In doing so, we stay committed to scripture and yet still begin to unpick the toxic narratives around gender (especially masculinities) that we see around us today. We ought to recognise that boys might learn more and grow deeper in their faith if they see the Christ who was open and vulnerable to the world, who embraced all, and who was not scared to show his emotion and love to those whom he encountered. Masculinities can be vulnerable and exposed, just as Jesus was in life and on the cross. In his closing lines, that boys will not want to follow Jesus unless he is “strong in the face of opposition, pain, and death”, Mr Harding feeds into problematic narratives of a “macho Jesus”, which have been seen particularly in American conservative Evangelicalism. The further we oversimplify, homogenise, and dichotomise gender, the more we fail to recognise the diversity of God’s good creation and the space that we need to cultivate in churches for both children and adults which allows for individualised encounter with God among communities. What would be more authentic to human experience than the author’s implicit claims to some sort of biological essentialism would be to interrogate how we construct social understandings of boys and men, and inscribe those meanings on to particular bodies, and unpick what we mean when we say that boys and men are made to be and behave in a certain way: where has that come from?īefore giving resources and answers that may do more damage than good, we ought to peel back what myths and misgivings we have around masculinities and how we can provide better education on those issues. I could unpack each one at length, but some, for brief mention, include: that boys “need an adventure”, that girls might be a “distraction” to boys, that boys should be involved in “practical” work in church, that boys “do not enjoy reading” and would need a more accessible Bible, and that boys need space to “let off steam”. Mr Harding helps to bolster myths that all boys have a certain way of being, many of them leading to the toxic attitudes and behaviour that he avows to be countering. Sir, - Having published a book, Boys Will Be Boys: And other myths (SCM Press, 2022), I, you will be unsurprised to read, reject Nick Harding’s worrying claim ( Feature, 17 March) that the saying “‘Boys will be boys’ has a basis in fact”.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |