Preacher Mark Driscoll Bashes Single Christian Males Some More

Preacher Mark Driscoll Bashes Single Christian Males Some More
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Thank you for the comments on the blog. I logged in today to find I had about 8 or 9 comments from about four different people. I cannot promise I will respond to each one. If and when I do reply, it might be tomorrow or later.
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Now on to Mark Driscoll’s recent young, single, male- bashing fest. Which is in the tradition of Debbie “Marriage Mandater” Maken’s habit of bashing young, single Christian men.

I’m a woman. So I tend to blog from, well, a woman’s perspective and primarily concerning how unmarried women are treated by evangelical Christians (and other sorts of Christians – the Neo Reformed guys and Baptists can be pretty bad).

Occasionally, I do get male readers on this blog, so I sometimes will do a post such as this one.

The older, single Christian males get stuck being stereotyped by married Christians, and Christian culture in general, as either
1. homosexual
2. pedophile or
3. social loser / weirdo

Your younger, single Christian men, those 20ish into maybe their mid 30s, get a whole other set of stereotypes from conservative, evangelical, Baptist and Neo Reformed Christians. More on that in the remainder of this post.

Seattle area Neo Reformed preacher (and all around egotist, sexist, sex obsessed, attention whore) Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church was in the news a lot the past couple of months, for crashing the “Strange Fire” conference and more recently and notoriously for being accused by conservative Christian radio show host Janet Mefferd of plagiarism.

Those topics – the Strange Fire incident and the Mefferd situation – have been blogged to death the past two weeks by a million different people. You can do a search online and quickly find a billion pages about both incidents.

Here lately, though, Driscoll was interviewed by popular right wing commentator and former Fox News cable television host Glenn Beck.

Driscoll took the opportunity in this interview with Beck to bash young, single men.

I have read a few articles about the interview, but I have so far not been able to bring myself to actually watch the video of it.

I assume Driscoll was foremost being critical of Christian single males, but perhaps he was speaking in generic terms, of all men in their twenties, both Christian and Non Christian.

While I largely abhor Driscoll on so many fronts, I do think he may have a small point where he criticizes single men for not asking women out on dates. I do see that as being a problem for Christian single males in their 20s and even much older.

It even appears to be a problem with Non Christian males. Not too long ago, Amy of the secular advice column “Ask Amy” brought it up in response to a young, single man who wrote her:

DEAR AMY:

“Newly Single” is the 27-year-old woman who noted that guys never ask for a woman’s phone number. I’m a guy, and I figure if the woman is really interested in me, she’d say something or ask for my number.

It’s not laziness on the guy’s part. It’s just a way we screen.
— Satisfied in Seattle

Here was Amy’s response to this guy, one which I totally agreed with:

DEAR SATISFIED:

If everybody is “screening,” nobody is ever going to get together.

Growing up, I (and other Christian females), were told by preachers, Christian parents, and Christian dating material, never to pursue a man.

We Christian females were told, even in Non-Christian dating advice books and columns, that men like to pursue.

We were told never to ask a man out, do not initiate flirting, and so forth. We were essentially told to sit, look pretty, bat our eyelashes, and the man was supposed to take the lead and ask us out on dinner dates or to movies.

Lo and behold if I arrived to my early 40s still single because most men will not approach, or were not brave enough, to ask me out.

Yes, I had men flirt with me in my college days, but I only recognize that in hindsight; the guys were showing interest, but I had been taught by Christians (and secular dating advice) to expect a very forth-right request as in a male approaching me and asking,
“Hey, Christian Pundit, are you free this Friday night? I would like to take you out to dinner.”

Therefore, I did not read the offers to carry my school books from college class to college class by guys, as they often did, as romantic interest. I was interpreting those gestures as the guys being “nice,” not as them having a crush and wanting to date.

