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The Toxic War on Masculinity: How Christianity Reconciles the Sexes
Nancy R. Pearcey
Baker Books (2023). 344 pp.
In The Toxic War on Masculinity: How Christianity Reconciles the Sexes, best-selling author and apologist Nancy Pearcey traces the American cultural crisis of masculinity to the secularization of Western society since the Industrial Revolution––and offers what she sees as the biblical solution to the problem. Pearcey’s treatment of masculinity weaves together many theological, sociological, exegetical, and historical threads. And while the scope and ambition of the project is impressive, the results are mixed.
Overview and Appreciation
There are several things to appreciate about The Toxic War on Masculinity, including an often nuanced portrait of masculinity centered on the calling of fatherhood. I confess that the book’s title (and its lead endorsement) colored my assumptions going in. Like many Christian books and sermon series on masculinity, I feared Toxic War might amount to a baptizing of cultural stereotypes about men and a cherry-picking of tough-guy or outdoorsman-friendly biblical references. I have witnessed first-hand the ways Christian teaching on men and masculinity perpetuates vice rather than virtue. But Pearcey in many sections won me over. She is often unafraid to challenge macho attitudes (e.g., p. 47), and the book’s thesis draws a contrast between “biblical” and “secular” scripts of masculinity. Moreover, the staunchest defenders of strict gender roles may be surprised by Toxic War, which highlights again and again the importance of fathers not only providing and protecting but nurturing, caretaking, and sharing the burden of domestic responsibilities.
The core of Pearcey’s book is a historical sketch of changes in the social role of and expectations for men since the colonial era in America. On a basic level, Pearcey’s argument is that the industrial revolution combined with an ongoing process of secularization have created unique challenges and crises for male identity. While not particularly novel, this argument is strong and sound. Inasmuch as she correctly identifies and diagnoses many of the problems facing men in America, this is a valuable read and a far more robust and nuanced discussion of masculine identity than many of those on offer in the marketplace of Christian masculinity. There are, I am sure, aspects of her historical work that professional historians will critique (more on this below), but it is worth noting that the broad sweep of her narrative is cogent and coherently presented.
Pearcey also concludes each chapter with reflections on masculinity, often with ample reference to biblical themes or texts. These were some of the sections I appreciated most in the book, such as her discussion of how the New Testament redefines the meaning of strength (pp. 48–49) and her insistence that Christian men should not view the more “gentle” virtues like the fruits of the Spirit or the beatitudes as gendered (p. 30). While she does not always signal it explicitly, Pearcey’s vision of masculinity leans far more into the cultivation of Christian virtue in general, as opposed to the too-common Christian script oriented more towards being a strong leader. In this sense, Pearcey’s book may serve as a helpful corrective to hierarchy-obsessed and strength-focused portraits of Christian masculinity. She also avoids many of the pitfalls of certain expressions of complementarian ideology. For instance, she speaks in defense of traditional marital roles but sees the subjugation of women to men in the curses of Gen 3 to be a result of the Fall rather than a fact of the created order (pp. 29–30). Still, she understands complementarianism to be the traditional and biblical view over and against egalitarianism and “liberal” views.
When the “Biblical” Script Turns Toxic
Perhaps the greatest weakness of the central part of the book is Pearcey’s over-equating the rise of toxic masculinity––both in terms of the script men follow and cultural attitudes towards men––with the displacement of a “biblical” manhood with a “secular” script. It is not that she’s wrong to point out that American culture has been in a long process of de-Christianization since the colonial era. Rather, this alone is an incomplete explanation of the crisis of toxic masculinity in the church. There are times when reading Toxic War where it feels like everything bad that happens in the world with reference to masculinity can, for Pearcey, be boiled down to a simple “secular = bad” formula. But reducing the problem of toxic masculinity to simple “biblical” and “secular” scripts obscures the complexity of the crisis.
