The Church Impotent
The Church Impotent

Author: Leon J. Podles

Publisher: Spence Publishing Company

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The current preoccupation with the role of women in the church obscures the more serious problem of the perennial absence of men. This provocative book argues that Western churches have become women's clubs, that the emasculation of Christianity is dangerous for the church and society, and that a masculine presence can and must be restored.After documenting the highly feminized state of Western Christianity, Dr. Podles identifies the masculine traits that once characterized the Christian life but are now commonly considered incompatible with it. He contends that though masculinity has been marginalized within Christianity, it cannot be expunged from human society. If detached from Christianity, it reappears as a substitute religion, with unwholesome and even horrific consequences. The church, too, is diminished by its emasculation. Dr. Podles concludes by considering how Christianity's virility might be restored.In the otherwise stale and overworked field of gender studies, The Church Impotent is the only book to confront the lopsidedly feminine cast of modern Christianity with a profound analysis of its historical and sociological roots.

Why Men Hate Going to Church
Why Men Hate Going to Church

Author: David Murrow

Publisher: HarperChristian + ORM

Published: 2011-10-31

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 0849949815

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

“Church is boring.” “It’s irrelevant.” “It’s full of hypocrites.” You’ve heard the excuses—now learn the real reasons men and boys are fleeing churches of every kind, all over the world, and what we can do about it. Women comprise more than 60% of the adults in a typical worship service in America. Some overseas congregations report ten women for every man in attendance. Men are less likely to lead, volunteer, and give in the church. They pray less, share their faith less, and read the Bible less. In Why Men Hate Going to Church, David Murrow identifies the barriers keeping many men from going to church, explains why it’s so hard to motivate the men who do attend, and also takes you inside several fast-growing congregations that are winning the hearts of men and boys. In this completely revised, reorganized, and rewritten edition of the classic book, with more than 70 percent new content, explore topics like: The increase and decrease in male church attendance during the past 500 years Why Christian churches are more feminine even though men are often still the leaders The difference between the type of God men and women like to worship The lack of volunteering and ministry opportunities for men The benefits men get from attending church regularly Men need the church but, more importantly, the church needs men. The presence of enthusiastic men is one of the surest predictors of church health, growth, giving, and expansion. Why Men Hate Going to Church does not call men back to church—it calls the church back to men.

Sacrilege
Sacrilege

Author: Leon J. Podles

Publisher:

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780979027994

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Sacrilege explores the deep roots of the Catholic Church's sexual-abuse scandal, revealing its full depth and breadth. In horrifying yet necessary detail, former federal investigator Leon Podles surveys the full extent of the damage, showing how victims were failed by bishops, laity, therapists, police, courts, press, and even popes. Examining the history behind today's headlines, Dr. Podles reveals how centuries-old theological errors encouraged blind submission to hierarchy, by making obedience to authority the highest virtue. He also shines a light on the new theological errors, popularized since Vatican II, that glorify every type of sexual expression--including pedophilia. Sacrilege will prove an essential resource for all those concerned with the history and future of Catholicism.

Impotence
Impotence

Author: Angus McLaren

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2008-09-15

Total Pages: 351

ISBN-13: 0226500934

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

As anyone who has watched television in recent years can attest, we live in the age of Viagra. From Bob Dole to Mike Ditka to late-night comedians, our culture has been engaged in one long, frank, and very public talk about impotence—and our newfound pharmaceutical solutions. But as Angus McLaren shows us in Impotence, the first cultural history of the subject, the failure of men to rise to the occasion has been a recurrent topic since the dawn of human culture. Drawing on a dazzling range of sources from across centuries, McLaren demonstrates how male sexuality was constructed around the idea of potency, from times past when it was essential for the purpose of siring children, to today, when successful sex is viewed as a component of a healthy emotional life. Along the way, Impotence enlightens and fascinates with tales of sexual failure and its remedies—for example, had Ditka lived in ancient Mesopotamia, he might have recited spells while eating roots and plants rather than pills—and explanations, which over the years have included witchcraft, shell-shock, masturbation, feminism, and the Oedipal complex. McLaren also explores the surprising political and social effects of impotence, from the revolutionary unrest fueled by Louis XVI’s failure to consummate his marriage to the boost given the fledgling American republic by George Washington’s failure to found a dynasty. Each age, McLaren shows, turns impotence to its own purposes, using it to help define what is normal and healthy for men, their relationships, and society. From marraige manuals to metrosexuals, from Renaissance Italy to Hollywood movies, Impotence is a serious but highly entertaining examination of a problem that humanity has simultaneously regarded as life’s greatest tragedy and its greatest joke.

