Vicious and Virtuous Men: Toward Hearing the Signal Amid the Noise
Photo by Simeon Lesley on Unsplash
This a reflection on two recent cultural phenomena, the common story they have to tell, and what it might mean for the church in America as it seeks to form holy and virtuous men. To pose my topic in the form of a question: if bad men are the problem, is investing in better men the solution?
In this piece, I want to explore the perhaps unexpected intersection of two pieces of media that have both become sensations in their respective spaces: the Barbie film by Greta Gerwig, and the song “Rich Men North of Richmond,” a breakout hit by Oliver Anthony. On the surface, these may seem like polar opposite cultural artifacts. Barbie, as some deem it, is the quintessential feminist movie: a subversive take on a toy thought by some to be harmless, and by others to be vapid if not downright harmful to women. On the other hand, Anthony’s smash hit single seems like a classic ballad of working-class men, the last people who might be seen wearing pink in a movie theater watching Margot Robbie battle the patriarchy.
Running through both of these, however, is a common thread: vicious (that is, vice-ridden) men, and the worlds they create with their misdirected power and influence.
Culture Wars as the Death of Thought & Virtue
The idea for this article came to me when I saw the social media reaction to Christianity Today’s handling of the two aforementioned pieces of pop culture. The long-established evangelical periodical received criticism in some corners of the internet when it published pieces simultaneously praising Barbie and critiquing Oliver Anthony. (Full disclosure: the Barbie piece in question was written by someone I have not met but whom I have frequently read, followed, and highly respect, the Northern Seminary theologian and fellow Methodist Beth Felker Jones.) Predictable accusations followed that this was evidence of Christianity Today becoming “woke,” an odd take on a periodical founded by Billy Graham.
Culture wars, like real wars, tend to make people narrow, foolish, and brutal. Barbie, the culture warriors said, was another “woke” Hollywood film. On the other side of the trench, culture warriors dismissed “Rich Men North of Richmond” as something unloving, backwards, and evincing problematic prejudices and dog-whistles.
Such dismissals are natural in an attention economy in which the easiest way to build an audience is to be the loudest person despising someone or something else. Who can blame the bloggers and podcasters? The algorithms reward such behavior. And while there are valid critiques of any piece of media, that will not be my focus here.
I have written previously in Firebrand to make a theological case for the statement, “Black Lives Matter.” This was a similar culture-war phenomenon in which the simple (and rewarded) takes were either uncritically positive or thoughtlessly negative. In that piece, I attempted to get beyond culture-war noise and take seriously a message in the protests that resonated with the gospel. Similarly, there is a great deal of noise about these two recent pop-culture phenomena, both for and against. For all the noise, however, they share an important and common message. To that signal we now turn.
The Signal: Rich Men in the Mattel Boardroom and North of Richmond
At bottom, both of these pieces of art are about men who wield power in controlling, vicious, and oppressive ways. I’ll describe them briefly, as some readers may be unfamiliar with one or both.
Barbie is something of a cross between Pinocchio and The Matrix. Margot Robbie’s title character journeys from the Barbie World to the real world (or, at least, Los Angeles) in search of the truth about herself. She discovers that the real world is a mirror opposite of the Barbie World: men run things, not women, and rather than being happy, safe, and comfortable, she feels threatened, lost, and isolated. One of the more telling scenes takes place soon after she and Ken (played by Ryan Gosling) arrive and Barbie immediately notices an “undertone” of physical threat.
Ken, on the other hand, who feels aggrieved and ignored in the Barbie World, discovers the patriarchy of the real world and brings it back to Barbie World to mete out vengeance over a world that had reduced him to a background character. In the meantime, Barbie comes to realize that, though she was created with good intentions, the rich men in suits who run Mattel quite literally want to put her back in the box. In an interesting parallel, the villains of Anthony’s ballad are not all that different from Barbie's antagonists.
Oliver Anthony rocketed to stardom recently in just a period of weeks. As of this writing, the YouTube video of “Rich Men North of Richmond” has accrued more than 83 million views. While a three-minute song cannot be as textured and rich as a two-hour film, a common thread connects this song with Barbie. Note these lyrics:
These rich men north of Richmond
Lord knows they all just wanna have total control
Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do
And they don't think you know, but I know that you do
'Cause your dollar ain't **** and it's taxed to no end
Cause of rich men north of Richmond
Like Gerwig’s Barbie, Oliver Anthony inhabits a world ordered by rich men who have control and seek to maintain it. This power is both economic and psychological, not unlike what Barbie discovers in Los Angeles. Thus, while ostensibly serving opposite ends of the political and ideological spectrum, these two popular media artifacts share a common problem at their root: men whose power far outstrips their character.