Pearcey’s biblical-secular contrast is heavily underwritten by the sociological work of Brad Wilcox, which she uses to suggest that conservative Christian men are, relative to other social groups of men, the least violent and most engaged in the lives of their families and kids (pp. 14–15, 36–37). While I am not in a position to evaluate the sociological merits of Wilcox’s work, the basic insight strikes me as sound. And I do think (in certain settings) it’s worth noting that most Christian men do not live up to the toxic stereotype that may prevail in some quarters. The idea that most Christian men are sleeping around, closet porn addicts, or abusing and beating their children is ridiculous and not supported by the evidence. However, what is most damaging is not necessarily the frequency of these problems in churches––though this is certainly also an issue––but the church's failure to address them in its own ranks. Even worse, churches and denominations have often engaged in active cover-up and minimization of unspeakable wickedness in the name of male authority or institutional “integrity.” The consistency with which Pearcey returns to her claim based on Wilcox’s data can feel like a special pleading that not all Christian men are toxic. This is of course true so far as it goes. But Pearcey slants her narrative through use of this data, implying that the real problem is with the liberals, secularists, and the “nominals,” and that conservatives are somehow off the hook. But, of course, it remains the case that some men do cause serious harm even while articulating self-consciously “biblical” visions of masculinity. This is, indeed, why the word biblical––a term Pearcey uses constantly––can at times be so unhelpful. Where the biblical script can turn toxic is when Christian communities give cover to men who appear to be or present themselves as godly while causing great harm, or when passages about male headship are made into an ideology of hierarchy and domination.
Pearcey’s framing leaves some important questions––I might argue, the most important questions––unanswered. In her concluding section entitled, “When Christian Men Absorb the Secular Script,” she notes multiple examples of men who are very involved in church, but nonetheless commit egregious sins against their families and communities. This is clearly an issue Pearcey cares deeply about, and she devotes significant sections of the book to the problem of abuse. To her credit, she gives many challenges to Christians and church leaders to take more seriously both the possibility and reality of abuse in their communities. However, it is exactly here where her thesis about secularization shows its cracks. These abusers are self-evidently not the “nominal” Protestants she says are the real problem again and again. She brushes past what is perhaps the most pernicious and alarming aspect of the sexual abuse crisis perpetuated by men in the church. These apparently God-fearing men do not merely “hang around the fringes” of Christian communities becoming confused about what’s really “biblical.” Instead, scandal after scandal and exposé after exposé suggest that too many churchgoing men and church leaders themselves participate in and perpetuate perversions of Christian ideology that are toxically patriarchal. How to account for the existence of these types of abusers––those featured in Amazon’s Shiny Happy People or documented in SBC investigations––Pearcey has little to say. How do we explain the apparently robust religious commitment of the most dangerous abusers in Christian communities, men like Ravi Zacharias who are able to leverage their supposed proximity to God for unspeakable evil? For these men and for a church seeking to address the abuse crisis and renew our communities, the “secular” script is not the problem.
(Colonial) America, the Beautiful
A second issue with Toxic War is Pearcey’s tendency to romanticize the past. In particular, her portrait of masculinity in colonial America is almost idyllic. In this chapter, she frames the argument thus: “How did America go from a colonial society that celebrated hardy pioneer men on the frontier to one that openly derides masculinity as toxic?” (p. 72) While she insists that she is not romanticizing the colonial era (p. 75), one is often left with the impression that all would be well with manhood in America if we could somehow reverse the clock and go back to the “good old days” when well-educated gentleman farmers cultivated their minds, families, land, all the while philosophising about republicanism and Lockean ethics. Here I think Pearcey falls too much into the common pattern among conservatives (as recently critiqued by Richard Reeves¹) in seeing the solution to the masculinity crisis to be a turning back the clock to an era to which we cannot, in fact, ever go back. Indeed, there may be things for men of our day to learn from the male and moral values of colonial America, but I also imagine there are things to critique, even from a “biblical” perspective. Pearcey grants (in a very brief section) the injustice associated with slavery in this era and how this affected the available scripts for masculinity, but this certainly warranted more attention. While I cannot speak as an expert on American history, colonial or otherwise, I wondered what other historians of men and masculinity may think about Pearcey’s portrayal of colonial America. In particular, I was curious what the masculine values in cities and among lower class workers might have been, and whether aristocratic men spent long amounts of time away from children.
