Identifying Key Battles in "The Toxic War On Masculinity"
A review and some reflection on a very important book.
Sometimes you read a book and it turns your whole world upside down; a sudden revelation causes you to question all your previous assumptions about the world and even your own history. Such books are powerful, and for many people, this may be the thing that happens when reading Nancy Pearcey’s new book, The Toxic War on Masculinity. But for others it may instead be the key that pulls all the inconsistencies and incongruities of our world and culture into focus.
It’s fair to say that the first category will consist of many women, who are unaware of the harm that feminist ideology has done to fathers, husbands, and sons. The second group likely comprises mostly men, who will suddenly have a map to decode the inarticulate hostility they experience daily as they try to navigate life in our postmodern world. The book does an excellent job of what it sets out to do, exposing the conflicting cultural narratives between “the good man” and “the real man”, documenting their historical development, and giving some hopeful suggestions for repairing some of the damage done.
There are many excellent reviews of the book already, and several great interviews with the author available online, where the basic ideas are expressed. Of course the book itself goes into much greater detail and gives exceptional sources for the claims being made - which is why I wholeheartedly recommend picking it up. I’m glad to say it was well worth it to buy it twice; I ended up buying the audible version to get through it quicker, but having the hardcover with notes is an invaluable resource.
With that being said, rather than simply giving another review, I’d like to focus on expanding some of the points that are made in the book, and especially how they apply to the goals of Tectonic School.
Pearcey highlights the industrial revolution as the turning point in what went wrong for traditional masculine virtues, and it's not surprising that the event that caused such massive cultural disruption was centered around work. As noted in the book, work is a part of God’s cultural mandate, and is a good part of creation. The fall has warped our relationship with work, and men can easily fall into both laziness and workaholism, but career remains one of the most central and defining characteristics of who we are as men. For good or for ill, a man’s productive capacity in real work, not just career advancement, is a measuring stick of worth among his peers.
While Pearcey is undoubtedly correct about the separation of men from their families causing a negative impact on their spiritual well being, it's reasonable to imagine that the process of industrialization itself had a negative impact on men’s relationship with their work. The discovery of the industrial machine led to the construction of factories and other manufacturing complexes, which were themselves designed to work as machines - with the worker simply being one more replaceable part, just another belt or cog.
When work is meaningful in and of itself, when it fulfills a creative pursuit, it has a sustaining power to motivate. The sense of accomplishment and purpose derived from satisfying work is not ultimately enough to fulfill our longings for a satisfactory life; one reason why “it is not good for the man to be alone” is that the fruit of our effort is best enjoyed when shared with others.
Family is indeed a more powerful motivator than the creative drive alone. For those who did have families, the impetus to provide motivated them to endure the demoralizing conditions of the industrial workplace. But if the worker had no one to care for, it’s easy to see how they fell into all the bad behavior associated with the problematic and “toxic” man.
Fast forward to the current day, and the advancements in technology and policy have made the disconnect even greater. While men still had some value in the industrial age for their greater strength, much of the labor force has moved overseas, and average men find that they are in competition for managerial jobs with a superior class of worker - Women.
Economists like George Gilder and Thomas Sowell have decried the policy decisions implemented to encourage more women in the workplace and higher education, not because they are misogynists, but because they had enough prescience to see what would happen when men were robbed of their central role as productive workers in society.
A tremendous blind spot on the part of Christian leaders and cultural influencers is the role that technological, economic, and policy decisions unrelated to “moral issues” like abortion play in shaping the choices people make. While it's easy to see how events like the sexual revolution have had a negative impact on the social institution of marriage, we often overlook the events that brought us to such a place. Pearcey’s book does an excellent service in reminding us to look back through history to trace these roots. But while she focuses on the shifting cultural views on masculinity itself, it’s important to ask the question: what caused those shifts?
Evidence seems to support the idea that economic and technological change have a bigger impact on society than changes in theology - Francis Schaeffer pointed out that as ideas filter through culture, theology is really the last thing to reflect change. In fact, while much of the current desire to return to more traditional forms of worship can be seen as a reaction to the feminized worship of the mainline and evangelical churches, those changes were preceded by a whole slew of prior causes.
Trad Cath, Ortho Bros, and the popular online interest in Postmillennialism, Theonomy and Christian Nationalism among young, mostly male, Reformed Christians are very clearly reacting to streams within Christianity that they see as compromised. But Pearcey’s account clearly shows that it was the men who first abandoned the faith (if not intentionally), leaving pastors with mostly female congregations - and the women drew more women in when they found Christianity provided answers to the societal problems caused by an undisciplined male populace.
The other important distinction Pearcey highlights is that in the aftermath of the industrial revolution, Christian culture adapted by retreating to the secular/sacred divide. This bifurcated mode of thinking is still with us today. A preacher on Sunday morning might trace our current woes to the removal of prayer from public schools, without realizing that such practice was already antithetical to the values of society when those laws were changed. Because we view prayer as a spiritual act, its removal will have a negative spiritual impact. But we are ignorant to the spiritual nature of economic decisions fueled by sins of selfishness and greed. The cumulative effect of centuries of such decisions is that traditional family values have become a luxury lifestyle for elite earners.
