Men's Bodies, Men's Gods explores the intersection of body, religion, and culture from the specific perspective of male identities. How are male bodies constructed in different historical periods and contexts? How do race, ethnicity, and sexual preference impact on the intersection of male bodies and religious identity? Does Christianity provide models to cope with the aging and ailing male body? Does it provide models for intimacy between men and women? Between men and men? And, how do men reflect the carnal dimensions of power, abuse, and justice?
Bjorn Krondorfer, one of the leading scholars in this field, has collected 35 key texts that have shaped this field within the wider area of the study of gender, religion and culture. The texts in this critical reader engage actively and critically with the position of men in society and church, men's privileged relation to the sacred and to religious authority, the ideals of masculinity as engendered by religious discourse, and alternative trajectories of being in the world, whether spiritually, relationally or sexually. Each of the texts is introduced by the editor and accompanied by bibliographies that make this the ideal tool for study.
Exploring models for masculinity as they appear in major works of Greek literature, this book combines literary, historical, and psychological insights to examine how the ancient Greeks understood the meaning of a man's life. The thoughts and actions of Achilles, Odysseus, Oedipus, and other enduring characters from Greek literature reflect the imperatives that the ancient Greeks saw as governing a man's life as he moved from childhood to adult maturity to old age. Because the Greeks believed that men (as opposed to women) were by nature the proper agents of human civilization within the larger order of the universe, examining how the Greeks thought that a man ought to live his life prompts exploration of the place of human life in a world governed by transcendent forces, nature, fate, and the gods. While focusing on the experience of men in ancient Greece, the discussion also offers an analysis of the society in which they lived, addressing questions still vital in our own time, such as how the members of a society should govern themselves, distribute resources, form relationships with others, weigh the needs of the individual against the larger good of the community, and establish right relations with divine forces beyond their knowledge or control. Suggestions for further reading offer the reader the chance to explore the ideas in the book.
Contributors to this book--historians, biblical specialists, theologians, ethicists, and scholars of comparative religions--examine the relationship between religious tradition and manhood. The essays cover a broad range of topics--from the dynamics of power in shaping masculine identity, to the role religion plays in shaping masculine identity, to the experience of myth, ritual, spiritual discipline, and community in the lives of men.
The International Encyclopedia of Men and Masculinities offers a comprehensive guide to the current state of scholarship about men, masculinities, and gender around the world. The Encyclopedia's coverage is comprehensive across three dimensions: areas of personal and social life, academic disciplines, and cultural and historical contexts and formations. The Encyclopedia: examines every area of men's personal and social lives as shaped by gender covers masculinity politics, the men's groups and movements that have tried to change men's roles presents entries on working with particular groups of boys or men, from male patients to men in prison incorporates cross-disciplinary perspectives on and examinations of men, gender and gender relations gives comprehensive coverage of diverse cultural and historical formations of masculinity and the bodies of scholarship that have documented them. The Encyclopedia of Men and Masculinities is composed of over 350 free-standing entries written from their individual perspectives by eminent scholars in their fields. Entries are organized alphabetically for general ease of access but also listed thematically at the front of the encyclopedia, for the convenience of readers with specific areas of interest.
Since the early 1990s there have been various movements designed to encourage 'masculine spirituality'. All these movements share a concern that spirituality has become too feminine and that men's experiences of the spiritual are being marginalized. The task of masculine spirituality is to promote 'authentic' masculine characteristics within a spiritual context. Numen, Old Men examines these characteristics to argue that masculine spirituality is thinly veiled patriarchy. The mythopoetic, evangelical, and Catholic men's movements are shown to promote a hetero-patriarchal spirituality by appealing to either combative and oppressive neo-Jungian archetypes or biblical models of man as the leader of the family. Numen, Old Men examines spiritualities that aim to honour and transcend both the masculine and feminine, and offers gay spirituality as an example of masculine spirituality that resists patriarchy.