In the church, we saw this theme play out in the excellent (but tragically non-fictional) Rise and Fall of Mars Hill podcast, which followed the quick success and even more dramatically rapid decline of Mark Driscoll. By his own admission, Driscoll ran over many “bodies” on his climb to the top of the megachurch world, damaging thousands of women and men in the process.
Men, Church, and Popular Alternatives to Church: Where Men Are Formed and De-Formed
As the Mars Hill debacle illustrates, the church has its share of blame for deforming men. In recent years a slew of books has chronicled the evangelical world’s complicity in misogyny of various forms. The Southern Baptist Convention doubled down on its position regarding women in ministry and dismissed Saddleback Church, founded by Rick Warren, from its fellowship. Books like Jesus and John Wayne track the ways in which the evangelical church has propped up vicious men who in turn treat women horribly both in the church and in wider society. Additionally, much ink has been spilled about how to get men to come back to church.
But the church is not alone in de-forming men. Guys who are not in church have plenty of other options with which to fill their time. As I will argue, none of these are morally or spiritually neutral. While a long litany could be cited here, I will focus on three: sports, video games, and podcasts.
In a telling scene in Remember The Titans, Denzel Washington’s Coach Boone looks over the football field and proudly states, “This is my church.” Ecclesial leaders have debated the impact of youth sports on worship and congregational involvement for decades, but this dynamic goes beyond young people. For many men, either participating in or watching sports fills nearly all of their free time. To be sure, sports have many positive functions such as instilling discipline, teaching teamwork, and building character. But many popular sports can only be played for roughly half of one’s life or less. Men who lose their physical abilities as age catches up to them sometimes discover a gap of meaning when they can no longer pursue the activities they love. On the other hand, being a spectator is its own form of both entertainment and community, but this side of sports can be as shallow as it is all-consuming. It can be tempting to lose oneself in cheering or booing a team on which we do not play, rather than developing our own capacities, contributing to our community, or serving our neighbors.
Next, we turn to a different kind of game. Increasingly, video games take up much of men’s free time and energy, and the industry makes staggering amounts of money, with some estimates in the hundreds of billions of dollars annually. Increasingly realistic technology, through virtual reality and artificial intelligence, will only make gaming a more appealing escape in the years to come.
And while I am not currently a gamer, I have dabbled, especially in my college days, and I have many friends who are gamers. In moderation, it strikes me as a harmless hobby. In fact, many people develop serious friendships through their gaming. The downside of this can be isolation; I have known young men whose only relationships were with gamers on the other side of the country. Many games are designed to be immersive and ever-expansive, and thus militate against self-limitation. That is, games can be addictive by design. In some countries, for instance, young men have died after gaming binges lasting days. Video games may be harmless if used and not abused, but do they make men better?
Lastly, I believe we have a generation of men being fathered and catechized by podcasts. The degree to which you feel this is positive or negative probably depends on how you feel about popular pocasters, but there is no arguing with their influence. Men like Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson, and Jocko Willink are influencing an entire generation of young men being raised on YouTube. There are, of course, scores of critiques given of lightning rods like these. But while many take issue with the vision of masculinity that these and other influential media figures offer, few offer an alternative aside from long screeds about “toxic masculinity.”
The problem here is that nothing will never beat something. If the church and the wider culture are not offering alternative visions of what manhood means, then searching, earnest, and sometimes broken young men will find something to fill that vacuum. As Michael J. Fox’s Lewis Rothschild put it in The American President, people are thirsty, and if there is no water they will crawl to a mirage and drink the sand.
The Solution: From Vicious to Virtuous Men
The answer to the problem that both Barbie and Oliver Anthony name in their different ways is virtuous men. As opposed to the vicious and vacuous men of Barbie and “Rich Men North of Richmond,” virtuous men empower and serve rather than control others. They are aware that, as Lord Acton famously named, “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” (The only exception being, of course, our Lord.) Virtuous men seek accountability as a check on their pride, practice downward mobility instead of conspicuous consumption, desire covenant love rather than serial monogamy, and view other people as ends in themselves, rather than a mere means to accomplishing their personal desires. In other words, good men treat people as gifts made in God’s image, not as things to be manipulated and discarded. And if, by the way, it sounds like this is a description of a virtuous person, and not merely a description of a good man, that is no accident. Virtue is not gender-specific, though it may be expressed in gender-specific ways, given the different challenges that men and women face.