It would be disingenuous to say that there was not much that I appreciated, learned, and found enlightening about Pearcey’s historical narrative. At its best, Toxic War elucidates historical developments and attitude shifts regarding religiosity among both men and women in America. Moreover, Pearcey shows how surprisingly pro-feminist some biblical emphases are, and how feminist movements themselves have often been indebted to the biblical tradition.
Incomplete Solutions
Pearcey’s proposed solutions to the masculinity crisis involve men renewing a sense of calling to fatherhood and family headship, as well as a reintegration of working and family life. I appreciated the many ways Pearcey encourages men to think beyond mere provision and protection for their role in the family. This is perhaps especially crucial as we move into a twenty-first century reality where fewer and fewer families can support themselves with a sole “breadwinner” husband and a “caretaker” wife. However, Pearcey’s proposed solutions are not without their shortcomings.
First, the nuclear family is very much central to her vision in a way that, I would argue, is somewhat alien to the New Testament. Pearcey has very little to say about singleness or how men can understand their calling as Christians independent of marriage and the fathering of children. Since both Jesus and the Apostle Paul were single, celibate men, this would seem incomplete as a “biblical” vision for masculinity. Second, many of Pearcey’s solutions, again, lean into nostalgia for a bygone era, a return to the good ol’ days when men worked from home. Her chapter on “Bringing Fathers Back” leans heavily into work-from-home solutions to the crisis, and inasmuch as these provide opportunities for some men to be more present and involved in their children’s lives, well and good. However, Pearcey’s anecdotes skew towards well-educated, academic, and flexible-hours vocations, not accounting for the millions and millions of dads (and moms) who work in professions where such an integration of work and home life is simply not possible. Throughout the book, Pearcey acknowledges that this presents a challenge for men and for families, but her solutions in this regard skew towards the upper class and fall short of addressing the breadth of the problem or impracticality of different lifestyles for some. To be clear, I’m as much in favor of fathers spending more time with their kids as anyone, but we should note that the culture is, happily, already trending in this direction.² I don’t think this is a result of a return to Christian values as Pearcey understands them. It is just an outworking of many “secular” men’s desire to be more present in family life.
Not So Critical Engagement
Given that this book is obviously speaking into an ongoing conversation in a post-#metoo, post-#churchtoo world, it’s striking how little Pearcey engages with would-be detractors of her thesis. I grant that not every book needs to grapple with opposing narratives and voices in a robust way, but Pearcey’s book clearly presents itself as an academically researched volume written for a popular audience. Despite this, her direct engagement with the prominent ongoing conversation in the church about masculinity is decidedly muted. This is especially noticeable considering she mentions John Wayne as a trope of unhealthy masculinity in her acknowledgements (p. 271), an unsubtle reference to Kristin Kobes Du Mez’s Jesus and John Wayne (Liveright, 2020). Indeed, it’s hard not to read Pearcey’s historical narrative as a response to Jesus and John Wayne. Despite this, Pearcey never once cites Du Mez’s book or engages directly with her thesis. As a reader who is sympathetic to many aspects of Pearcey’s treatment, but who also finds Du Mez’s work compelling––I would have appreciated a more robust and critical dialogue about what has gone wrong with masculinity, not merely in the culture, but in conservative Christian subculture. The closest the book comes to this critical engagement is Pearcey’s chapter on muscular Christianity. However, within a book full of historical value judgments, Pearcey fails to grapple in any serious way with the ongoing reality and legacy of this muscular Christianity. She simply writes, “Around the middle of the century, the evangelical movement differentiated itself from fundamentalism. Most evangelical churches no longer teach Muscular Christianity. Yet they are still puzzled over how to minister effectively to men.” (p. 188) This amounts to a dismissal of Du Mez’s thesis without any semblance of a counterargument.
