The Care of Men

The Care of Men

The Care of Men

The Care of Men

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Overview

Men in our culture are experiencing various crises to which pastors and pastoral caregivers are called to respond. These crises include changing role definitions and gender expectations, as well as diminishing economic opportunities. In light of these crises, men need new foundations for self-esteem and identity and new support for changing. With their different experiences and specialties, the contributors to The Care of Men examine some crises and provide helpful ideas for caregivers in diverse situations with diverse populations of men.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781426753480
Publisher: Abingdon Press
Publication date: 12/01/2011
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 256
File size: 1 MB

About the Author

Christie Cozad Neuger is Professor of Pastoral Theology at United Theological Seminary of The Twin Cities in New Brighton, Minnesota. She has local church and hospital pastoral experience. She is currently co-authoring with Howard Clinebell the latest revision of Basic Types of Pastoral Care and Counseling.

Read an Excerpt

The Care of Men


By Christie Cozad Neuger, James Newton Poling

Abingdon Press

Copyright © 1997 Abingdon Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4267-5348-0



CHAPTER 1

GENDER AND THEOLOGY

Christie Cozad Neuger and James Newton Poling


That we live in a time of significant transition is not a unique point of view. Since change is a given of life, all time periods exist in the midst of transition. Yet, many would say that the cultural transitions of which we are a part are unique in that they signify a kind of radical discontinuity with foundational assumptions that have formed both our epistemological and our anthropological starting places. Many would talk about these shifts as a move from modernity into postmodernity. According to Kenneth Gergen, a contemporary social constructionist, modern society was built around the need to contain disruptive forces and to build walls around chaos. Behavior modification and its offshoots would be an example of "the need to render chaos predictable.' One of the fundamental beliefs of the modern era is that objective truth exists and is knowable. In contrast, a postmodern perspective is characterized by the awareness of multiple perspectives on truth. Gergen suggests that we are "populated by others" in such a way that we are exposed to countless opinions, personalities, and doubts. The result is that there is no single organizing truth but multiple perspectives. Consequently, postmodernism means that who we are, how we relate to various power systems in the culture, and what our past experiences have been all shape the way we understand reality and the way we construct it. As Bonnie Miller-McLemore points out, this is a confusing time of transition because "it is after modern trust in universal truths but before what we do not know."

Feminist liberation perspectives have been both a contributing force to postmodernism and a consequence of these shifting boundaries around knowledge. Gerda Lerner suggests that from time to time women have "come into consciousness" about their exclusion from the meaning-making processes of the culture and these awarenesses have become a dynamic force for change. During the past twenty-five years of this wave of the feminist movement, women (and some men) have become increasingly aware of the destructive impact of patriarchy, especially on women's lives. And they have also become aware of how our assumptions, our cherished bodies of knowledge, our institutions, and the very fabric of the society are distorted by a patriarchal orientation that has been a part of Western culture from our earliest historical records. Consequently, there has been much effort in recent years to develop feminist methods that would accomplish several necessary purposes in the reorientation of knowledge and in the development of liberating practices. Deconstructive methods have emerged that bring a "hermeneutic of suspicion" to theories and practices previously held as "truths." Reclaiming methods have been developed in order to discover and record the experiences of those (women and members of other marginalized groups) whose perspectives were not considered or whose experiences were deliberately distorted as histories and bodies of knowledge were created and interpreted. Reconstructive approaches have also been created that look both at epistemological questions (how do we know what we know?) and at providing content that has been missing. And new practices have been proposed and instituted that give a wider range of options and rights to women and others who have been deprived of equal access to resources.

There have been extensive political implications arising out of these efforts, if we understand political to mean the nature of the power relationships of the culture. Roles for women (and to a degree for men) have been successfully challenged and changed. Biological determinism has been tempered by the awareness of the social construction of gender. And women and men have begun to find ways to relate to one another out of a fuller recognition of common humanity rather than out of the limited framework of sexual complementarity. These changes, of which we are in the midst, have not been smooth or linear. They have threatened much of what many hold dear and have often seemed overwhelming in the extensiveness of the challenge. There have been (and are) many forms of resistance to these perspectives, and there is considerable debate about how far we might go in reorienting knowledge and practices. There is, at this time, both a push to follow through even more radically on the implications of these liberation perspectives and a powerful conservative backlash to reverse or at least slow down many of the shifts in values and roles that have emerged from feminist thought.

Both of these somewhat polarized perspectives are reflected in the various men's movements as discussed in the introduction. However, in most of the men's movements there has been a clear effort to begin to look at what it means to be male in this culture and the implications of that for work, family, friendships, and spirituality. As is typical in liberation movements where those who have been denied or harmed the most are the ones who begin the challenge of the status quo, women have been the leaders in questioning the "truth" and claims of the culture; resisting those rules, roles, and practices that caused them harm and pain; and proposing new possibilities for a more just and liberating society. There were men who early on recognized the justice of these claims for women and who joined them as profeminists working for change. But, as feminism has developed, it has been better able to recognize the interlocking oppressions of a patriarchal system and the damaging effects this has on all members of the society. Consequently, feminist theory and practice is not just about women's experiences and women's rights but also about dismantling systems of power arrangements and stereotyped role limitations for women and men. A feminist/profeminist orientation is now a multicultural, multivalent analysis that includes the power dynamics around gender, class, race, sexual orientation, able-bodiedness, and age. As Rebecca Chopp says,

Patriarchy is revealed not simply as a social arrangement nor as individual acts of cruelty toward women on the part of men but rather as a deep spiritual ordering that invades and spreads across the social order—through individual identity, to social practices, to lines of authority in institutions, to cultural images and representations.


