C.F.W. Walther
24th July 2005, 07:31 PM
I'm looking for the article in totem by Aaron D. Wolf. Here are some excerpts from it taken from this link.
http://degenhart.us/blog/?p=122
These familiar strains from the popular hymn “In The Garden” represent the modern American imagination of the essence of Christianity: a romantic fantasy in which a chivalric Jesus rescues me from my own loneliness and despair and fills all of my emotional needs. This effeminate picture of the Christian life, from the dramatic conversion experience to the long walks in the garden alone with “Jesus,” has produced generations of effeminate Christian men who either allow themselves to be consumed by their imaginary “walks with Jesus” or else drift away from church altogether, knowing that their best efforts at spiritual courtship will fall well short of the women who now, more than ever, fill the pew’s of American churches.
The image of the effeminate clergyman is nearly universal in America - not just among liberals but among self-identified conservatives. The myriad queer priests on the Catholic side has as their counterparts the femmy Protestant pastor who must rely on silly stories and Dr. Phil psychobabble to carry his sermons. Vasectomized fathers of 1.5 children make their vestments look like dresses as they tug at the heart-strings of men and women. Evangelical megachurch pastors, with their khakis and polo shirts, take up the role of vicar of Jesus-the-Boyfriend, as their sermons or chats insist on fanning the flames of passon for Christ instead of proclaiming the Passion of the Christ.
In her insightful work The Feminization of American Culture, Ann Douglas traces the problem of the effeminacy of the American Christian man to the disestablishment of churches. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the Congregationalist and Episcopalian churches that were established in the states along the East Coast were disestablished, and all of the civil benefits that those churches had enjoyed - the power to levy taxes to support the pastor and the church facilities, the social status for pastors that this system required and protected, the necessity of church membership for those who wished to enjoy certain social benefits - were stripped away. She is quick to point out that disestablishment had its own intellectual antecedents - in particular, the democratizing Yankee spirit known today as the American Way, the culture that ultimately produced television advertising and “Rock the Vote!” Outside of clerical circles, the leading lights of this age were averse to the idea of any sort of enforced religion. Thomas Jefferson, for example, supported the disestablishment of the Episcopal Church in Virginia.
This was a reworking of the Gospel in the spirit of the Enlightenment, a new, baptized form of individualism centered on the emotions, which fit in nicely with the democratizing effort to disestablish the churches. Since the masculine idea of “forced religion” became anathema, Yankee pastors increasingly turned into salesmen, and women, not heads of households, began to play dominant roles in churches, trading authority for “influence.”
http://degenhart.us/blog/?p=122
These familiar strains from the popular hymn “In The Garden” represent the modern American imagination of the essence of Christianity: a romantic fantasy in which a chivalric Jesus rescues me from my own loneliness and despair and fills all of my emotional needs. This effeminate picture of the Christian life, from the dramatic conversion experience to the long walks in the garden alone with “Jesus,” has produced generations of effeminate Christian men who either allow themselves to be consumed by their imaginary “walks with Jesus” or else drift away from church altogether, knowing that their best efforts at spiritual courtship will fall well short of the women who now, more than ever, fill the pew’s of American churches.
The image of the effeminate clergyman is nearly universal in America - not just among liberals but among self-identified conservatives. The myriad queer priests on the Catholic side has as their counterparts the femmy Protestant pastor who must rely on silly stories and Dr. Phil psychobabble to carry his sermons. Vasectomized fathers of 1.5 children make their vestments look like dresses as they tug at the heart-strings of men and women. Evangelical megachurch pastors, with their khakis and polo shirts, take up the role of vicar of Jesus-the-Boyfriend, as their sermons or chats insist on fanning the flames of passon for Christ instead of proclaiming the Passion of the Christ.
In her insightful work The Feminization of American Culture, Ann Douglas traces the problem of the effeminacy of the American Christian man to the disestablishment of churches. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the Congregationalist and Episcopalian churches that were established in the states along the East Coast were disestablished, and all of the civil benefits that those churches had enjoyed - the power to levy taxes to support the pastor and the church facilities, the social status for pastors that this system required and protected, the necessity of church membership for those who wished to enjoy certain social benefits - were stripped away. She is quick to point out that disestablishment had its own intellectual antecedents - in particular, the democratizing Yankee spirit known today as the American Way, the culture that ultimately produced television advertising and “Rock the Vote!” Outside of clerical circles, the leading lights of this age were averse to the idea of any sort of enforced religion. Thomas Jefferson, for example, supported the disestablishment of the Episcopal Church in Virginia.
This was a reworking of the Gospel in the spirit of the Enlightenment, a new, baptized form of individualism centered on the emotions, which fit in nicely with the democratizing effort to disestablish the churches. Since the masculine idea of “forced religion” became anathema, Yankee pastors increasingly turned into salesmen, and women, not heads of households, began to play dominant roles in churches, trading authority for “influence.”