[Vision2020] Christ Church Cult Castration Complex

Fri Apr 20 18:49:25 PDT 2012

I'm so grateful for Deco's alerting all of us to this.  I usually follow Wilson's blog, but I hadn't checked it yet today.

I've just finished a blistering commentary on his list, and you can read it at the blog address posted below.  

Warning:  I was righteously angry when I wrote it, and I take back not a word.  Indeed, I'll likely be moved to comment further and just as harshly in days to come . . . 

Keely
www.keely-prevailingwinds.com

Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2012 16:19:47 -0700
From: art.deco.studios at gmail.com
To: vision2020 at moscow.com
Subject: [Vision2020] Christ Church Cult Castration Complex

				Christ and Pop Culture

 Where The Christian Faith Meets The Common Knowledge of Our Age

 Sacred Space: Doug Wilson, the Church Is a Bride, Bro
By Brad Williams – April 20, 2012

 "If that sort of intimacy makes a man nervous, then he might have forgotten that he is part of the bride of Christ." 

Every Friday in Sacred Space, Brad Williams explores the place of popular culture in the local church.

This is probably an example of Girlie Worship.
Some sections of the evangelical church are so fueled by testosterone
 right now that I fear the bride of Christ might become a bearded lady. 
Hardly a month goes by where high profile evangelical pastors extol the 
virtues of manly combat in MMA or fail to miss an opportunity to make 
fun of girly music leaders. This week is no exception. Doug Wilson 
decided to put out a post titled “Your Worship Service Might Be Effeminate If..“,
 and then he went on to list a plethora of things that are neither 
feminine nor unmanly. I find this list ridiculous, and I find the 
attitude behind it laughable. How is it that a church culture with 
all-male leadership, bearded awesomeness, and a general masculine flair 
still has room to lament a sissified church culture? How much manliness 
does a church need?
To put my cards right out there on the table, I’m going to confess 
that I am a thorough-going complementarian. I believe that the 
elders/pastors of the local church should be filled only by qualified 
men. (I put that out there so that I will have the opportunity to offend
 everyone in this article.) However, I find the type of bravado put out 
there concerning the new “manliness” by folks like Mark Driscoll and now
 Doug Wilson to be a terrible hindrance to my cause, which I believe is 
very important.
First, let me point out that the church’s worship cannot be 
effeminate. Nor should it be masculine. Nor should it be feminine. The 
worship service should be designed to allow men and women to worship the
 Almighty as, well, men and women. What the gathering of the church does
 is allow men and women to express their adoration of God for His 
offering of His Son Jesus as a propitiation for our sins. So the pastor,
 the music leaders, the responsive reading guy, the prayers—these things
 are all done to remind us of the glorious truths of the Bible, and 
people are free to respond to that however they might best express 
themselves. That could include dancing half-naked in front of the ark of
 God, or it could include a man getting his ugly cry on because of the 
glory of God has broken his heart. Or, he could stand at parade rest and
 sing lustily and make battle noises, I guess. Either way, you ought to 
leave that dude alone, brother.
So technically, the worship of the church cannot be effeminate. Only 
individual men can be effeminate. But what that exactly means is a bit 
of a mystery to me. To avoid that, does it mean he has to grow a beard? 
Quit wearing preppy cardigans? No gold bracelets? Wilson tries to help 
us spot effeminate worship, but things like this only leave me more 
confused:
Your music minister is more concerned that the choir 
trills their r’s correctly than that they fill the sanctuary with loud 
sounds of battle
The worship music rides particular chord changes hard, with special mention being given to the shift from E Minor to C Major
I had no idea that music was supposed to sound like the sounds of 
battle! I’m quite sure that Douglas Wilson has never seen a real battle,
 and if he has, he is mad for thinking the screams of the dead and dying
 and bomb blasts are what we are trying to accomplish in the ministry of
 music. And key shifts are girly now? This is a shock to me as well. My 
favorite, however, is this one: This list is printed out and handed around at your church, and at least three people are mortally offended. Yeah, so if we are offended by the list, then we may be effeminate.

