The Masculine Mandate: God’s Calling To Men, by Richard D. Phillips

This sort of book, which I read because I figured it would be relevant to Father’s Day and deal with concerns about proper masculinity and its related issues with regards to relationships, seeks to provide a balance in dealing with two interrelated but contrary social trends. This book quite openly attacks what the author calls the feminised evangelical churches, being influenced by hostile and ungodly social trends that involve the growing hostility of culture to the moral demands of God’s laws, and also attack by name the ideal expressed in Wild At Heart, which calls on men to abandon their responsibilities to others and engage on selfish wilderness quests for identity. Though the author does not go into much detail on the relationship between these two phenomena, they are related. The growing feminization of society and the direct attacks on manhood that go on all over our society (even in the advertisements we see) has led many men to disengage from a hostile society and ungodly institutions and seek solace in the wilderness, while the lack of responsibility of many men towards such issues as work and family has led women to take on a much greater role in such areas of life than God intended, leading to a great deal of stress and pressure and children who have grown up without knowing or understanding proper godly roles and responsibilities.

Reading a book like this is not a pleasant experience for someone such as myself. Although I can certainly commend the author for his intentions to provide balance, it is clear that there are some areas (such as the ignorance of the role of the deaconess in a congregation) that there is a lack of balance that the author occasionally seeks to mitigate by including some areas under the responsibility of both men and women, albeit belatedly. This is a book directed at men, and presumably married men and fathers, to help encourage them to lead their families in a godly fashion. Although the author explicitly states that he does not intend to attack single men, the fact that he spends three chapters early on in the book talking about the role of the man in marriage as a keeper and a builder, as a servant and a lord, as a worker and a protector (these sorts of expressions are used often in the book) and states several times that many men appear to shy away from marriage in their youth out of selfishness and irresponsibility (he does not seem to understand just how wounded many young people, both men and women, are in this present age, as a result of his intact family background), it is hard for a single man who wants a godly marriage but finds the path difficult and unpleasant and largely unrewarding at present to feel anything but attacked by the nature of the book as a whole.

The author comes from the reformed tradition, and as a very macho South Carolinian whose family has a lengthy record of military service as tank commanders and before that as cavalry commanders, the author has a certain mindset that can definitely be termed as traditionalist. Given this mindset, is remarkable that the author spends so much time seeking to show a more tender side of manhood and masculinity that does not cower before postmodern social follies but at the same time does not rejoice in an emotionally distant and “strong and silent” manhood that fails to provide the proper encouragement and love for a wife and children. Instead, the author, within the limits of his background and understanding, seeks to provide a model of manhood that is loving and deeply concerned with involvement in the life of a wife and children, support and encouragement for struggling friends, and a look towards the Kingdom of God that overcomes envy and selfish ambition, while openly showing the need for men to work in productive and godly ways. Those readers who are not offended by the author’s occasionally defensive tone will be able to find much of value here, even if they do not share his precise beliefs in some aspects of life and the afterlife.

The Masculine Mandate clearly places the responsibilities of men within relationships and institutions, first seeking to explain what the masculine mandate (or dominion mandate) means for believers: looking at man in the garden instead of in the wilderness, examining the beginning of Genesis to see the responsibilities of men to work and to keep, looking at man’s sacred calling to work from the beginning and into the kingdom of God, looking at men (and women) as being created in the image of God and also being placed as servants of God and lords over His creation. The second section of the book is focused on living that mandate in the context of relationships: spending three chapters looking at God’s design for marriage, how it has been frustrated by sin, and how it can be redeemed through the grace of God, then spending two chapters looking at how men disciple and discipline children (the author is a fan of spanking under constricted circumstances and the voice of authority, but is mostly attuened to making sure that fathers give their hearts and their time to their children and provide a godly example as well as godly biblical instruction), before looking at men in friendship (which is where this section could have begun, since not all men are fathers and not all men are husbands, but all men have friendships with men and women and can provide godly encouragement to others), and looking at the role of men in the church to work and protect the Church from evil, before finishing with a look of men as servants of the Lord and then closing with some thought-provoking questions for further examination.

Readers of this book ought to expect a work that places heavy but biblical demands on its (presumably male) readers to apply the Bible in all walks of life, from the tradition of a reformed Protestant who views the stories and proverbs of the Bible as rich and fertile ground for contemporary spritual application but who does not have a profound interest in specific biblical laws directly. The author includes a lot of personal stories that help round of his rough edges, and shows a great sensitivity to the desire of others to be godly and manly men who nonetheless do not use masculinity as a cloak for emotional distance or a lack of compassionate care and concern for others within their area of influence and responsibility. For honestly struggling with the balance between divine providence and human responsibility, and for at least aiming at a godly balance between the extremes of this present corrupt society, the author is to be commended, even if he can occasionally show himself as lacking in understanding for the places where his potential readers are coming from, as well as their own anxieties and concerns about feeling and being seen as sufficiently manly men according to the standards of God’s word as well as an often harsh and judgmental society.