In our time, beyond the ultimate issues of theism and atheism, two fundamental and very practical theories regarding patriarchy oppose each other, with essential implications for human survival: either a biblical view of human existence (which presupposes the flourishing of the natural or nuclear family and the male/female distinction) or a CRT atheist “anti-racist” view that ultimately eliminates all distinctions for the sake of the installation of a godless Marxist utopian equity.

Part of Critical Race Theory is the assumption that racism is inevitably related to white male heterosexuality and the oppressive patriarchy that occurs under the selfish rule of powerful father-figures. Thus, the contemporary version of a “man” in U.S. society is “hyper-masculine, straight, and white…the wealthy white male property owner.” So “…we must begin to dismantle the racist and patriarchal systems.”[1] Theorist Rob Okun calls for an “anti-patriarchy Peace Corps with dedicated organizers fanning out across the country to help communities figure out ways to rid their local schools, courts, workplaces, hospitals, and houses of worship of entrenched white supremacy and patriarchy.”[2]
Black thinker, John Washington, a self-described “liberal” examines this goal provocatively.[3] His analysis deserves our attention. His autobiographical essay begins with a stunning observation: “CRT identifies the problem as white supremacist fathers that produce black victims—but this black man [the author] identifies the absentee black fathers as the problem.”[4]
Washington wonders if the criminal behavior of young black males today owes something to a sense of lost masculinity that others get to see in their faithful fathers at home. In inner-city communities, he argues, viciousness often defines what fatherless young men imagine is manhood. He sees much truth in the 1965 controversial report entitled “The Negro Family: A Case of National Action” by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a sociologist working at the Labor Department. Moynihan concluded that many of the social problems affecting American blacks are due to the disintegration of the black family. Washington supports this thesis by going into great detail to show how one-parent families, whether black or white, create all kinds of problems for children, and especially boys.
There is a sad irony in Washington’s conclusion regarding the reasons for the state of affairs in the black family. As long as patriarchy is considered evil (as Critical Race Theory maintains), then the real solution—wise fatherhood—can never be applied because it is openly attacked as the ultimate cause of the problem. The genuine solution is seen as the essential cause. Thus the race problem will never be solved as long as CRT is considered to be the solution for racism. My observation is supported by certain black thinkers who, like Washington, analyze the fundamental black problem as the absence of fathers in the home. Christian believer and black activist, Jason Whitlock, believes that the only real solution to black issues is the introduction of a biblical understanding of the role of a father. He asks: “Our family structure is way outside of God’s design. Do we think the charity of guilt-ridden white people (CRT) can fix problems resulting from the destruction of the family unit?”[5]
A case needs to be made for biblical patriarchy, granted both its effectiveness and its contemporary demonization. Patriarchy means the rule (arche) of the father (pater), which, since the rise of radical feminism, has now becoming identified as a great social evil. Any time there is rule, sinful human beings will exploit it and/or rebel against it. Unfortunately, even Christian husbands are capable of gross oppression of their wives and children. Having perhaps seen such abuse, feminist thinkers demonize the arche of the father. Feminist theorist Andrea Dworkin believes that
Being female in this world means having been robbed of the potential for human choice by men who love to hate us. One does not make choices in freedom. Instead, one conforms in body type and behavior and values to become an object of male sexual desire, which requires an abandonment of a wide-ranging capacity for choice…[6]
For radical theologian, Mary Daly, patriarchy comes from way back. The works of Aristotle, for example, portrayed women as morally, intellectually, and physically inferior to men, to be considered as property. Their role in society was to reproduce and to serve men in the household, where male domination of women is natural and virtuous.[7] “I intuitively understood,” says Daly, “that for a (person) trapped in patriarchy, which is the religion of the entire planet, ‘to be’ in the fullest sense is ‘to sin.’” Thus a patriarchal culture is profoundly sinful.[8] Such a negative view of patriarchy is understandable, considering some expressions of it. This negative analysis of patriarchy also holds true in history in regards to racism, in which the white patriarch consigns black people to slavery, suffering, and injustice. It would seem that both those suffering in a racist society and those suffering under an unhealthy patriarchy have reached the only valid solution: Eliminate family and creational sexual norms.
