The Dark Side of Manhood: Tanks, Guns & A Sprinting Senator
The Stronger Men's Conference is something to behold—and mourn over
Clips from the Stronger Men’s Conference have been limping onto social media and the three-day event was something to behold.
Produced by Pentecostal megachurch James River Church, the annual gathering bills itself as having a “passion for helping men to become all that God has created them to be.”
While the conference’s raison d'être is purposefully ambiguous—God can be molded into whatever they want—this year’s theme seems to have been “every obnoxiously masculine trope in one place, loud.”
Of special note was the appearance of Missouri senator Josh Hawley, hawking copies of his forthcoming redundantly-titled book, Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs (which I’m going to attempt to review once published).
While Hawley’s infamy will forever live in his sprint from the insurrectionists he originally fist-pumped on Jan 6, he’s doubling down on revisionist history and religious platitudes with marketing copy like this:
The American Founders believed that a republic depends on certain masculine virtues. Senator Josh Hawley thinks they were right. In a bold new book, he calls on American men to stand up and embrace their God-given responsibility as husbands, fathers, and citizens.
His appearance at the conference was, expectedly, high on obliqueness, overconfidence, and forest-scented body spray, and low on actual meaning.
James River Church is no stranger to saying a lot of nothing—redundantly. In 2018, pastor John Lindell claimed yoga asanas were “created with demonic intent to open you up to demonic power because Hinduism is demonic.” (Apparently COVID wasn’t demonic enough. The church bucked pandemic restrictions in 2020 to host in-person, unmasked Christmas celebrations.)
The JRC playbook features little that is new. A god is often vaguely employed when making big claims with little evidence. In this way, divine figures are malleable: you can shape an expected behavior or outcome in whatever manner you choose and manipulate it with scriptural language.
And if you scream it into a microphone while balls of fire shoot up around you on stage, it feels all the more plausible.
Perhaps most disturbing about this conference is the broad age range of attendees being exposed to tanks and machine guns as evidence of masculine providence, flanked by speakers championing their god’s almighty power.
As gun-rights-at-any-cost advocates like to say, there’s a mental health crisis in America.
And it spreads in churches like this.
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I’m not a religious person, but spotting the difference between indoctrination and revelation isn’t difficult. This propaganda pathway is well-trod.
Muscular Christianity’s ubiquity in American culture doesn’t comfort. It confuses and, given the chronic story of mass shootings here, frightens.
If you think gender identity is confusing, wait until you hear about people who believe their god tells them to militarize. And hate those who don’t agree.
No, I’m not religious, but I can appreciate the quiet beauty and steadfast contemplation behind the best of scripture.
A religion of metaphysical claims will always be divisive because faith is the only proof that can be conjured. And other people have other faiths, with other agendas.
A religion based on charitable actions—there’s something we can all rally around.
Which brings me to Wendell Berry’s 2002 essay, “Two Minds,” which I happened to read the same day the tank video came across my feed. The different approaches to Christianity couldn’t be more stark.
Berry’s deftness of words and clarity of thought provide a necessary corrective to the abominable assault of stimuli on display at the James River Church.
Most of the most important laws for the conduct of human life probably are religious in origin—laws such as these: Be merciful, be forgiving, love your neighbors, be hospitable to strangers, be kind to other creatures, take care of the helpless, love your enemies. We must, in short, love and care for one another and the other creatures. We are allowed to make no exceptions. Every person’s obligation toward the Creation is summed up in two words from Genesis 2:15: “Keep it.”
A religion that serves everyone.
Dare I say, a roadmap to manhood worthy of consideration.