I kept waiting for these men to boldly, plainly state their intent to me:
“Hey you. Free tonight? Great. I’ll pick you up at 6, for dinner and a show at 7.”
-That never happened.

I hear this from a lot of other single Christian women, both young and middle aged: first of all, there is a “man shortage” going on, but even if there are men present in a Christian church, or whatever environment, they will not ask the woman out.

This does seem to be worse among two particular groups of men:
1. Men today who are under age 30, and
2. men of all ages who are shy/ scared/ fear rejection, so they will not ask a woman out on a date.

I have seen these men on the internet say they would PREFER a woman ASK THEM OUT, rather than be expected to ask a woman out. If that is the fantasy you are living in, where you continually hope women will ask you out, you will die alone and single.

Even in this day and age, women -even Non Christian feminist ones- are strongly encouraged by culture, parents, and friends, to wait for the guy to do all the heavy lifting in starting a relationship.

Yes, sometimes women will make the first move and ask a man out or initiate the flirting (I have done so before), but more often than not, we ladies wait to be asked by the guy because we are taught by culture and religious leaders we are to be passive.

The dude is supposed to take the initiative – that is what we ladies hear repeatedly from our pre-teen years to our senior years and all stages in-between.

I do think single Christian males need to step up and start asking women out. So to a degree, I am with Driscoll on that much.

However, I think there’s a polite or gentle way to get the point across. I don’t think young men have to be beaten up or shamed to get the message.

If Driscoll is operating under the assumption that getting married would automatically grow a man up, he is mistaken.

I have blogged and blogged many examples taken from the news of married people, some of whom are Christian, both men and women, who have shown evidence of being selfish, ungodly, and immature.

I have featured story after story on this blog of married men and women who have done everything from rape children, neglect babies for hours or days resulting in the child’s death; stolen drugs from friends; who have raging porn addictions; and one married Baptist preacher who was arrested for being a serial killer.
I also featured one story of a hetero, married Christian youth pastor and father himself, who was raping young sons of other parents.
All of these people are married or were parents, but marriage and parenthood did nothing to make them behave properly or more godly.

Here are some links about Driscoll’s latest young, single- male- bashing commentary on Beck:
(Please note: some of the links I am providing here may be to blogs or sites that are liberal or emergent;
I am tipping agnostic these days, but my understanding of Christianity is such that my theological and doctrinal views still tend to be conservative and right wing.
Meaning, I do not necessarily agree with all views of all sites and blogs I am linking to below if they are liberal):

(Link): MARK DRISCOLL TELLS GLENN BECK THAT TODAY’S YOUNG MEN ARE ‘JOKES’

(Link): Mark Driscoll on Glenn Beck

Excerpt:

In the first video, Glenn opens up by saying, “Mark says that if we lose the men and we lose the inner cities, Christiandom [sic] is done, at least in the West.” Mark simply replies, “Yeah,” and goes on to talk about “re-evangelizing” cities and their men. Here is more evidence that Mark is really looking for a return to Christendom, not a rejection of it. While he confuses this with his talk of “civil religion” elsewhere, he is pining for the (supposed) days gone by when Christianity was central in American culture and politics/legislation. This is the meaning of “Christendom” in the thinking of the new religious right.

(Link): Glenn Beck Interviews Mark Driscoll: The Age of Intolerance

This is from Beck’s site, The Blaze (which is right wing):
(Link): FIERY PASTOR DOESN’T MINCE WORDS ON WHAT YOUNG MEN TODAY NEED TO HEAR: ‘STOP SMILING, BECAUSE YOU’RE THE JOKE’

Excerpts from The Blaze:

Driscoll explained [to Beck] how he read an article explaining that many single, young men would prefer to play video games, text, and download porn on their phones while taking a bus than drive themselves.