But biblical patriarchy does not teach what Aristotle believed nor does it teach human beings to oppress and hate one another in systems of racism. The Christian era developed the principles already laid down in the creation. Women and men are “naturally” different and together they constitute the core element of human societies: biological families created by God. Since the world is a dangerous place, men act as protectors of women and children and work selflessly to bring in wages that make family life possible. In the Genesis account of the beginnings of human society, men worked in tough conditions and women gave birth to children who were raised by father and mother together. To the first woman God said: “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children” (Gen 3:16). To the first man he said: “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground” (Gen 3:19). The fundamental reality of patriarchy emerges not from an evil desire for power but from the very caring structures of creation and the natural roles of men and women living in a sinful world.
There is nothing evil about patriarchy. God gave it to us and revealed it to us because it expresses his image. The ultimate Pater who rules is God himself, who reveals himself in Scripture as a Father of the fatherless and protector of widows (Ps 68:5) and as a provider for the needy (Ps 68:9–10). Thus, the believer exclaims: “You are my Father, my God, and the Rock of my salvation” (Ps 89:26), the one who shows compassion to his children (Ps 103:13). In the New Testament Jesus reveals God as both his Father (John 3:35) and our Father,” to whom we pray (Matt 6:9). According to Jesus, God is the caring Father of those in need (Matt 18:14), a loving Father (John 14:23). Paul quotes from a collection of verses in the Old Testament Scriptures where God says: I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty (2 Cor 6:18).
Since human beings are made in God’s image, we are exhorted to live out and express the biblical reality of patriarchy, both as males and females, understanding what the will of the Lord is (Eph 5:17), as expressed in verses 22–33, which show an interplay of the marital relationship of “one flesh union” via “love” and “reverence” (Eph 5:33).
Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the savior of the body. Therefore, as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourishes and cherishes it, even as the Lord the church: For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife respect her husband.
Clearly the biblical version of patriarchy seeks to maintain the different male and female roles and the mutual respect between the husband and the wife. The husband submits to the constraints that Christ lays out for him and the female submits to her husband in the same way that the Church comes under the fatherly tenderness of the Church/God relationship. The arrangement is an exquisite and unparalleled description of the symphony of marital love that God intended and where children thrive. The “great mystery” of Genesis 2:24 is the amazing fact that God inspired the Old Testament text regarding marriage to act as a mere preview of the mystery of the gospel.
In our time, beyond the ultimate issues of theism and atheism, two fundamental and very practical theories regarding patriarchy oppose each other, with essential implications for human survival: either a biblical view of human existence (which presupposes the flourishing of the natural or nuclear family and the male/female distinction) or a CRT atheist “anti-racist” view that ultimately eliminates all distinctions for the sake of the installation of a godless Marxist utopian equity. The extent to which this social justice ideology has taken over our educational institutions and even some of our Christian schools and churches indicates that contemporary racism is not merely a question of moral choices but a conflict of essential ideological truth. Behind this, there is something truly sad taking place. The real solution to racism, namely a faithful husband and father staying at home, playing the role of a real patriarch, caring for his children (especially his sons for their emergence into manhood), can never be allowed according to the ideology of anti-racism, since patriarchy is defined as the ultimate expression of social evil.
Jesus defines divine patriarchy as the essence of love when he says to his opponents, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God…I came not of my own accord, but he sent me” (Jn 8:42). This is the essence of the gospel Jesus brings to the human situation. “God (our Father) is love” (1 Jn 4:8). Ultimately, our human home will not be empty. It will be transformed and ruled by our eternal patriarch —God the Father, who, in his love for his children, provided salvation through his Son. Our tender Father will wipe away every tear (Rev 21:4). Men and women of every race who have confessed their sins and acknowledged Jesus as their Savior will find indescribable joy as they bow in reverence to their God and Father and take their place in the final expression of family.