The implications of this understanding of patriarchy as a deep spiritual malaise is central to looking at some of the theological shifts that have been important in feminist/profeminist theory building in the past twenty-five years. If, indeed, patriarchy harms all of us and interferes with God's lure toward wholeness and justice for creation, then it is important to build proposals for the care of men on a foundation of liberation-based theology. In other words, feminist theology is not just about what theological positions are harmful or helpful for women. Rather, feminist theology is about the dismantling of narrow and distorted claims about God and creation that have resulted from attempting to understand God through a patriarchal framework and that have worked against God's intentions for humanity. Thus, the questions and methods of feminist theology are essential to looking at issues related to the care of men. There is much at stake for men, as the following chapters indicate, in the dismantling of patriarchy. As Rosemary Radford Ruether has said, "Patriarchy is itself the original men's movement, and the struggle to overthrow it must be a movement of men as well as women."


THEOLOGY AND CULTURE: A FORMATIVE DIALOGUE

Patriarchy is a complex and interwoven system that organizes perspectives, relationships, institutions, and the rules that govern them around a set of dualistic and hierarchical assumptions. As pointed out above, patriarchy is a "conceptual error of vast proportions" or, maybe more accurately, a "conceptual trap." In other words, human reality has been built out of a set of faulty premises at its foundation. As Nelle Morton has said, "The partial has paraded as the whole." As it has become evident that much "truth" is dependent on standpoint and experience, it has also become evident that our constructions of reality are problematic for most people. The construction of social reality, based on the perceptions and experiences of a ruling class (white, economically viable, heterosexual males in our culture) disadvantages those who have not actively participated in that construction and, ultimately, it damages all of humanity and creation.

Much of feminist theology has been motivated by the conviction that theological interpretation has a radically formative relationship to culture and that the shape of the culture guides our ongoing interpretations of God and God's intention for creation. From the beginning, feminist theology recognized that women's reflections had been largely left out of the "human" interpretation of religious experience and that women had not been acknowledged as active "meaning-makers" for the culture's myth and symbol systems. In addition, the perspectives, purposes, traits, and needs of women (and others) had been assigned by the dominant culture and then had been devalued.

A dualistic understanding of the world emerged out of this process. Dualism takes dualities (a recognition of difference without a value judgment) and assigns dominant and subordinate status to the differences. So, those realities that could be seen as unities or as equally valuable parts of a whole, are separated and given differing value. These dualistic splits between things like mind and body, spirit and matter, thinking and feeling, male and female have been given theological significance in their valuing. The first of each of these pairs has been seen as more valuable, closer to God, and associated with men. The second of each pair was associated with nature and with women and devalued.

A corresponding hierarchy based on this dualistic starting place and descending from the most male to the least male has been used to structure society. God, seen as the top of this hierarchy and most male, has been understood to be the source of the hierarchy/natural order and the maleness of God has been sustained out of the cultural value system. So, a "sacred circle" has been established consisting of a God who is named, defined, and empowered through patriarchal assumptions and who, in turn, through human-created symbols and structures, names, defines and empowers (some) males. Women (and things and people more closely associated with nature), in this scheme, become defined as "other." Men (at least those who follow patriarchal rules for maleness) become defined as closer to God and as responsible for creating and maintaining systems of meaning. As Mary Daly once said so succinctly, "If God is male, then the male is God." This dualistic system of valuing and devaluing does harm to the potential and diverse gifts of both women and men.

Originally, the impetus of feminist theology, then, was to empower and reclaim the importance of women's experience in both theological interpretation and in the liberative shaping of the culture. However, it soon became evident that if women's voices, in general, had been left out of the creative and interpretive processes, so had the voices of other groups who were marginalized by the value hierarchy of patriarchy. The experiences of the poor, the uneducated, people of color, gay men and lesbians, and others had been and continue to be excluded from the meaning-making processes of the culture. Consequently, issues of justice have become expanded beyond women's concerns and the enormity of the conceptual error of patriarchy has begun to be understood.

The importance of this relationship between religious symbols, and their interpretation, and human culture is at the heart of liberation/liberating theologies. As Rebecca Chopp and Mark Taylor suggest in the introduction to their text, Reconstructing Christian Theology,

The problems of destruction, devastation, abuse, and imperialism have been reinforced and sustained, at least in part, by Christian practices and theological discoveries. For instance, rates of physical abuse of women are exorbitant in the United States. One of the justifications given by abusers (and sometimes the abused) is that women are inferior in God's hierarchy and must be submissive to men. Religiously sanctioned notions of women's obedience and service are often obstacles to women's freedom from exploitation.


