13 comments

1. Lindsay warned us.

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2. The downfall of all societies has always been the erasure of Judeo/Christian ethic.

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3. Thank you for linking to this article, Dr. Clark. Very, very much appreciated.

   The author points out that “in prior generations, under-fathered men would join street gangs.” While he’s probably referencing the Jewish gangs of his grandfather’s era in 1930s Brooklyn, that was also the origin of Italian immigrant street gang members who, as adults, became recruits for the Italian Mafia in other parts of New York City. Still others who wanted to stay on the right side of the law, or who were given by the courts a final chance to turn their lives around, joined the military. Al Capone, as a young man, liked to hang around the Brooklyn Navy yards admiring the discipline of the sailors, and there were people who correctly predicted that he’d either end up in the military or the Mob. Sadly, he made the wrong choice after punching a female teacher and dropping out of school.

   Capone’s story, and the later story of how he met his wife, and acquired a facial scar in a knife attack by her brother defending her against his advances, shows an ambivalent relationship with women and female authority that illustrates an older version of today’s “red pill” manosphere.

   I live and work outside Fort Leonard Wood in the Missouri Ozarks and see all the time how the military can take men from troubled homes, turn them around, and make them into productive citizens. The good part is that not just in America, but quite possibly as long as professional military forces have existed, dating back to Rome and even before that, the military has been a way in which young men could prove themselves and men who didn’t learn at home what they should have learned got a second chance.

   The bad part is that people who go to alternative sources other than the family to learn about manhood, whether that means bad things like gangs, good things like the military or sports teams, or today, the “manosphere” of the internet, are getting a view of masculinity which teaches boys how to be men without explicit biblical values and without the oversight of the church. A sergeant or a coach can be a great male role model, but he’s not a pastor or an elder, and his organization has a different purpose from the church.

   As the author states, so-called “red pill” teaching “teaches that men only embody the nice guy archetype because they’ve been manipulated by their feminist mothers and culture. Men who never question their programming end up as ‘blue-pill betas,’ effeminate suckers deprived of their masculine birthright. They’re guys that women settle for and marry but never desire. These are supposedly the predominant type of man today.”

   I don’t have to agree with the author’s denominational affiliation to agree that he has hit the nail on the head about what far too many young men are being taught today. I see it all over the place in conservative circles, and it’s entering conservative churches, particularly in denominations where formal theological training for pastors is uncommon and in which pastors are usually selected from men who have been successful as self-made self-employed business owners, or the military. In other words, men who have established themselves in “male” roles, not formal academic study, as a path to the pastorate.

   The author continues and points out some very seriously anti-Semitic content in parts of the “manosphere.” Fortunately, I live in the Bible Belt and most of our local young people in conservative Christian churches have been inoculated against that by strongly pro-Israel teaching in their churches. (I’m not dispensationalist, but that’s a side point.) But for a man from a troubled secular home in a secular part of the United States, particularly our major urban areas, that is a very real temptation and I’m seeing some of it cropping up in conservative Reformed circles.

   Reformed pastors and seminarians who spend most of their time reading thick books written decades ago or centuries ago need to be aware of what is being taught online, including by some conservative Reformed people.

   Understanding how to refute Barth and Arminius and Pelagius is important. It’s just as important in today’s world to know how to deal BIBLICALLY with what the author correctly warns is a crisis caused by the lack of functioning fathers in too many American homes.

   The problem is not new. Italian street gangs (and before that, Irish street gangs, and today, Hispanic street gangs) happened because of absent fathers and young men seeking families and authority structures they didn’t find at home.

   The right solution is a functioning church and elders who can lead young men who weren’t led well at home. Sadly, many good Reformed pastors and elders aren’t aware of how they could help provide a solution because Reformed churches usually do a good job of teaching covenantal faithfulness, don’t have a lot of broken homes among their members, and don’t have a lot of experience working with children and teenagers from broken homes. A Reformed woman who has been abandoned by a godless husband is likely to be helped by her own parents and extended family, which is great, but what happens when a single mother with a rebellious teenage son joins a Reformed church and has no family to help?

   Reformed churches are far better equipped to help young men from troubled homes than “I’ll fly away” dispy evangelicals who have been taught this world is not important and we should just pray for the rapture. I totally get it that a single mother with a troubled teenage son can be a serious challenge to a church in which most of the families grew up Reformed and many are interrelated, but we have the solutions to problems that many evangelicals do not.

   What we see on the internet is a new form of the old wrong solutions to a problem that is far from new, but which is, at least arguably, a lot worse today than it was in previous generations thanks to the rise of feminism and attacks on godly male role models.

   Reformed pastors need to be aware of what is out there on the internet because it poses a very real risk to our young people, especially but not only those who are new Christians who don’t come from solid covenantal homes and extended families of generational faithfulness.

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   • I need to check my memory before posting. This is partly inaccurate: “Capone’s story, and the later story of how he met his wife, and acquired a facial scar in a knife attack by her brother defending her against his advances…”

     It’s correct that Capone made lewd comments to a woman and was attacked by her brother when Capone refused to apologize, but he didn’t marry that woman.

     The point remains that men who are not taught properly about how to act as men, and who have problems with legitimate female authority (in Capone’s case, his teacher), are not new. Capone admired the Navy which provided a path for a young man to achieve success in life. He ended up in the Mob instead.

     “Redpilled” men should listen and learn.

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4. Keep sounding the alarms Clark. As I’ve stated, I personally know of Neo-Nazis in NAPARC churches and of clergy/leadership who at the very least tolerate/turn a blind eye (& many even are symphatetic?). This (CN, dissident right, Neo-Nazism, etc.) is the greatest threat to Confessional Calvinism in North America right now, and we’re at risk of destroying our reputation even if it’s a minority position.

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5. Hating Jews is easier than hating sin. Blaming Jews (and feminists and homosexuals and transexuals and absentee fathers) is easier than blaming oneself. God, have mercy.

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6. I’m perplexed by the conclusion of this article, where the author states, “my audience has grown, and great men (like Pastor Doug Wilson)—with a link to Wilson’s dougwils.com—! have come to my defence in the public square.”

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   • The author is in Wilson’s denomination, the CREC. I and others have been seeing the same things online, that young men are being attracted to neo-Nazi ideology and rhetoric.

     Some advocates of Christian Nationalism have adopted “blood and soil” (Nazi) rhetoric.

     I discovered this for myself when I began researching that movement. I found a a 1939 article describing the phenomenon and then saw the same language in a prominent book advocating CN. It was an eye opener.

     Then there was this (Twitter/X) thread by Jake Meador

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     • I share Angela’s perplexity.
       I have attended Joel Ellis’s church and this action would be very much according to his character, I found him to be, in my opinion, a biblical preacher and teacher. I was very surprised when the Reformation OPC became CREC. Why would anyone want to get even close to Christian Nationalism in even a mild form?

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       • Not to mention, joining the de facto institutional home of the federal vision theology.

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     • May I ask what article you saw and which CN books had the similar themes?

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       • Hi Trent,

         Yes, I am working on something. When I’m ready, I will publish it.

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7. I’m sharing the Christ Over All link with several folks in my church. I prefaced the link with: “Small wonder that memories of numerous antisemitic words and actions I’ve experienced over the decades flare when reading the following, especially since I’ve encountered veiled/outright antisemitism both inside and out of church/parachurch walls. So much for Paul declaring that there’s neither Jew nor Gentile, and that the “wall of hostility/separation” has been torn down. Clearly many folks out there are dirtying their hands with brick, mortar…and broken glass.”

   May many of this ilk repent…and see His light. MARANATHA!

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