Dr. Peter Jones is scholar in residence at Westminster Seminary California and associate pastor at New Life Presbyterian Church in Escondido, Calif. He is director of truthXchange, a communications center aimed at equipping the Christian community to recognize and effectively respond to the rise of paganism. This article is used with permission.

[1] https://voicemalemagazine.org/white-male-supremacy-and-the-patriarchy-racism-pandemic/
[2] Art.cit.
[3] https://quillette.com/2022/03/21/awol-black-fathers/
[4] Art.cit.
[5] https://www.theblaze.com/op-ed/whitlock-the-nfls-black-leadership-and-ownership-crisis-is-a-symptom-of-the-black-family-crisisSee also the work of Bob Woodson, founder and president of The Woodson Center and the author of “Red, White, and Black: Rescuing American History from Revisionists and Race Hustlers.” https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/feb/14/hope-and-empowerment-for-troubled-communities-a-vi/
[6] Art.cit.
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriarchy
[8] https://www.thoughtco.com/patriarchal-society-feminism-definition-3528978
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Lord’s Day after Lord’s Day, like the drumbeat of an advancing army, we proclaim the Lord’s Death. The death of the babe born in Bethlehem, the death of the Christ, the death of the King of the Jews, the death of Jesus of Nazareth. The Death which all peoples of the earth must reckon with. Here we proclaim it. Next week we proclaim it. Until He comes again we proclaim the death which defanged Death itself.

While our focus during the Advent season is upon Christ’s incarnation and birth, we should ever be mindful that He was born to die. As we come to this table, it should be noted that we are commanded to keep this Supper until Christ comes; and in our partaking of it, we show the Lord’s death.
There is poignancy in the Lord’s death. To state the obvious, death isn’t possible unless He was first born in the likeness of human flesh, and then lived a truly human life. And so, it’s the death of the Lord which we declare each time we partake of this bread & wine.
The church makes a corporate proclamation whenever we take this meal. We proclaim that God became a man and died.
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The very first line of Peter Pan is an ominous one: “All children, except one, grow up.” “Growing up” is more than aging, more than growing a beard, or more even than simply having responsibility. Without meaningful aspiration, Lost Boys will remain lost. Without glory’s inoculation of shame, masculinity will be reduced to performance dressed-up with double cigar holders. Neither are a sufficient Muse to virtue or character. Neither rescue men from this existential crisis, nor do they deliver more than momentary relief from shame. What then, shall men do?

J. M. Barrie first wrote Peter Pan as a play in 1904, expanding it into a full novel in 1911. Nothing he wrote before or since would ever come close to sparking such popular reception. It tapped into and articulated the tension of a society in the throes of rapid social change and economic reordering. British Imperialism’s assumed stability shuddered in the face of America’s rise to power on the global stage. Though Britain was technically victorious, the South African War (1899-1902) offered Great Britain both a disturbing preview of WWI and a painful illustration of the consequences in being slow to adapt to rapid technological advancement. Combining the dated tactics of the muzzle-loading era with breach-loading rifles led only to carnage. A growing fear of national decline was palpable, with its attendant implications spreading through British society.
The original play’s subtitle, “The Boy Who Refused To Grow Up,” encapsulated both a conflicted nostalgia for the passing Victorian Era and an anxious uncertainty of what the emerging Edwardian Age would hold. The world that was (Hook) no longer is, but what will be (Pan) is yet-unclear, with British men caught in an economic, cultural, and political crucible not unlike the liminality of our own cultural moment.
To mark the 70th Anniversary of their animated classic, Peter Pan, Disney is releasing a live-action remake, Peter Pan and Wendy. While I’m looking forward to seeing Jim Gaffigan in the role of Mr. Smee, it is highly unlikely to resonate with a new generation of young men. The most dark and honest themes of Barrie’s original work will undoubtedly be either cut or as kiddified as the animated version it celebrates the anniversary of. And if so, it will tragically miss an invaluable opportunity to offer hope to a modern generation of boys and men in crisis.
Men, Masculinity, and Culture Wars
For reasons largely outside of their control, boys and young men are falling through society’s cracks at alarming rates. This is happening so consistently and comprehensively that men are now imminently facing an even greater educational disadvantage and disparity in workforce representation than women have since Title IX passed in 1972. In an article focused on the friendlessness and despair facing modern men, David French shows that the disappearance of vocational outlets has left men with a crisis of meaning, purpose, and community – one greatly worsened by the collapse of institutional safety nets that historically mitigated the pain of similar socio-economic shifts.
Parallels abound between the Late Victorian Era and Late Modernity, but they end with the start of WWI (at least for now). The first Industrial Age conflict violently accelerated transition across Western society. Albeit at catastrophic cost, it also provided an outlet for young British men floundering in transition, “adventure” equipping them with patriotic meaning and purpose. We may be living through a period of similarly seismic erosion of consensus, but God forbid we become desperate enough to view war as a viable solution to modern liminality.
What are modern men to do when our culture provides vanishingly few realistic or socially acceptable outlets for men longing to matter and eager to prove it. What aspiration is left for men when the Left believes your sex is irredeemably depraved and the Right gives participation trophies for being born with a penis?
I too would rather take flight with happy thoughts or play the pirate king of a fictional paradise than fight over equally dishonest utopias. Like all escapist fantasies, anti-visions require nothing of those preoccupied by them except to conceptually “be against” the other. It’s an easy, distracting fantasy. But our modern culture wars and the anti-visions fueling them are not innocent distractions. A false 911 call is a felony because it draws life-saving attention and resources away from actual needs.
Dehumanizing legalism (on the Left) and empty caricatures (on the Right) make no meaningful impact on the existential realities of men and succeed only in compounding the existential crisis lurking beneath the economic and educational one.
The Existential Crisis of Unanswered Shame
Thanks in large part to Brené Brown’s popularization, many people finally have some language to describe the pool we’ve been swimming in – shame. But being aware that we’re drowning in shame isn’t the same as being equipped or skilled to wisely answer it (especially theologically), and Brown almost exclusively focuses on negative or toxic shame. Shame can be healthy. It functions as a guardrail to our most socially damaging inclinations (e.g. adultery or child neglect). Its absence can be disastrous to families, communities, and cultures, but shame-as-social-consequence is, on its own, limited in affecting long-term transformation.
To be “shameless” is not a complement. It describes someone who selfishly ignores social guardrails at the expense of their community (either knowingly or foolishly). Yet only sociopaths reach that point due to a true absence of shame. Counter-intuitively, it is when an over-saturation of shame accumulates and metastasizes, that we simply stop caring about social consequences. We become shameless when shame overwhelms our capacity to attend to it, resolve it, or both. We, men and women alike, will slide into shamelessness if we believe we no longer have any standing left to lose. Once shame reaches that tipping point within a person or community, it flips from guardrail to jet fuel, empowering the very social ill it was leveraged to mitigate.
Shame is the fear of insignificance, the lived experience of finitude (healthy) and/or not-mattering (unhealthy). Biblically, it is the opposite of “doxa,” or “glory” (also translated as “weight/significance”). Kids subjected to verbal abuse, or who are repeatedly shamed for minor infractions start to assume it’s true because it’s easier than being haunted by the question of whether it is or not. Anyone who has adopted or cared for foster children knows how much time and effort it takes to answer shame’s narrative with one of enough-ness and beloved-ness. If you are always a burden to those around you, why bother trying?
