This could have been an egalitarian book.
Nancy Pearcey draws from multiple disciplines to argue that masculinity isn’t inherently toxic, but that both men and women are created in God’s image to be good people and equal participants in the work of God’s cultural mandate. Many of her ideas are ones I wholeheartedly endorse as a feminist, egalitarian, and Bible scholar. I agree with her that maleness is not toxic, and that toxic masculinity is a problem. I agree that God created each man to be what she calls a “Good Man” and to do good for his community and the world. She is right that secular scripts have created the unhealthy “Real Man” model who is aggressive, dominant, selfish, wild, and independent. And I like her solution: for the church to lead the way in calling men to become Christlike.
The book has a broad scope and attempts to engage many fields—history, sociology, anthropology, gender studies, theology, pop culture, neuroscience, and more. Her own education includes a general studies BA and a biblical studies MA, and she has done coursework in philosophy. She is a professor of apologetics. Because the book branches beyond her personal expertise, it touches these other fields at a relatively surface level.
A historical narrative frames the book. Pearcey writes that the American colonial era was an ideal time in history for the American family, because men were with their families in home industry and were present parents, modeling healthy manhood for their boys and doing good for their neighbors (p. 75). In her opinion, the Industrial Revolution was a major negative turning point because it took men out of their homes and taught them to be selfishly individualistic and career-focused (p. 88). As the spheres of work and home separated, women took over the domain of the home, greater cultural distinctions arose between women and men, and men rebelled against the domesticating influence of women—setting the sexes against each other instead of the partnership she argues that women and men held in earlier times (pp. 106–109). Ultimately, she encourages women and men to turn toward each other and to balance their lives so they can share the work of marriage, home, and childrearing and participate together in God’s creative work in the world. She believes that engaged fathers will set positive examples of healthy masculinity for their sons to follow (p. 215).
Of particular interest to CBE readers, she addresses women’s and men’s roles in marriage and the church. Pearcey engages many helpful sources, including egalitarian Bible scholars Catherine Clark Kroeger and Philip B. Payne, but she draws different conclusions than they do. This creates a disorienting reading experience throughout. She upholds complementarian talking points, insisting that male headship is important, that men have unique responsibilities to lead that women don’t have, and that feminism has been a destructive force—even while using multiple feminist and egalitarian concepts to illustrate her ideas. For example, she argues that Ephesians 5 does not make men rulers over their wives but that the commands are for mutuality and love (p. 64) and that helper in Genesis 2 means Eve was “a coequal companion” (p. 83). Yet she still expects male “headship” in marriage (p. 55), which seems to mean, in this book, a loose sense of male authority that somehow excludes the inferiority of women (pp. 35, 51). She writes, “committed conservative Christian couples use the traditional rhetoric of male headship, yet in practice these men fit the close, relational model favored by progressives” (p. 59).
Her examples of good marriages are functionally egalitarian (p. 51), and she decries women’s gifts being squelched in the church and the workplace (p. 30), yet she still argues in favor of complementarian beliefs, even if they are in name only. She does encourage men and women both to engage in work inside and outside the home and promotes policies that would make work-life balance better for both women and men (p. 213). She has two excellent chapters addressing abuse (chapters 13–14) and calls churches to do better at handling abuse in their midst. (My strongest critique of her abuse chapters is that they do not clearly support divorce in cases of abuse. This is a necessary aspect of the discussion that should always be included.)
Pearcey argues that the phenomenon of violence committed by Christian men is a result of “nominal” Christians, particularly nominal Protestants. For example, she points out, “Research has found that nominal Christian men have the highest rates of divorce and domestic violence—even higher than secular men” (p. 230). She suggests this is because such men might hear “submission” language in the church and use it to destructive ends: “This is not to say that biblical teaching causes abuse but that oppressive men may distort Scripture to justify it” (p. 230). In churches that teach “patriarchal gender views,” Pearcey is concerned that men who are “insecure, immature, and/or misogynistic” may latch on to such ideas “to confirm… their right to dominate women” (p. 230). She calls on churches to “address it within our own ranks,” self-policing the abuse Christian men commit (p. 230).
The book offers the valuable argument that men are not created to be toxic; it is sin that draws them into toxicity. Pearcey shows well that it is Christ who can free men from these damaging cultural values, and it is not women’s job to tame or rescue men, nor are women to blame for men’s bad behavior. I appreciate that this book helped me consider whether I had unexamined assumptions about men being inherently bad. In my work as a pastor, emotion coach, and anti-abuse advocate, I frequently see and hear about toxic men and their painful impacts on women. I’m grateful Pearcey reminded me that there are good men and that truly following Jesus is the solution for men who have been malformed by the Real Man model.
It is disappointing that Pearcey argues against a caricature or sometimes the extreme ends of feminist and egalitarian beliefs. For example, she ascribes to feminists the belief that there are not important differences between men and women (p. 125), and calls their words “male-bashing,” (pp. 20, 161), and cites women writing “I hate men” and #KillAllMen (p. 20). Yet these are not the views of most feminists and egalitarians. Egalitarianism in particular is proactive in shaping a less toxic world for men and for women. In spite of Pearcey’s commitment to upholding complementarianism as part of the solution, I finished the book more convinced of the need for egalitarianism. All the things she describes as problems men face in developing healthy masculinity are solved by egalitarian Christian ideas.
If readers are curious about the historical and cultural development of toxic forms of masculinity in American culture, this book’s broad overview could be one starting point for their research. However, I would not recommend it as a resource for egalitarian readers in general because of its insistence on holding to gender-based hierarchy, in theory even if not in practice.
Related Resources
Book Review: All My Knotted-Up Life
Book Review: On Purpose: Understanding God’s Freedom for Women Through Scripture
Book Review: Biblical Porn: Affect, Labor, and Pastor Mark Driscoll’s Evangelical Empire
Book Review: Gender Roles and the People of God
The Consequences of Soft Complementarianism