the differences between URL and IRL ministry. “Christians should not attempt to pastor themselves. But that is the temptation that faces them when they use abstract ministry resources (space) to the neglect of the faithful local churches and faithful church leaders that see them and know them (place).”

“In February of this year, I was diagnosed with a rare type of brain cancer. I am, quite literally, one in a million. A seizure brought me to my knees and was the catalyst for the discovery. A brain biopsy and a craniotomy followed in the days and months after. I went from being independent and in the prime of my life, just on the cusp of turning forty, to being dependent, unable to drive, living with family, and staring down the face of a life-altering diagnosis that is presently incurable. “

It was such a joy to read this article. “We met her when she was almost three months old. We adopted her only a matter of weeks ago. On her adoption day, she wore a little pink smocked dress with princesses on it, and as she sat in her stroller surrounded by the three children who had welcomed her into their world and loved her sweetly and sacrifically, we all heard her practicing her new name under her breath, ‘Ivy Joy Edgington.’”

As a Christian reader, my task, my challenge, and my joy, is to read with discernment, to subtract what is opposed to a Christian worldview, and to bind together the pieces through distinctly Christian thinking.

No man shall ever take from me the joy that Christ rose from the dead.
—Charles Spurgeon