Masculinity redeemed

Reflections from Josh Hawley's latest book

In January 1918, Thomas Carey Johnson was in the middle of delivering a series of lectures to his students at Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, Virginia. He selected as the subject of these talks several isms he no doubt expected his young crop of seminarians to face in their future ministries. 

Importantly, each of these isms were really reactions to the capital-I Ism of the day: Modernism. Among those reactions, Johnson counted a relatively new and obscure philosophy coming out of the German academy. It’s unclear if Johnson really believed a mass movement of people would have the patience of mind to systematically organize Friedrich Nietzsche’s ideas and fashion them into a coherent worldview, but he certainly understood why men, and young men in particular, would be drawn to a version of Nietzscheanism like moths to a flame. 

The turn of the nineteenth century was a time of male ambivalence. Dizzying changes in philosophy, politics, and society had upended the expectations and future prospects of men. Within that malaise, Johnson believed Nietzsche offered a false but alluring opportunity for “redeeming men.”¹ Seeing as most earthly frontiers had been subdued by science, technology, and industry, Johnson thought men would find in Nietzche’s abolition of traditional Christian morality new opportunities to dare and to dream. “He would lift the naturally strong to greater strength,” Johnson explained, “that they should court danger and adventure, overcome pity, and…above all be valorous.”²

Today, we face new isms but a similar crisis among men. Male suicide rates are up and their employment levels are down. What should men do in the wake of a cultural revolution which has left so many of them deft of purpose and meaning?

This is the question which another prominent Presbyterian has attempted to answer. In his latest book, Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Need, Senator Josh Hawley identifies Epicureanism as the dominant ism of our day.³ For Hawley, this post-modern iteration of an idea with ancient roots seeks to overthrow any constraint on the human person that would prevent him from actualizing his inner truth. Only when we have cast off the bonds of religion, family, even biology can we create a society in which all people are truly free. 

Another author⁴ has recognized the same cultural trend and says that men often play the part of social scapegoat in the Epicurean utopia, bearing the sins of heteronormativity, patriarchy, and so-called “toxic” masculinity. Instead of cultivating virtue to channel their natural inclinations of ambition, assertiveness, and aggression, men are encouraged to numb them with porn, drugs, and video games. 

Among men, reactions to Epicureanism range from basic acceptance to the hyper-masculinity of internet celebrities like the Tate Brothers. The two, though they seem like opposites, lead men to the same place: trapped within an immanent frame, without transcendent meaning or purpose, and enslaved to the passions of their flesh.

Josh Hawley is a statesman, not a professor, but it is interesting to see how his alternative approach mirrors that of Johnson’s a century earlier. The consonance between the two suggests a concrete tradition of Reformed reflection on masculinity that we can make use of in our own churches and communities. 

Central for both Johnson and Hawley is correcting the record about Christianity. Nietzsche’s version of Christianity with its “slave morality” was a “caricature,” Johnson said.⁵ If he had truly labored in the Bible, Nietzsche would have seen that Christian faith “was making strong men.”⁶

For Johnson, the meaning of manhood comes from the God of the Bible who “frowns on the doting indulgence of the grandmamma” and calls men to “stand with iron strength against being swayed by mere benevolence to go against the right.”⁷ A Christian man’s allegiance, Johnson said, was to “that love which is heroically controlled by regard to inexorable and eternal right.”⁸ In other words, men were divinely constituted to virtuously discipline their strength in order to serve others, especially the weak and the vulnerable.

Johnson admitted that the biblical concept of Christian manhood was foreign to the German pietism with which Nietzsche was familiar. However, aberrant forms of Christianity didn’t negate the true expression of faith. Likewise, Hawley doesn’t want to give up the biblical vision for manhood just because modern evangelical churches have mostly embraced egalitarianism. Instead, Hawley calls men to take up the mantle of what he calls “the Adam story” (which is really one iteration in a series of Adam stories that includes other biblical figures like Abraham, Joshua, and David), disciplining their hearts, minds, and bodies for sacrificial service as husbands, fathers, warriors, builders, priests, and kings.⁹ 

Both Johnson and Hawley call men to the vita activa which requires true effort. And though plenty of authors have directed similar calls at men, what makes Hawley’s, and Johnson’s, and the Reformed tradition’s contributions unique, and ultimately more satisfying, is the central role of grace.

For Hawley, grace is not a footnote or something you tack on at the end; it's interwoven throughout a man’s entire identity. Indeed, a man can not obtain his high calling without it! “To be a man is to realize that we are, each of us, imperfect. We are wounded and flawed,” Hawley admits. He goes on,¹⁰

We are dependent for our significance on something outside ourselves. That is no cause for shame. For in recognizing our need, we do what Adam would not. We embrace humility, we accept the call to serve, and we open our lives to the possibility of transformation. The success of a man’s life turns out to depend not finally on the man. It depends on the God he serves.

Transformation comes by grace through faith in Jesus, or “The Man” as Hawley often refers to him throughout the book. Yes, we are called to action. To be a builder and a warrior and a king means we actually have to do something. Yet, our activity is always derivative, always a response, to a prior identity we passively receive. In the garden, we received our identity as sons of God, created in his image to build and rule and love as God does. Yet, the first man, Adam, gave up that God-give identity to construct one of his own making. Perhaps that makes Adam the first Epicurean and the Epicureanism we see so much of today our natural inheritance.

Thankfully, our first father was not the end of the Adam story. There is a New Adam, a New Man, a true Son of God who opens the path back to God and our true calling. In Jesus, there is salvation from our sin, adoption into the family of God, and blessed service in Christ’s kingdom. Only when we have grasped the Gospel of Jesus in the deepest part of our soul, can we truly live out our calling and mission as men.

Image credit: Unsplash

1. Thomas Cary Johnson, “Nietzscheanism” in Some Modern Isms (Richmond, VA: Presbyterian Committee of Publication, 1919), 166.

2. Johnson, 166.

3. Josh Hawley, Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs (Washington, DD: Regnery Publishing, 2023), 27-28.

4. See Joshua Mitchell, American Awakening: Identity Politics and Other Afflictions of Our Time (New York, NY: Encounter Books, 2022).

5. Johnson, 170.

6. Ibid., 174.

7. Ibid., 175.

8. Ibid., 175.

9. Hawley, 13.

10. Ibid., 57.