“So guys have no vision of future, career, no intent of taking a gal on a date, maybe to get a wife out of the deal, maybe have a kid,” he said. “You can’t take ‘em to little league, can’t go pick up your groceries…”

When Beck asked Driscoll what he says to such men, Driscoll responded strongly: “You’ve got to tell them that they’re wrong! That they’re absolutely wrong, and they have no idea what they’re doing. And that the culture has sold them a bunch of products, and it’s just trying to make them addicted to porn and pot and substances and to take all the money out of their wallet…because the fool’s parade keeps going to the ATM and handing away their future.”

…Driscoll described many of the “men” today as “boys who can shave.”

“Nobody looks at these guys and says, ‘You didn’t have a dad. You’re addicted to porn. You don’t have a clue. You don’t have a plan. You’re part of the problem. Stop smiling, because you’re the joke,’” Driscoll remarked.”Nobody just tells them that, but that’s exactly what they need…”

Notice in that same interview, Driscoll uses a bus analogy:

“No one else is doing it,” he said simply. “The world is just filled with noise, and if you can cut against the grain, say something in a different tone with different content … initially you’re offended by it … but now I’m interested because maybe, maybe I’ve been lied to. Because my thing ain’t working … maybe the bus I’m on is headed over a cliff and it’s a good time to consider getting off.”

What the hell is it with Driscoll and busses?

Driscoll once said over a year ago that church members at his church that disagree with him will get “thrown off the bus” and he giggled after saying it. Listen to Driscoll in this audio in a You Tube video:
(Link): Mark Driscoll – There is a pile of dead bodies behind the Mars Hill bus

Several months after making those “throwing people off the bus” remarks, he wrote some weird blog page or said in a sermon that the preacher of a church is like the pilot, and the passengers need to shut up, don’t question anything, and just trust the pilot.

Driscoll does not want critical thinkers at his church, he wants drones who will unquestioningly accept his views, while forking over tithes. But anyway, his penchant for using vehicle analogies to talk about church is odd. You can read more about that here:
(Link): Mark Driscoll has shifted transportation metaphors

But anyhow, here we are again with single Christian males being bashed.

For those of you single Christian guys now in your twenties, it gets worse as time marches on.

As I already noted early in this post, you will go from being chewed out for being an X-box playing, bus-taking slacker, but by the time you reach your mid-30s and later, the stereotypes change: there will be suspicions by even pleasant, grey haired old ladies at your church that you are a homosexual, a pedophile, or garden variety weirdo. You have that to look forward to.

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Related posts this blog:

(Link): The Dear Driscoll Site – Re: Mark Driscoll – Christians: Stop Supporting Driscoll, any church Driscoll runs, and Stop Supporting Guys Like Him!

(Link): Conservative Christianity Stuck in 1950s Leave it To Beaver-ville

(Link):  Preacher Mark Driscoll Disparages Virgins and Virginity (Again) – The Feelings of Fornicators Always Take Precedence With the Anti-Purity Culture, Anti-Slut- Shaming, and Pro- Cheap Grace Crowd

(Link): Christian Gender and Sex Stereotypes Act as Obstacles to Christian Singles Who Want to Get Married (Not All Men Are Obsessed with Sex)

(Link): Stigmas and Stereotypes of Single Unmarried Men Over 25 or 30 Years of Age – They’re Supposedly All Homosexual or Pedophiles

(Link): How Christian Teaching on Gender Roles and Sex Can Mess People Up in Adulthood (from Wine and Marble blog, post by a former Christian guy)

(Link): Why Men Don’t Go To Church

(Link): Christian Males Blaming their Unwanted Protracted Singleness on Feminism – They have the wrong target

(Link): How the Sexual Revolution Ruined Friendship – Also: If Christians Truly Believed in Celibacy and Virginity, they would stop adhering to certain sexual and gender stereotypes that work against both

(Link): How (Married) Christians and Christian Teachings About Dating/Marriage Are Keeping Single Christians Single Part 1

(Link): The Annoying, Weird, Sexist Preoccupation by Christian Males with Female Looks and Sexuality