Sex as a Weapon - Decoding the Literature of the Christian Men's Movement

A discussion of the Christian men's movement — Iron John for fundamentalists, Promise Keepers to the tenth power — is best begun with some mean-spirited fun. Not because there is anything laughable about loving Jesus or thinking about gender, but because the language with which conservative evangelical men combine these two passions, at conferences and in "cell groups" and in books with titles such as You, The Warrior Leader; The Barbarian Way and Fight on Your Knees often seems as if it's been lifted directly from Beavis & Butt-Head, absent the adolescent giggles. The movement itself is deadly earnest, and worse, a threat — legally, emotionally, sometimes physically — to all those who can't or won't conform to its perversely precise dream of a nation of sexually self-regulating spiritual warriors. I’ll get to that. But first, some yuks.
Take, for example, God's Gift to Women (the title of a manliness guide for young men), male "headship" of the American family. Women can't get enough of good headship, but a man must be careful; a woman's hunger for his headship may lead him to abuse its potency through the sin of anger. A few years ago, I learned in an evangelical magazine what to do in such a situation: push your anger down and store it inside your heart, where Jesus will work it over it until it is ready to be "released," transformed into "white-hot brother love."