This would be effeminate (no beard, short hair), but his eyes are piercing my soul, so this is an example of Manly Worship.
Here’s what is so bad about the list, beside it being nearly non-nonsensical:
First, worship cannot be effeminate, only men can.
Second, how shall we define effeminate worship? As awesome as kilts 
and claymores are, they reveal more about Wilson’s fantasy life than 
they do the proper conduct of a real man in worship.
Third, the list is probably offensive to women. I don’t want to speak
 for them, but the list seems to indicate that feminine worship is 
undesirable. It may be undesirable in a man, if we can figure out what 
that looks like at church, but surely it is to be commended in women! 
Wilson’s manly dreams for the church reach so high that he naturally 
assumes that women are happy worshiping in masculine worship.
In the end, I’ll throw Wilson a bone. I don’t like “Jesus is my 
Girlfriend” type songs either. It isn’t because they are too mushy; it’s
 because they are generally lousy songs and theologically thread-bare. 
I’m not nervous about intimacy with God, and I actually enjoy singing 
pretty songs to God that demonstrate my desire to know Him more 
intimately. And if that sort of intimacy makes a man nervous, then he 
might have forgotten that he is part of the bride of Christ. 
That’s the same sort of nasty aloofness that keeps men from kissing 
their sons and telling them that they love them. It’s the same lie that 
makes men think it is unmanly to weep or confess weakness.
If that’s the kind of culture Wilson wants to cultivate, count me out.

Share

        About the Author

            Brad Williams has had a life of adventure that is given only
 to those who have no idea what they are doing. Out of high school, he 
joined the Army National Guard and served for six years, during that 
time he managed to get an English Lit. degree from the University of 
Alabama, become a Christian, and log a ridiculous amount of hours on 
Final Fantasy. After college, he moved to North Carolina where he got a 
Masters of Divinity w/ Biblical Languages and met and married a girl too
 good for him. He now lives in Alabama where he pastors a church and 
lives with his long-suffering wife, two awesome children, two dogs, and a
 cat named Bugs. He recently bought a small farm where he plans to raise
 goats and grow watermelons. 

Above all, Brad hopes to live and to love in such a manner that he will 
not be ashamed at the appearance of Jesus Christ on the Final Day.      

	13 Comments

						Frank Turk

				Posted April 20, 2012 at 8:27 AM			
			Oh Brad — when you said this, you should have re-written the whole essay:
“First, worship cannot be effeminate, only men can.”
Indeed.  Who exactly is superintending worship, or administrating it, or pastoring it?
This, I am afraid, is Doug’s point and ought to be someplace in yours.

						Brad Williams

				Posted April 20, 2012 at 8:51 AM			
			If that was Doug’s point, he could 
have made it himself. Instead, he made a silly list that has little or 
nothing to do with being effeminate. What he has in mind for effeminate 
seems to be largely based on his personal construction of what a man 
should dress like, what songs a man should like, what he does with his 
hands in worship, and whether or not the singing sounds like people are 
being slain whilst bombs go off in the background. It’s ridiculous. But 
instead of saying it like that, I decided just to make fun of him.
As you know, I live in a corner of the world where manliness is 
generally thought to be defined by one’s delight in NASCAR, college 
football, and a neatly trimmed mullet. The NASCAR is a little nuanced 
though. If you like Jeff Gordon instead of “Dale”, you are probably a 
sissy. Also, you would lose five man points from being born north of the
 Mason-Dixon.

						Frank Turk

				Posted April 20, 2012 at 8:58 AM			
			Suit yourself.  I think you missed the point of Doug’s list pretty broadly.

