Friday, December 08, 2006

GodMen



That would make a very good name for a band. It isn't a band, sadly, but a new form of Promise Keeper-type all-men organizations which desire to make men more interested in religion by promising more violence and dominance over women:

The strobe lights pulse and the air vibrates to a killer rock beat. Giant screens show mayhem and gross-out pranks: a car wreck, a sucker punch, a flabby (and naked) rear end, sealed with duct tape.

Brad Stine runs onstage in ripped blue jeans, his shirt untucked, his long hair shaggy. He's a stand-up comic by trade, but he's here today as an evangelist, on a mission to build up a new Christian man — one profanity at a time. "It's the wuss-ification of America that's getting us!" screeches Stine, 46.

A moment later he adds a fervent: "Thank you, Lord, for our testosterone!"

...

In fact, men taking charge is a big theme of the GodMen revival. At what he hopes will be the first of many such conferences, in a warehouse-turned-nightclub in downtown Nashville, Stine asks the men: "Are you ready to grab your sword and say, 'OK, family, I'm going to lead you?' " He also distributes a list of a real man's rules for his woman. No. 1: "Learn to work the toilet seat. You're a big girl. If it's up, put it down."

Read the whole article, and you will find an interesting interpretation of what it means to lead the family with a sword in hand:

Eric Miller, a construction worker, admits his wife is none too pleased when he takes off, alone, on a weekend camping trip a few weeks after the GodMen conference this fall.

"She was a little bit leery of it, as we have an infant," he reports. "She said, 'I need your help around here.' "

Miller, 26, refuses to yield: "I am supposed to be the leader of the family."

I've sometimes wondered what would happen if the women of these male-dominant families started taking the schtick seriously: Ok, so he is the boss. This means that I will sit on my ass doing nothing at all until he's in the room and then I will only do whatever he explicitly tells me. Let him worry about the children's dentist and doctor dates, let him worry about whether there is toilet paper in the house. It's up to the boss to do those things or very explicitly and carefully tell the underling what to do.

I actually had to claw at my goddessy corset while reading the initial article. Oppression articles always make me feel like I can't get a breath in. But then I read the bit where the men blame their alienation from the church on the frilly and pink atmosphere of churches, and my Inner Interior Decorator saved the day by giving me something else to think about. That "something else" is how to redecorate all the churches to get guys back into the lap of Jesus:

We will hang beer mobiles from the ceiling. There will be a spittoon by the door and a large manly receptacle for swords and cell phones. All paintings of Jesus will be violent ones, showing him winning. So the crucifix is out. And the ministers will preach in boxing shorts. An air-freshener smelling of farts might be used at exciting points in the sermons, the points where God tells that a lot of people will be slaughtered and enslaved.

Women could be given a small annex to pray in.
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Stole the link from Pandagon.