Richard Reeves points out in his new book, Of Boys and Men: Why The Modern Male Is Struggling, Why it Matters, and What To Do About It, that the two most common words men use to describe themselves are “useless” and “worthless.” “Well, if this supposedly is who I am,” men say to ourselves, “then why shouldn’t I (watch pornography/have an affair/embezzle money/binge digital entertainment)?” I encountered no narrative more consistent while screening soldiers for PTSD as a Chaplain in the Army National Guard. Over 9 years, I counseled over 50 soldiers with suicidal ideations, six of which culminated in a formal intervention (a medical 72-hour hold). All of them were warriors fighting demons of fear and despair, but stunningly only one of them suffered due to combat-related trauma.
Arguably, the most toxic aspects of modern masculinity are behaviors of despair – symptoms of deep insecurity and prolonged experience of not-belonging. As one of the few remaining institutions still seen as trustworthy, young men often gravitate toward the military as a means of overcoming insecurity through an even greater belonging. Many men enlist to flee their demons, but they never stop fighting them.
Contrary to their reputation as angry task-masters, Drill Instructors intuitively function as paternal glory-surgeons. They know, intuitively if not consciously, that when we puritanically tell men “be better” without believing they can be (never mind mentoring them in that journey), we empower the deep-seeded shame and insecurity that produced it in the first place. But shame’s insecurity, when answered with another’s authoritative reassurance of significance (“glory”), becomes the fertile soil of transformation. Apart from glory’s surgical renarration of the soul, shame will fester until not-mattering becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
That is the existential crisis facing men, and the context for why it’s being ignored.
The Left’s Lost Boys and Cultural Shame
No one epitomizes the Left’s anti-vision of masculinity’s toxic excess more than John Wayne. Let’s avoid the minefield of whether that is fair or accurate, and assume for the sake of argument that I actually agree that he personifies toxic masculinity, that I also want to see a more kind, humble, and Christ-like servanthood to characterize modern men. So why isn’t that happening?
Predating Kristin Kobes Du Mez’s wildly popular book by three years, Stephen Metcalf traced a surprising thread through John Wayne’s career – being bullied.
That’s right. The man’s man who ain’t never took no lip from nobody was relentlessly and publicly shamed by John Ford, the man who discovered and molded him into the silver screen’s no-nonsense, gruff-talking stoic. Ford was apparently “savage in his mistreatment of Wayne” who so passively took it on the chin that others on set would have to step in to defend him.
Yes, we are indeed talking about the same John Wayne.
What’s even more surprising is why Ford bullied him: Wayne wasn’t man enough. To Ford, he was a floating signifier, a malleable vessel to project his idealized masculinity into. As much (twisted) Drill Instructor as Film Director, Ford wasn’t satisfied with merely shaping Wayne’s performance, he had to remake Wayne himself into his own (imagined) swashbuckling image. It was a projection birthed from his own unaddressed shame, even self-hatred, over what he saw as feminine attributes he longed to purge.
Like John Ford, James Hook relentlessly sought to purge Peter Pan from Neverland after losing both his hand and his significance in a sword fight with a child. Shame is ever the domain of the bully. And, to the degree that it directs his aspirations, one to which he is utterly enslaved (and compensating for). Prescient of the masculinity crisis that has grown over the last decade, Metcalf sees Wayne’s transformation as a cautionary tale:
Masculinity as puerile male bonding, as toxic overcompensation and status jockeying—this is what’s unleashed when masculinity no longer has an obvious function. Divorced from social purpose, “being a man” becomes merely symbolic. (emphasis mine)
If many on the Left want to actively encourage men to LARP as pirates and spread juvenile masculinity, then they should simply continue doing exactly as they are. To stunt all expressions of masculine strength – both healthy and toxic – is a doomed strategy, and one increasingly transparent in its goal of role reversal rather than real equality. This puritanical impulse simply genders depravity in the opposite direction, shutting down even healthy masculine expression for a counterfeit (i.e. “worthless” and “useless”).
Without affirmation of worth or aspiration to grow, shame begets shame.
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