At the same time, however, exaggerated masculinity is not the solution to excessive femininity. In fact, when a pastor plays up his manliness, my first question is: What have you done to show that you’re a real man? And wearing lumberjack clothes while watching MMA fighting isn’t an answer. 

Over at The New Republic, Elizabeth Bruenig has penned a lengthy report on the “failure of macho Christianity,” focusing on the rise and fall of two “macho” Christian pastors: Mark Driscoll and the lesser-known Heath Mooneyham. Except for the twist that both pastors adopted self-consciously masculine styles and condemned the feminization of the church, there is nothing exceptional about their stories. After all, prominent pastors fail all the time. Jim Bakker — perhaps the biggest pastor to fall in the last 50 years–was hardly a paragon of aggressive hyper-masculinity. Famous pastors on every conceivable spectrum of masculinity have crashed and burned.

Pastors are people, and people are sinful. When pastors become celebrities, they are subject to the same temptations as all celebrities (with the added bonus of sometimes-titanic egos.) That’s no excuse.

But I will agree with Bruenig’s attack on “macho Christianity” to one, limited extent: When anything becomes a gimmicky modifier to Christianity, it’s problematic — whether it’s self-conscious masculinity, self-conscious hipsterism, self-conscious femininity, or self-conscious activism. The Evangelical world is prone to gimmickry, with celebrity pastors bringing their fresh take and unique style — often building huge followings.

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