How will such men be made? If things like sports, gaming, and podcasts are to some extent deforming men, what resources might sanctify men into something more noble?
Resources for Making Men Better
There are many possible people, institutions, and resources that I could name, but I’ll bring up just three by way of example. In order, those are F3, Tolkien, and the church.
Depending on what part of the country you are in, you may or may not have heard of F3, a free fitness ministry begun in Charlotte, North Carolina. F3 stands for fitness, faith, and fellowship. It is a network of free, volunteer-led workout groups that often feature a spiritual or devotional component. Workouts vary, but often they are bootcamp-style and open to men of all fitness levels and ages. (The female version, FIA, is also quite popular.) F3 is an amazing example of a positive male community based on something more robust than sports fandom or beer, in which true relationships can be formed in a fitness community not based on gimmicks or influencers. For another endorsement of F3, check out the excellent book Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport.
Speaking of books, let's talk Tolkien. Of course, J.R.R. Tolkien is treasured by men and women alike. But for men, there are few better literary mentors one could have than Tolkien. The men in his world defy contemporary Western stereotypes. Think of Aragorn: he is brave and yet gentle, a warrior as well as a healer, yet he does not seek power; he is aware of its danger. Or look to the real heroes, the Hobbits. They are diminutive and peaceful, loving food, drink, and song. The Hobbits are stouter than they appear, and male Hobbits (like Frodo and Sam) have deep, affectionate friendships; they lead simple but meaningful lives, desiring a good crop rather than riches or conquest. If human men had Hobbits for mentors, the world would be a more peaceful place.
Lastly, and perhaps most surprisingly, I mention the church. This is more aspirational than the others, reflecting what could be more than what is, in many instances. But the church should be a community that provides positive formation for men, not just in catechesis and matters spiritual, but for their whole lives. In the church, men should learn to value multiple generations, caring both for young disciples coming up and treasuring the wisdom of older disciples in their midst. Church should be a community in which men learn to serve in Christlike ways—on committees and mission trips, bringing people meals, and supporting other men who are struggling.
Growing up in my home church, I saw men build things and serve others, support people who were suffering, study and teach, care and receive care. I realize this is not everyone’s experience and that women in particular have suffered from abusive, unhealthy, and cruel men in the church. But again, the answer to brutal and vicious men is forming gentle and virtuous men. As Billy Abraham has so helpfully described, the church stewards a treasure trove of canonical healing resources entrusted to her through the Holy Spirit: Word, sacrament, saints, and icons, to name a few. In the church, men might discover a wide range of persons and practices to re-calibrate malformed hearts.
Conclusion: Known, Loved, and Sent
Much of the media that men in contemporary North American culture consume today is oriented not toward the good, true, and beautiful, but instead to what is expedient, convenient, and attractive. To paraphrase C.S. Lewis, our culture feeds men junk food and we wonder why they are unwell.
What men need is not all that different from what anyone needs. Men need to be known, loved, and sent. We need to be valued and, in turn, given a valuable mission to order our talents and energies. Instead, our culture gives men stereotypes, approbation, and judgment. It is no wonder so many of us are in a state of arrested development. But it need not be so.
The ultimate calling of men, just as it is for women, is to become saints. This is a glorious and wonderful gift in a world that asks so little of men. Through Jesus, we are capable of divinity, we can reach for what Wesley called “perfection in love.” There are other options for men than to become the cold corporate tycoons or vacuous Kens of Barbie’s world, or the rich men north of Richmond who deal in control and manipulation.
What our current situation makes clear is that men are indeed hungry for meaning. As we have already noted, nothing will never beat something. You may not like the current state of men in our culture, but if we are not attempting to offer them a positive, hopeful alternative, do not be surprised if the vain, self-indulgent, and hollow wins out. Let us try to hear the signal amid the noise, and let us offer men who are too often shown only the vicious or vacuous paths a virtuous, ennobling, and holy alternative.
Drew McIntyre is an Elder in the Western North Carolina Conference and the pastor of Grace United Methodist Church in Greensboro, NC. He serves on Firebrand’s Editorial Board.