I watched the video promo for the Stronger Men's Conference this morning. The last time I laughed as much in front of a screen it was a re-run of Father Ted, to me the height of comic genius.
I don't think that was quite the effect the Stronger Men were aiming at. For those who aren't up with this, the video is a high-octane, sharply-edited montage of monster trucks, machine guns, motorcycle aerobatics and large chaps beating each other to a pulp in some sort of ring. There are a couple of sentences from a preacher – one John Gray – about authority and power before more monster trucks.
It's been getting a bit of publicity, which is presumably the idea, though it's left quite a few people unimpressed. What's so funny about it?
Well, I'm a man, so presumably I'm right in the demographic this 'action-packed' conference – with its 'world-class communicators, high-energy worship and awesome entertainment' – is aimed at. And frankly, it sounds absolutely ghastly.
I'll admit it – I'm awed by those aerobatics and think monster trucks are pretty cool. Machine guns – no. Definitely not the MMA violence – seriously, what's that doing at a Christian conference?
And it's not that I don't think men are interested in that kind of thing, and probably more than women, generally speaking and on the whole. I know – here I totally lose whatever credibility I ever had with my feminist friends, but I think men and women are different, again generally speaking and on the whole. Not better or worse, and definitely not complementary – 'complementarianism', particularly at its extreme end, is pushing at the door of heresy – just different. Trying to deny that in the name of equality is as daft as trying to enforce it in the name of 'biblical' gender roles. Just don't.
I laughed at the Stronger Men video (in fact our whole office did). Why? Because it was such a lazy and witless portrayal of masculinity. It looked as if it had been designed by an ad agency, and not a very good one. It wasn't about what real men are really like: it was about what a Hollywood action movie thinks they're like.
And the point about those films is that they are fiction. They're designed to let men insert themselves into the persona of the brute who's shooting, stabbing and beating the bad guys and bedding beautiful women. It's vicarious violence for men whose usual wrestling is with the ring-pulls from beer cans.
But when Christians offer fiction as fact they're offering stones instead of bread, when they should be offering reality, at a deeper level than anything men have known before. And maybe, once you get behind that nonsensical video, that's what the Stronger Men conference does. I really hope so – but the omens aren't good. What it promises is a Christianity that's about violence and power. It baptises some of the darkest urges of our nature in a male-only context. Seriously, who thought that was a good idea?
Do men need to be stronger? I'd want to say, 'It depends what you mean by strong.' Enjoy your monster trucks, your motorcycles, your football and your mountain-climbing. Be blokes, and don't be ashamed of it. But those pursuits have nothing to do with strength. That's about doing the right thing, refusing to be violent when you could be, taking responsibility, caring and being vulnerable, admitting when you're wrong and trying harder next time. There is, in fact, nothing particularly masculine about any of that; it's just part of being a decent human being.
Follow Mark Woods on Twitter: @RevMarkWoods