The vast network of social evils are of deep interest to liberation theologies. The concerns of feminist and other liberation theologies range from a focus on right relationships between men and women to the implications of atonement theories for the experiences of abuse in women's and children's lives to a revisioning of the relationship between humanity and the rest of creation.

A primary focus is still on the process of naming around questions such as who has the right to name, what does it mean to name, and how do we name the unnameable. The power of naming, especially naming God, continues to be a high-stake task for the theological enterprise. As a World Council of Churches study group, representing seventeen countries, said in 1980, "We have discovered that an almost exclusively male image of God in the Christian tradition has helped cause the affirmation of male, white, Western superiority and has led to a sense of inferiority of women and of people from non-Western cultures."

It is important to recognize that the distortions that have emerged from a patriarchal mind-set in terms of religious symbol systems, theological interpretations, and the structuring of culture have harmed everyone. When a culture exists within a conceptual error like that of patriarchy and builds rules, roles, and rituals around that error, no one can truly flourish. If the goal of theology is "faith seeking understanding" for the sake of responding to God's ever present lure toward wholeness/salvation, then it is crucial that all voices are heard and that society is built to reflect those voices in the fullness of their humanity. Collaboration, collegiality, and honest partnership is required across various patterns of difference and diversity if we are to dismantle the oppressive systems that seek to empower only the few and to silence the rest.


CONTEMPORARY THEMES IN FEMINIST LIBERATION THEOLOGY

It is useful, then, to look at some of the important and enduring themes in feminist liberation theology so that we might see how these themes affect the pastoral care of men. Although these themes are identified as contemporary feminist foci, they are also themes that have been integral to the theological enterprise for all time. Exploring the names and images of God, for example, has always been considered a central task for theology in general, not just for feminist theology. However, the critical links between the way we name God and the way we name (and value) the people, relationships, and institutions of the culture are a key element in feminist and other liberation theologies.

We will identify five theological themes that have been central to the work of feminist theology and social justice. These themes, in keeping with the above discussion, have obvious and deep interconnections with the way we have constructed our relationships and the rules that govern the exercise of power in the culture. Thus, there are significant implications for the care of men to be drawn from this work.


THE NATURE AND IMAGE OF GOD

For virtually all feminist theologians, language and imagery for God have been of central importance. This focus reflects what we have discussed above: that language does not just describe cultural reality but also informs, influences, and, to a certain extent, determines that culture. The fact that the dominant male power structure has had chief responsibility for developing and defining language as well as for interpreting primary symbols and metaphors results in a language and symbol system that discounts and devalues women's experience. Consequently, it has become a central focus for feminist theologians to take seriously the power of language, imagery and metaphors, especially about God.

Several male theologians have also taken on the theological task of exploring dominant language and imagery for God. Brian Wren, in a study examining the primary images and language used in hymnody, suggests that God imagery has almost exclusively portrayed the divine as male, all-powerful, in control, father, and king. He says,

Language is my particular concern. The systematic and almost exclusive use of male God-language, in a faith in which God is revealed as incarnate in a male human being, gives a distorted vision of God and supports male dominance in church and society. The distortion goes deep, in liturgies, creeds, hymns, and the language of the Bible. Some agree and find Christianity so steeped in male dominance that they bid farewell to Bible and church. Others say either that God intends men to dominate women, or that the distortion stems from the Fall and will only end in heaven. My hunch is that many are unhappy with those choices and would like to find a way forward that enlarges our knowledge of God, rejects male dominance and the hegemony of male god language, and names God anew in recognizable continuity with classic Christianity.


(Continues...)

Excerpted from The Care of Men by Christie Cozad Neuger, James Newton Poling. Copyright © 1997 Abingdon Press. Excerpted by permission of Abingdon Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Table of Contents

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS,
CONTRIBUTORS,
INTRODUCTION Christie Cozad Neuger and James Newton Poling,
CHAPTER ONE Gender and Theology Christie Cozad Neuger and James Newton Poling,
CHAPTER TWO Men's Issues in the Local Church: What Clergymen Have to Say Christie Cozad Neuger,
CHAPTER THREE Hard Work, Hard Lovin', Hard Times, Hardly Worth It: Care of Working-Class Men Judith L. Orr,
CHAPTER FOUR Love and Work Among African American Men Donald H. Matthews,
CHAPTER FIVE The Men's Movement and Pastoral Care of African American Men Edward P. Wimherly,
CHAPTER SIX The Shaman Says ... Womanist Reflection on Pastoral Care of African American Men Toinette M. Eugene,
CHAPTER SEVEN Male Violence Against Women and Children James Newton Poling,
CHAPTER EIGHT Pastoral Care of Gay Men Randle Mixon,
CHAPTER NINE Men and Women at Work: Fostering Collegial Relationships Joretta L. Marshall,
CHAPTER TEN Men and Grief: The Hidden Sea of Tears Without Outlet Herbert Anderson,
CONCLUSION Christie Cozad Neuger and James Newton Poling,
NOTES,

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