						JMC

				Posted April 20, 2012 at 9:13 AM			
			First of all, I do want to say that 
Pastor Wilson has meant a lot to me in the past. Once upon a time I was 
just an evangelical kid trying to make sense of being an evangelical kid
 in a culture where the 2 options seemed to be “conform to the world” or
 “be a goofy fundamentalist reactionary.” Pastor Wilson has had some 
very helpful things to say as far as helping many American Christians 
find a reasoned, uncompromising voice, and I for one have  benefited 
from many of those things. So props to him for that.
That being said, I agree that his rhetoric here seems silly. In his 
mind, I think he is trying to encourage Christians to embrace a “happy 
warrior” mentality. I’m pretty sure he’s not reveling in the glories of 
actual armed conflict per se, but trying, by way of biblical analogy, to
 encourage Christians to embrace “the joy of the Lord” as their strength
 in the battles against principalities and powers.
I think you are spot on that the rhetoric falls short in making light
 of “effeminate” traits. In recent years I have gained a deeper respect 
for and understanding of the power of the Incarnation. I find it 
gloriously ironic (and illuminating) that the Lord God of Angelic Armies
 of the OT accomplished His greatest victory in the form of an infant in
 a podunk town in the middle of nowhere. Just ponder what that means. 
Furthermore, I revel in the “Song of Mary”, the Magnificat, which should
 bring any man to tears when contemplated.
It seems to me that the power of Christians resides not in matching 
the rhetoric of the world, but in embracing the power of the still small
 voice, the Word become helpless flesh. That, in my mind, is the 
powerful biblical analogy that our culture, and all cultures, needs.
I could write so much more on this. Thanks for starting this conversation.

						Erin Straza

				Posted April 20, 2012 at 9:24 AM			
			I honestly thought Wilson’s list was a
 joke. Kilts? Trilling Rs? Pink shirts? I have never seen this in any 
church service ever. Maybe he was trying to use humor to break down 
barriers. It was not helpful because I was so thrown off by the oddities
 of it. Perhaps Wilson could develop a description biblical worship 
(which would be, by nature, non-effeminate), with Scripture references 
and without the humor.

						Brad Williams

				Posted April 20, 2012 at 9:41 AM			
			I think it was supposed to be funny, 
and I usually like funny. But this approach of making fun of men in a 
way that ostracizes men whose besetting sin is being effeminate, I don’t
 think you should make light of it. And by effeminate, I don’t mean 
metro-sexual dresser. I mean a man who struggles with same-sex 
attraction, which is really what 1 Cor. 6:9-10 is really talking about 
when the King James translates it ‘effeminate’. Effeminate, in the 
Bible, has nothing to do with trilling r’s or dress or pink shirts.

						Rose Bexar

				Posted April 20, 2012 at 11:05 AM			
			Liking hymns on the bagpipe (as I do,
 and I’m very definitely female) doesn’t make one’s worship masculine; 
it probably just makes one a Scot.  Something also tells me that 
Wilson’s never been in a choir, because otherwise he wouldn’t be picking
 on choristers who encunciate clearly.  To put an analogy from 1 
Cor. 14 into a slightly different context, what good’s a bugle if you 
can’t tell whether it’s playing Reveille or Taps?
Part of the problem with that list, aside from the failure of the 
humor (cf. John Scalzi on the failure mode of ‘clever’), is that it 
conflates two different problems that can be but are not always 
co-morbid:  churches going in for the hipster brand of artsy dreck and 
churches lacking the courage to stand against sin.  Neither is an 
inherently gendered failure.  In fact, I might be more likely to suspect
 the leadership of a self-conciously “masculine” church of failing to 
enforce truly Scriptural church discipline than I would the leadership 
of a church that’s all cotton candy.

And a huge WORD on your last point, Brad.  The “No chick flick moments” 
attitude is pernicious enough when dealing with one’s fellow humans; I 
can’t imagine what it does to one’s walk with God.

