Male spirituality? (s?)

/ 5 August 2007

ProdigalKiwi links to a list developed back in 1992 by Philip Culbertson of “stumbling blocks that inhibit the development of a healthy masculine spirituality within the Christian tradition.” What do you think? Is this in any way accurate? What would you add, or subtract? Or are we talking about gender in all together different ways today?

"1. The identification in the tradition of God as Father.
2. The fear of the feminine.
3. The domination by tradition-centered males of the development of almost all literature in theology and spiritual direction.
4. The suppression by males of much of the broad range of human emotions.
5. The valuing of self-sufficiency, making it hard to pray for help or to seek healing in the face of powerlessness.
6. The misunderstanding of the value and process of reciprocal relationships, which inhibits our sense of self in God’s eyes and devalues our interdependence with creation and with the rest of humanity.
7. The insistence that to do something is categorically manlier than to be something, or simply to be.
8. The problem men have knowing who they are when they are not in charge.
9. The heritage of body-soul dualism and the resultant dismissal of the body and human sexuality.
10. The need to control structurelessness by putting everything in a hierarchical order; the fear of both chaos and spontaneity.
11. The assumption that incompleteness [and mystery]… is a sign of failure.
12. The preference for linearity over circularity…"
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