Written by Aaron M. Renn |
Tuesday, October 31, 2023
There used to be large numbers of spaces and organizations in the world that were single sex. Male only spaces have been systematically targeted for elimination by feminists and elite culture for quite some time. The years long jihad against Augusta National Golf Club by the New York Times is a great example. At the same time, there’s a vast array of women’s only institutions and programs…Unlike with women demanding to enter male spaces, men have traditionally respected a women’s only label. But this might be breaking down. There was a lot of press about how men have started attending a tech career fair that was supposed to be for women. And why wouldn’t they? There are only a few all male spaces left.

I was delighted to see that former King’s College professor Anthony Bradley agrees with my write-up on evangelical servant leadership. He wrote on X:
Aaron nailed it! I’ve been to lots of men’s conferences and read dozens of books for Christian men: masculinity’s only expression for evangelical men is domestic. Even if things outside the home are mentioned, they are footnotes. For single young men, there is no on-ramp to live out 1 John 2:14 in their churches/communities so many look for it in video games, YouTube, etc. In fact, go to any evangelical youth group and ask the teenage boys what they want to do with their lives, you’re going to get something like this: “make enough money to provide for a family.” What they want to do, however, is fight evil and do something heroic in the world. They want to be heroes. What do we give them, instead? Small groups, a 6:00 AM Wednesday morning breakfast, 5:30AM F3 groups, and an annual men’s retreat.
Then, men are shamed for not being at home every night with their families. Then, we mock them for not having friends. It’s domestication and they run from this. Jordan Peterson, Andrew Tate, Hamza, Sneako, etc. offer young men something evangelicalism suppresses: how to use their power & strength outside of the four walls of their home to do something heroic that leaves their mark on the world. Again, I want to be clear here even if the cultural mandate/outside the home is taught for young men it is neither modeled nor practiced in a community of men they can join and there is no rite-of-passage into it outside-of-the-home culture shaping. They want to be brought into adversity & opposition in the fight against real evil & dominion over creation. This is *exactly* what Jesus offered his disciples. Jesus spoke directly to what young guys want. It’s instructive. I’m so glad he didn’t invite them to follow him to stay at home, attend a 6:00AM men’s breakfast or workout group, or a weekly small group. [emphasis added]
If you don’t know Bradley, his writeup on how evangelicalism is matrilineal is a must read. He also has a recent book out on college fraternities.
These are really great observations. I appreciate that he notes how men want a mission in the world, but this is what evangelical teaching denies them as men.
I believe the root cause of much of their bad teaching is in their unwillingness to advocate for substantive gender complementarity. They affirm that it exists, but never in any specifics. Thus the only thing that distinguishes men and women is how they relate to the opposite sex. The main complementarian book defines manhood and womanhood this way. As a result, masculinity (and femininity) can only be expressed in the domestic sphere.
He is also right to talk about a “community of men.” I noted that pagan masculinitist Jack Donovan was onto something when he talked about masculinity as being experience and expressed as part of a group (in his view a “gang”) of other men.
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In this life we learn more by getting things wrong than by getting things right. It is one of the great routes to wisdom: Learn by your mistakes. A child has to have some independence in order to learn to take responsibility. They need to be let off the leash so that they will understand the need for self-discipline. Otherwise you are deceiving yourself. So back off occasionally and see what he/she does.

There is nothing easy about parenting, and nothing easy about the responsibility of training our children in obedience through discipline. Because discipline is unpopular and unpleasant, parents often find themselves looking for substitutes. In her book Parenting Against the Tide, Ann Benton lists five poor substitutes for disciplining our children—five poor substitutes that fail to address the heart.
Excuse Them
This is the voice of therapy culture. Sometimes we make excuses for our child’s misbehavior. We say, “he’s tired, she’s had a hard day, he’s disappointed, she’s traumatised, he’s got low self-esteem …” Now all of these things may be true. But that is not the point. The point is this: Are we going to allow our children to take responsibility for their own behavior/misbehavior or not? Or is it always going to be the fault of someone else or of the circumstances? I am not saying we cannot be understanding or sympathetic. But if we are going to praise our children when they do well, surely it is logical to chastise them when they do badly. They make choices, which are moral choices, all day long. If we commend them for the good we cannot merely excuse them for the bad. That is very poor training because it teaches them to blame-shift.
Ignore Them
This is the voice of liberalism, which would be inclined to allow the children as far as possible to do as they like. When called upon to intervene, liberalism refuses to recognise an absolute moral worldview, whereby some things are definitely wrong and some things are definitely right. This is a failure in discipline because we need to instruct our children’s sense of right and wrong and that this is quite outside of how they fell about it. It might feel great to pull someone’s hair but it is wrong. Children have a moral sense, they have a conscience and this conscience is your friend when you discipline. Bring in right and wrong as absolutes. And be clear that the fundamental right course of action for a child is obedience to you.
Organise Them
[This is] the voice of strategic management. Some parents work really hard to avoid the occasion for misbehavior by organizing their children’s life and surroundings.
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Christian Europe must die in order for it to live. It must follow the Savior. And this demands that men like Richard Dawkins must bend his knee and follow Christ’s humility. Jesus humbled Himself so that He might be raised into glory. And if Dawkins wants glory too, he must see that the glory of Christendom which he pines for is found in the humiliation of the God-man 2000 years ago outside of Jerusalem. There, in Him, is all our hope and righteousness. The cross is the spike which will crush the serpent head of Islamic lies. 

If you haven’t seen it yet, Richard Dawkins made quite the statement in a recent interview. In responding to the growth of Islam in England and Europe he admitted, wistfully, that he misses the charm of Christendom.
We find before us, class, a helpful little lesson for us mere mortals. Secularists have claimed for a long time that there is no supernatural powers (divine or malevolent) out there. So, imagine their shock when they grab a live outlet and find that there are indeed powers and principalities. This is precisely what is happening. Christ’s reign holds Satan at bay; the dragon is bound in regards to his ability to deceive the nations. But this does not mean he doesn’t still prowl looking for a tasty snack of deep fried atheist.
Islam is rushing in upon Europe. Like a spring high tide which catches beachgoers at unawares, the inheritors of Western Civilization are finding out what those sea-walls and levies which they worked hard to tear down were for. The raw and brutal power of Islamic conquest has come upon them. Along with it is an insistence on righteousness by works. These works are defined by the greed, lust, and ambition of the loudest voice interpreting Muhammed. This brutalizing power will soon replace the bells of Christendom with the eery adhan.
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