MEN AND WOMEN IN CHRISTIANITY

Two moments in the origins and development of Christianity have significantly shaped Christian notions of masculinity: the belief in the incarnation and the virtue of chastity. They have provided men with a rationale for securing male privilege within hierarchical institutions, but have also allowed them to experiment with alternatives to hegemonic masculinities.

As told in the New Testament, the disciples and early followers of Jesus of Nazareth, a Jewish-born man, believed him to be the Messiah, the son of God. After his crucifixion and resurrection, the Greek title ‘Christ’ ('khristos') for Messiah was added to his name. More than a Jewish teacher and prophet, Jesus Christ was seen as God himself: God incarnate. The biblical God became flesh, embodied in the human Jesus. The church fathers wrestled with the mystery of incarnation in increasingly abstract theological debates about the Trinity (Father–Son–Spirit) and Christology (the nature of Christ), but affirmed in the Nicene Creed (325 CE) that Jesus Christ was of the substance of God, at once fully divine and fully human.

For Christians, incarnational faith opens the possibility of experiencing the divine presence at work in the human body. For Christian men, the fact that God became incarnate in a male saviour figure (rather than a female body) had two lasting consequences: first, men could argue theologically for their privileged position within the emerging church, rationalising the exclusivity of the male clergy and papacy on the grounds of Christ’s maleness. Second, they disciplined their male bodies and passions through asceticism, monasticism and an ethics of chastity in the hope of imitating the sinless Christ, who was seen as the embodiment of an ideal masculinity.

As Christianity spread, the blending of the prophetic Hebrew traditions with the Greco-Roman ethos enabled men to live against the prevailing expectations of the Roman empire. Instead of free statesmen, soldiers or Roman householders, they became ‘slaves of Christ’ in the form of nomadic wanderers, martyrs, eunuchs (castration), hermits (desert dwellers), monks, urbanised Gnostic teachers and soldiers for Christ. Christian ascetics went beyond Greco-Roman ideas of controlling one’s passions through temperate eating and sexuality. Probing the body at its limits, they pushed for life-long celibacy and extended fasts in order to overcome the sinful human condition and end human dependency on the fallen, material world. Imitating Christ meant to live in a male body without masculine desires – a struggle that, according to Christian hagiographies, only a few saints accomplished.

Concurrent with asceticism, the lives of Christian male householders, who had no desire to break out of secure social structures, were regulated by moral codes. Grafted upon the Roman 'pater familias', the Christian householder was not expected to be celibate or ascetic but to moderate his behaviour. Licit sexuality for laity was channelled into marriage and reproduction, whereas clergy were urged to celibacy and humility. At the waning of the Roman empire, the virtues of ascetic and chaste behaviour of a once marginalised masculinity became dominant.

While Eastern Christianity (Greek and Russian Orthodox traditions) never required clergy to be celibate, except for bishops and monks, the medieval Western Catholic Church settled on three pathways for Christian men: the domestication of the ascetic spirit into monastic orders; a non-celibate laity following rules of chastity; and a celibate clergy.

As the medieval Catholic Church gained power, it enforced celibacy among its priests after the Gregorian reform and the Second Lateran Council in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. This era also saw the emergence of devotional chivalry and of militant defenders of faith as new Christian masculine ideals. Crusaders and Knights of God battled perceived external threats (infidels); the inquisitor, internal enemies (heresy). Monastic orders proliferated, some dedicated to active ministry ('vita activa'), others to a secluded life ('vita contemplativa'). Furthermore, scholastic theology posited reason as the highest form of faith, and man, within the natural order, as the most rational being.

The Protestant Reformation no longer required clergy or laity to be celibate, ascetic or monastic. Monasteries and convents were disassembled in Protestant countries, thus disabling a spiritual and communal alternative for men and women alike. The clerical monopoly was replaced by a focus on family ruled by a male head. The ideal Protestant man submitted to a marital code of chastity and to the virtue of moderation. The Reformation as harbinger of modernity also led to church–state separation and a privatisation of religion. As a result, men shifted their quest for power and authority from ecclesiastical circles of male celibates to secular spheres of influence (e.g nation states, science, economy). Christianity became perceived as a feminised realm, and various nineteenth- and twentieth century Christian men’s movements tried to counteract this trend by re-masculinising the church.

Despite the dominance of androcentric theologies and patriarchal practices, the belief in the incarnation as the possibility of divine presence embodied in humans has always provided liberating, non-hegemonic and sometimes queer trajectories for Christian men (and women). Modern sensitivities concerning questions of human rights, equality and diversity as well as the women’s movement and world-wide ecumenical efforts have deepened such liberating visions.

In North America, men’s studies in Religion has emerged as a new field of scholarly inquiry. Informed by feminist and queer theory as well as gay studies, it investigates the effects of gender and sexuality upon faith and religious practice. However, a sustained analysis of global Christianity from a consciously male-gendered perspective is still in its infancy. Missing still is an assessment of Christian masculinities as lived, embodied and articulated in specific localities, especially postcolonial masculinities in non-Western countries.

By Björn Krondorfer in "International Encyclopedia of Men and Masculinities", edited by Michael Flood, Judith Kegan Gardiner, Bob Pease and Keith Pringe, Routledge, London/New York, 2007, excerpts p. 658-660. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.

See also:

 Men and Women in Hinduism - http://stravaganzastravaganza.blogspot.com.br/2014/01/men-and-women-in-hinduism.html

Men and Women in Judaism - http://stravaganzastravaganza.blogspot.com.br/2014/01/men-and-women-in-judaism.html

Men and Women in Islam - http://stravaganzastravaganza.blogspot.com.br/2014/01/men-and-women-in-islam.html