						Amy

				Posted April 20, 2012 at 11:12 AM			
			What guys like Driscoll and Wilson 
don’t quite understand is that the guy who can go into the worship 
service in his pink shirt and sing perfect key changes to the glory of 
God and feel perfectly comfortable doing it with no thought whatsoever 
to what the hairer fellows in the place think of him…well, this guy is 
the one who’s got it going on.  I get that all this masculinity 
obsession comes from these guys growing up in churches where the men 
have no backbone.  But just like the hokey fundamentalist that they love
 to ridicule, they combat it by having a knee jerk reaction to the other
 extreme.  Some day the blogoshpere will be full of articles

 written by the children of the young reformed lamenting all the ways 
we’ve screwed up the church.  Thank God for grace.  We need to show it 
to others because we’ll definitely need it shown to us.

						Dan Martin

				Posted April 20, 2012 at 11:32 AM			
			Love the post! As a guy who has 
fathered three children and is still crazy for his wife, but has been 
known to wear a pink shirt with a purple tie to church, AMEN!

						Daniel

				Posted April 20, 2012 at 12:55 PM			
			Frankly, the fear of being accused of
 being “effeminate” (in society’s terms, not biblical ones) is one of 
the greatest fears in “manly” Christianity in the “manly” Evangelical 
Church.  It is one more example of the Church confusing conservative 
culture (Republican politics, NASCAR, Football, 
God-bless-the-US-and-damn-the-defeatist-Jeremiahs, etc.) with Biblical 
values.  And frankly, it smells not just a little of despising 
homosexuals.  (By that I do not mean despising sin, which is biblical; I
 mean despising the sinner.  That distinction is often lost in the 
heated “manly” rhetoric.)
Biblical manhood had little parallel with either Metrosexual manhood 
or NASCAResque manhood.  And it more often than not is at loggerheads 
with both the throne and the religious establishment, rather than acting
 as an enabler of either one.
Wearing kilts?  Pink shirts?  Chord transitions, for heavens sake?!  
What a bunch of claptrap.  Frankly, this is incredibly superficial.
Talking about hell, the devil and sin is “manly”?  It may be 
biblical, it may be vital–but somehow equating not having the correct 
percentages of sermons devoted to Satan as being “effeminate” sounds 
just plain silly.
And “Jesus is my girlfriend songs”?  Would someone please give me an 
example?  I’ve heard this accusation before, but it never made sense to 
me.  The only example that comes to my mind, that I have only heard on 
“Christian” radio and not in worship, was “Some Kind of Wonderful” 
adapted to be a Jesus song (by the original artist, but still quite 
cringeworthy.)

						Seth T. Hahne

				Posted April 20, 2012 at 1:57 PM			
			“Jesus is my girlfriend” songs are 
any worship song that could easily be sung in dulcet tones to your 
girlfriend while you slip off her bra. Example:
In the secret, in the quiet place

In the stillness you are there

In the secret, in the quiet hour

I wait only for you

Cause I want to know you more
I want to know you

I want to hear your voice

I want to know you more
I want to touch you

I want to see your face

I want to know you more

Sexy!

						Daniel

				Posted April 20, 2012 at 3:58 PM			
			@Seth–
Hmmm…pretty tame compared to Song of Solomon…though some would argue 
that we’re in danger of role-reversal (being the bride vs. the 
bridegroom).  Of course, in S of S, sometimes the roles seem a bit 
confused, too (paragraph headings do wonders.)
The “sexiness” of that song wouldn’t really bother me too much…it’s a
 bit “lite”, but it really wouln’t bug me if I heard it in a worship 
service.  Not every worship tune needs to be a theological treatise, any
 more than every meal has to be (or should be) packed with protein.
Eros is also divine.

						Seth T. Hahne

				Posted April 20, 2012 at 4:04 PM			
			I wasn’t critiquing, just letting you
 know what people mean by “Jesus is my girlfriend” songs. The general 
critique runs that if a song could be sung to a girl you know, then 
maybe it’s not theologically turgid enough to be a valuable use of 
congregational praise time.
Also, even under the most allegorical readings of SoS, the book is 
not viewed as an example of corporate worship, so doesn’t really apply 
here. I mean, unless you’re introducing a new interpretation, which is 
fair
-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com

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