Losing the Good Portion
Losing the Good Portion

Author: Leon J. Podles

Publisher:

Published: 2020-01-15

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781587315053

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"Few books have explored in depth the lack of men in the churches. Podles' book The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity was the first book-length attempt to examine this phenomenon. David Murrow's Why Men Hate Going to Church was a popular presentation of Podles' material. Marta Trzebiatowska's and Steve Bruce's short Why Are Women More Religious than Men? confines itself almost entirely to modern British and American examples. Losing the Good Portion: Why Men Are Alienated from Christianity explores the causes and consequences of the almost millennium-old disparity between the participation of lay men and lay women in the churches of Western Christianity. Podles considers both the anecdotal and statistical evidence for the lack of men: sermons, church rolls, censuses, and sociological analyses. Podles sees the intellectual roots of lack of men in the Aristotelian understanding of male and female as active and passive, an understanding which has formed all discussion of masculinity and femininity, from Aquinas through Schleiermacher, Barth, and Hans Urs von Balthasar, all of whom saw femininity as more compatible with Christianity than masculinity. Men, according to anthropologists and psychologists, go through a difficult process to attain masculinity and therefore distance themselves from threats to that masculine identity, including Christianity. Men suspected the clergy was effeminate and sexually irregular. Historians of violence have examined the decline in violence in Europe and the civilizing role of the clergy, a role which further alienated men and led to violent anticlericalism Podles examines the presentation of Jesus' masculinity in Scripture and images of Jesus' masculinity in art, the role of thumos in spirituality, and the various movements that have helped keep men connected to the churches. He makes suggestions for possible outreach to men"--

Murder in the Church
Murder in the Church

Author: Chris J. Schimel

Publisher:

Published: 2020-03-02

Total Pages: 246

ISBN-13: 9781647460815

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Murder in the Church is a true, gripping nine-day-long event where parental, marital and personal life mistakes come together to create tragic consequences, after which God gloriously redeems. This book includes twelve profound life-lessons that will challenge and change you.

On Consumer Culture, Identity, The Church and the Rhetorics of Delight
On Consumer Culture, Identity, The Church and the Rhetorics of Delight

Author: Mark Clavier

Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic

Published: 2018-11-29

Total Pages: 169

ISBN-13: 1501330918

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Reading Augustine series presents short, engaging books offering personal readings of St. Augustine of Hippo's contributions to western philosophical, literary, and religious life. Mark Clavier's On Consumer Culture, Identity, The Church and the Rhetorics of Delight draws on Augustine of Hippo to provide a theological explanation for the success of marketing and consumer culture. Augustine's thought, rooted in rhetorical theory, presents a brilliant understanding of the experiences of damnation and salvation that takes seriously the often hidden psychology of human motivation. Clavier examines how Augustine's keen insight into the power of delight over personal notions of freedom and self-identity can be used to shed light on how the constant lure of promised happiness shapes our identities as consumers. From Augustine's perspective, it is only by addressing the sources of delight within consumerism and by rediscovering the wellsprings of God's delight that we can effectively challenge consumer culture. To an age awash with commercial rhetoric, the fifth-century Bishop of Hippo offers a theological rhetoric that is surprisingly contemporary and insightful.

Unfit For Marriage
Unfit For Marriage

Author: Edward J. Behrend-Martinez

Publisher:

Published: 2007-03-06

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Catholic Church of early modern Europe intended the sacrament of matrimony to represent a lifelong commitment, and it allowed few grounds for the dissolution of an unhappy marriage. One was nonconsummation owing to the sexual impotency of one of the partners. Even then, an annulment was granted only after a church court had conducted a lengthy investigation of the case, soliciting testimony from numerous witnesses as well as from the aggrieved couple, and had subjected the allegedly impotent spouse (and sometimes both spouses) to an intimate physical examination. Edward J. Behrend-Martinez has studied the transcripts of eighty-three impotency trials conducted by the ecclesiastical court of Calahorra (La Rioja), a Spanish diocese with urban and rural parishes, both Basque and Castilian. From these records, he draws a detailed, fascinating portrait of private life and public sexuality in early modern Europe. These trials were far more than a salacious inquiry into the intimate details of other people’s lives. The church valued marital sex as a cornerstone of stable society, intended not only for procreation but also for maintaining domestic harmony. Every couple’s sex life, however private in practice or intention, was a matter of public and ecclesiastical concern. Unfit for Marriage offers vivid accounts of marital sex and the role that property, gender, and personal preference played in marriage in early modern Europe. It is essential reading for anyone interested in social history, sexuality, gender studies, canon law, legal history, and the history of divorce in western Europe.

Men and Women in the Church
Men and Women in the Church

Author: Sarah Sumner

Publisher: InterVarsity Press

Published: 2009-09-20

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 0830876332

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Evangelicals stand divided in their view of women in the church. On one side stand complementarians, arguing the full worth of women but assigning them to differing roles. On the other side stand egalitarians, arguing that the full worth of women demands their equal treatment and access to leadership roles. Is there a way to mend the breach and build consensus? Sarah Sumner thinks there is. Avoiding the pitfalls of both radical feminism and reactionary conservatism, she traces a new path through the issues--biblical, theological, psychological and practical--to establish and affirm common ground. Arguing that men and women are both equal and distinct, Sumner encourages us to find ways to honor and benefit from the leadership gifts of both. Men and Women in the Church is a book for all who want a fresh and hope-filled look at a persistent problem.