This brings me to a final critique, namely that of sometimes sloppy argumentation and data slanting. I noted in the introduction to this review that a strength of Pearcey’s book is its synthesis of a wide range of sources, its disciplinary integration and breadth. But this also shows up as a weakness in her tendency to sometimes make unfounded sweeping claims. At times, it is clear Pearcey is speaking as a non-expert. I’ll give one example related to my own area of expertise, New Testament studies. In her chapter entitled “‘Taming’ Men,” Pearcey offers a brief word study of the Greek term πραϋς (praus) as part of her discussion of Jesus’ self-description as “meek and lowly in heart” (Matt 11:29, KJV). From a certain perspective, Pearcey recognizes, this is a decidedly un-masculine portrayal of Jesus. To counter this concern, she writes, “[I]n the first century [A.D.], the meaning of the word ‘meek’ (Greek: praus) was quite different from what it is today” (p. 156). Instead of the traditional meaning of meek, Pearcey argues (citing a preaching blog and sermon website) that the term means “power under control.” This is, quite simply, incorrect. The term straightforwardly––and certainly in context in Matt 11:29––means exactly what you think it means: gentle, soft, mild, meek. But the issue here is not only that it is wrong to expand the meaning of the term πραϋς to “power under control” in the texts she references; it is also that the citations are chronologically nowhere near the first-century usage she is claiming to represent. All the classical examples she (indirectly) cites for this meaning are from the fourth and fifth centuries B.C. Both her gloss of the term and the methodology used to arrive there would be immediately dismissed by any serious standard for ancient lexicography. Instead of offering an apologetic for Jesus’ meek and mild self-presentation, perhaps we can let stand that Jesus does not here portray himself in strong, manly terms. What if πραϋς actually does mean something offensive to our sensibilities of masculinity? What if Jesus really does mean that he is gentle as opposed to strong?
Conclusion and a Call to Pastors
Though I have spent a fair bit of time above critiquing what I see to be problems and shortcomings in The Toxic War on Masculinity, I will say again that there was much in this book that I found helpful, fascinating, even wise. Moreover, as a work of cultural apologetics, I understand Pearcey’s desire to reclaim some of the moral high ground from an increasingly post-Christian culture as it relates to masculinity. However, if the church wants to do this without an air of hypocrisy, we must turn our strongest critical energies inward to the log in our own eye, the evil in our own communities. We must tend to the very real and very serious crises of abuse and toxicity among male evangelical leaders, a crisis that cannot be solved and accounted for by simply pointing the finger out at the secular world. Sometimes––oftentimes, even––conservative, churchgoing men adopt toxic scripts and call them biblical. In many cases these are not “nominal” Christians. In fact, many pastors engage in explicit and dehumanizing ways of talking about women, and an alarming number of pastors and leaders have been outed as heinous abusers in recent years. Until other pastors openly and routinely condemn them for this error and show that their ways of teaching are a perversion of the gospel of grace contrary to the Kingdom of God, no amount of shouting down the secular culture's worldliness will eradicate the more nefarious and deceptive toxic masculinity in our midst.
Notes:
1. Richard Reeves, Of Boys and Men (Brookings, 2022). See especially his chapter entitled, “Seeing Red: The Political Right Wants to Turn Back the Clock.”
2. See the conclusion to Michael Kimmel’s Manhood in America: A Cultural History (Oxford, 4th ed., 2017).
Zachary Wagner serves as the Editorial Director of the Center for Pastor Theologians. He is a DPhil candidate in New Testament at the University of Oxford and the author of Non-Toxic Masculinity: Recovering Healthy Male Sexuality (IVP, 2023). He is a member of the St. Basil Fellowship of the Center for Pastor Theologians.
