Unmanly
Setting Aside Machismo to Become a Male Disciple of Jesus.
Christians have always been tempted to take our cues from the culture we happen to inhabit, then look to Scripture for confirmation. The pattern is familiar: a cultural account of strength, success, leadership, or the good life gets absorbed as common sense, and Scripture is recruited to underwrite what the culture has already taught us to want. The result is a Christianity that sounds biblical and operates culturally.
Unmanly is a project about that pattern. It uses the current literature on Christian manhood and biblical masculinity as a working example, because the manhood conversation is where the pattern shows up most plainly right now. Men are being told what masculinity looks like, and then told that Scripture supports it. The cultural account comes first; the theological work comes second, when it comes at all.
The Core Argument
The Corrective is Not a Better Cultural Account. It is Discipleship.
The question worth asking is not what kind of man a man should be, but what it looks like for a particular man, in the relationships and circumstances he actually occupies, to live under the authority of Christ. Biological sex matters and shapes how that life takes form. It is not the governing framework. Discipleship is.
What Unmanly is really after, then, is not a position on manhood. It is the slow, theological work of letting Scripture set the terms before culture does.
Resources
Engage with Unmanly
Podcast
The Unmanly Series on Thinking Christian
A series arc working through the diagnosis and the constructive alternative across several episodes of the long-form podcast. Each conversation treats a single question at length, and the arc as a whole models the kind of patient theological work the project is calling for, applied to a single test case.
Study Guide
Twenty Questions: Unmanly
Twenty questions across five sections: naming the problem, what the Bible says about men, Jesus as the paragon of humanity, the constructive alternative of male discipleship, and the church's role in male formation. Discussion questions at the end of each section for group use. Available through the Tailored formation platform.
Devotional
Unmanly: A Devotional Study
A devotional companion built around the central claims of the project, designed for a few weeks of personal engagement with the Scripture passages that figure most prominently in the argument. Available through the Tailored formation platform.
Articles
Unmanly Articles
A longer-form treatment of this topic across a set of articles that extend what the podcast and study materials introduce, with room to develop the theological work the shorter forms only begin. Available through the Tailored formation platform.