Nashville, Tenn. – The strobe lights pulse and the air vibrates to a killer rock beat. Giant screens show mayhem and gross-out pranks: a car wreck, a sucker punch, a flabby (and naked) rear end, sealed with duct tape.
Brad Stine runs onstage in ripped bluejeans, his shirt untucked, his long hair shaggy. He’s a stand-up comic by trade, but he’s here today as an evangelist, on a mission to build up a new Christian man – one profanity at a time.
“It’s the wuss-ification of America that’s getting us!” screeches Stine, 46.
A moment later he adds a fervent: “Thank you, Lord, for our testosterone!”
It’s an apt anthem for a contrarian movement gaining momentum on the fringes of Christianity. In daybreak fraternity meetings and weekend paintball wars, in wilderness retreats and X-rated chats about lust, thousands of Christian men are reaching for more forceful, more rugged expressions of their faith.
Stine’s day-long revival meeting, which he calls “GodMen,” is cruder than most. But it’s built around the same theory as the other experimental forums: Traditional church worship is emasculating.
Hold hands with strangers? Sing love songs to Jesus? No wonder pews across America hold far more women than men, Stine says. Factor in the pressure to be a “Christian nice guy” – no cussing, no confrontation, in tune with the wife’s emotions – and it’s amazing men keep the faith at all.
Says Christian radio host Paul Coughlin, author of “No More Christian Nice Guy”: “The idea of Jesus as meek and mild is as fictitious as anything in Dan Brown’s ‘Da Vinci Code.”‘
The standard portraits of Jesus with pale face, beatific smile, lapful of lambs?
“He’s been domesticated,” says Roland Martinson, a professor of ministry at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minn. “He’s portrayed now as gentle, loving, kind, rather than as a full-bodied person who kicked over tables in the temple, spent 40 days in the wilderness wrestling with his identity and with God, hung out with the guys in the street. The rough-hewn edges and courage … got lopped off.”
The virility crusade is, in part, a response to a stark gender gap. More than 60 percent of the adults at a typical worship service are women. That translates into 13 million more women than men in the pews on any given Sunday, according to David Murrow, author of “Why Men Hate Going to Church.” Women are also significantly more likely than men to attend Sunday school, read the Bible and pray regularly, according to the Barna Group, a Christian polling firm.
Murrow blames men’s lackluster attitude on the feminization of mainline churches: “Lace curtains. Quilted banners on the wall. Pink carpet. Fresh flowers at the podium.”
Millions of men, of course, find such worship peaceful or inspirational, not stifling. And there remain some staunch defenders of the Christian nice guy.
“It’s a wonderful thing to see a man welling up in tears,” says Greg Vaughn, who teaches men nationwide how to write love letters to their wives. “It takes a lot more courage to do that than to talk about football.”
The most famous men’s ministry, Promise Keepers, packed stadiums throughout the 1990s with men who wept and hugged one another as they pledged to be dutiful and pure. Men at Promise Keepers rallies today make the same vows, but in a nod to the new ethos of manliness, the conferences now carry titles such as “Storm the Gates” and “Uprising.” This year, the theme is “Unleashed,” as in unleashing the warrior within.
Coughlin and others in the manly Christian movement are unconvinced. Promise Keepers still emphasizes obedience and purity. Participants still shed tears. Plus, children are invited, and women work the arenas as support staff, so the conversation never gets too raw.
In several years of performing stand-up at Promise Keepers events, Stine never cursed; the closest he came to vulgarity was liberal use of the word “stinking.”
“I get tired of trying to maintain that Christian persona,” he says. “I hate that sense of decorum. I hate thinking, ‘Boy, I hope I don’t say the wrong thing.”‘
Stine argues that the genteel facade of a Christian nice guy inhibits introspection and substitutes cliches for spiritual growth.
GodMen is his attempt to encourage men to get real, such as by admitting to adultery. That honesty, he contends, molds better, more godly men than a typical Sunday service.
“We want to force you out of the safe places that have passed for spirituality,” Stine says.