Others have examined the effects of welfare programs on the family; when Gilder refers to the hordes of barbarians, he was describing the fatherless/jobless/futureless young men of the urban inner city. While many churches devote a lot of time to the needs of families in the urban environment, they may actually be perpetuating these problems. They have followed the lead of the government in providing material support, mostly to the single moms and elderly. What effectively happens is that they have taken away the impetus for all the men in the community to work. This leads the grown men to leave the community, or at least keeps them from committing to marriage, and it leads the young men to get into trouble. As there is no role for the males within the community proper, they create their own sub communities in the form of gangs.
The solution to all these problems is not unclear, but it is difficult. We can look to the exceptions of every bad scenario to find the answer; the presence of good fathers. If we attempt to correct things first from the theological level, it will require not simply a robust teaching about biblical patriarchy, but a serious emphasis on God’s role as Heavenly Father, and Christ as the Son, the firstborn who gathers and rescues His Father’s lost sheep.
But correcting our theology is only the first step. It must be applied and enacted in our world. Perhaps the clearest take away from Pearcey’s book is that the crucial battle ground in the war on masculinity is actually the world of industry and business. The secular sacred divide was a doomed coping mechanism, we sacrificed our voices in the workplace for private peace at home. Now however we live in an age of attention seeking algorithms. To many of the biggest players in the new economy, we are no longer the consumers of material goods, but the products themselves. Tech companies are reaping a harvest of our most precious and limited resources, ones that should be devoted to wives and children; our time and attention.
What is our solution? Christians need to take hold of Abraham Kuyper’s vision, a belief that Christ truly wants to be glorified in every aspect of our world, not just our private piety and personal worship. Eventually this means that Christians, real Christians who identify first as followers of Christ, must enter into realms like politics, beyond simply voting, but the easiest place to gain ground is through the market economy.
Entrepreneurs are visionaries; if they can see some opportunity to improve or cater to an underutilized market, they will find success - even if it’s just incremental. The biggest areas where an influx of Christian influence are desperately needed are in the workplace, and in education.
Tectonic School represents one unique approach to utilize under appreciated resources to exert such influence. Young men are opting out of college; skilled trades are desperate for workers, and small business owners are aging out, as the previous generations put an overwhelming emphasis on sending their children to college, rather than passing on the family trade. Our solution is to provide resources and encouragement for Godly tradesmen to mentor and apprentice young men in need of a career and path.
This program (and others like it) could not only create an alternative career path into the trades, but into entrepreneurship. Much of the market could be captured by structuring business models to encourage a return to healthy family life. As the credibility of the old world elites fades away, entrepreneurs will continue to capture political positions from those who have squandered our collective resources. The candidate who gains status by working up through the ranks, who knows what it’s like to work with his hands, is not only more electable, but actually a better leader than the one who inherits his wealth.
Pearcey provides evidence for this demand through some very good examples of families that have been able to reconfigure their work/life balance to allow for healthier marriages and better relationships between fathers and their children. But many of the people who can afford such arrangements are in the upper middle class. Marriage and family are economically challenging propositions for many young people, with home ownership being a difficult obstacle - one reason why construction should be an area of interest for entrepreneurs who want to promote traditional family values.
And this is perhaps the area where economics have had the biggest impact. We have been bombarded with marketing for a lifestyle of affluence and ease that treats sex partners as interchangeable, and children as an optional accessory. Career success, material comfort, or at least a steady stream of entertainment all vie for our dollars and our time. But the return on these investments is pitiful; no amount of money can provide people who actually love you to care for you in your old age.
The moment that resonated with me most in listening to Pearcey’s book was the story of a Christian minister who became a father late in life. He felt cheated and ripped off, because no one told him how much joy there was in fatherhood. This is perhaps the greatest tragedy of this war against masculinity. Men don’t even know what they are missing out on. Those of us who do, need to share this message not only with our own children, but with the world. True Christian fatherhood reflects the love of God for all his children, not only His begotten son, but the adopted ones as well.
Recent promotion for Gilder’s Men and Marriage, features a profound statement “Civilization is built by men with families to feed.” The truth is that despite the damage done by the industrial revolution, there is no escape from the fact that men must follow the work. Only men who have become fathers realize how truly important it is not only to take care of their own families, but to shape the world in which our children must live.
The Christian ideal of masculinity must go beyond the care of our own families. We must become symbols of God the Father, God the Son, and The Holy Spirit in our actions out in the world. We must become not only the fathers to the fatherless, but help fulfill all the masculine roles that are absent in our world. Like the Trinity, the Christian father exists within a relational matrix. We must bring our wives and children alongside - not at every stage of life, but as our children mature they need to see us taking care of those who don’t have husbands, fathers, brothers, or sons, and let them see our wives act as mothers, sisters and friends. Our homes should be oriented around inviting others in, so they can see what family and home are meant to be.
The conversation around masculinity will continue to develop for the foreseeable future. There are a lot of reactionary voices trying to sort out what it means to be a man. Most of them ignore the Bible, and have a very selective view of history. Fortunately, Nancy Pearcey’s book examines the current assault on masculinity through both of these lenses, and thoroughly. It will be an important book and a valuable resource for quite some time.