The Manliest Men of American Letters

I've been doing a lot of thinking these days about gender identity and the Bible. It seems to me that our culture has a pretty confused sense of what it means for men and women to be men and women, and my gut tells me that the Bible speaks to this in some way. At the same time, most of the efforts I've seen to use the Bible to define gender seem pretty content to wrench ideas out of their historical, literary and cultural context, and just use them arbitrarily to prop up unquestioned stereotypes about masculinity and femininity. Like the time I read in a magazine with a special family focus that the man must be the one to provide for his family, because of 1 Tim 5:8. Or the time I read in the literature of an Evangelical denomination that a woman's role is to provide hospitality in the home because of Heb 13:2.

Thinking about this, I got wondering: who would I include on a list of truly manly men? (And then, since the first two that jumped to mind were from American Lit, I decided to narrow the search down to that specific field.) Anyways, I present to you my list of the Top 5 Manly Men from American Literature.

1. Atticus Finch (To Kill a Mockingbird)-- for courageous commitment to justice. True courage, says Atticus, is knowing you're licked before you start, but you still start anyway. And, of course, he demonstrates this courage, and genuine manliness along with it, in the Tom Robinson case. I wept when Rev. Sykes wakes Scout so she can stand with all the rest of the gallery as Atticus leaves the courthouse after the guilty verdict.

2. Charles Ingalls (Little House on the Prairie)-- for indefatigable resourcefulness. I didn't discover the Little House series until I was a grown man reading to my children. But I'll tell you-- it seems like there was just nothing this man couldn't do. With his bare hands. No power tools. Even his determination must have had callouses on it.

3. Walt Whitman (Leaves of Grass)-- for the exuberant embracing of life. I got a battered copy of Leaves of Grass at a used book store in Massachusetts ages ago. Every now and then I sit down and read as much of it as I can handle, and I always go away with my heart beating a little bolder. "To be a sailor of the world, bound for all ports!"-- the heart cry of a genuine man who is intensely, sensually, madly in love with life.
4. Santiago (Old Man and the Sea)-- for self-sacrifice to a higher cause. My spirit kind of skipped a beat at the end when Santiago staggers up the hill with his mast across his shoulders (falling five times) and collapses in his shack after his long, lost struggle against the sea (arms straight out with the palms of his hands up). And of course, he wakes renewed, soon to face the sea again.

5. Slim (Of Mice and Men)-- for strength in serenity. There's still the moral ambiguity of his "sometimes a guy gotta" line after George killed Lennie, but anyone who can be described as having hands like a "dancing shiva" and still have such authority that not even Curly would tangle with him, counts as a man in my books.

Well, there's my list, for what it's worth.

But here's the thing: as a list describing what makes a man uniquely a man, I don't think it's worth all that much. Sure, any man who could live his life with a courageous commitment to justice, indefatigable resourcefulness, exuberant embracing of life, self-sacrifice to a higher cause and strength in serenity would be a man indeed-- but none of these characteristics are essential and exclusive to men (i.e. things that are only true of men, and without which a man would not be a man).

And "exclusive and essential" is the key when we come to the Bible asking it to define gender, too. There are lots of admirable men in there with admirable characters doing admirable things, but few if any of these traits are essential and exclusive to masculinity.

Where does this leave us? I'm not sure, but I think that rather than starting with culture-coded stereotypes, any theology of gender must take as its starting place the human response to the divine address. A biblical man, then, is a man who hears God address him in Christ, affirming him as a man--and who responds as a man-- "here I am." And a biblical woman, then, is a woman who hears God address her in Christ, affirming her as a woman -- and who responds as a woman-- "here I am."