A too Feminine Church, a too Masculine church... a gender bent church? Kazaky "what you gonna do" and the epistemology of the church.

Deep in our souls are we still able to encounter something like unto childlike innocence or are we just beasts? This is the question, presented lyrically, musically, and visually in Kazaky’s most recent music video.  It is a pressing and important question in any age. In ages past it was a purview of religion. While those religious of us still ask this question, at least upon occasion it may be too visceral for some circles, that it is being asked so emphatically, so far from the church, and by means so foreign to us says a lot about where it is we need to go if we are still going to be actively engaged in the world’s longing for spiritual understanding. Kazaky does not provide any answers, they just seek to engage themselves and others in the question. Here I am not seeking to engage the question at all but note something about its medium, specifically the gender bending inherent to their medium.

Over the past few months there has been a resurgence of muscular Christianity. Posts specifically about how the feminization of the church is bringing about a lack of vocations from young men, notably these are generally in churches where no women are allowed to be clergy. There have been several good responses, and rebuttals, of this resurgence. Direct feminist and profeminist responses to any resurgence of patriarchy are not only inherently good but also inherently necessary. These responses, however, engage only one level of interaction.

The church has been ubermasculized, it is in pressing need of a feminization. Patriarchy has left both men and women adrift and the church must respond to that first by ensuring the allowance of feminine spirituality and then striving to discover a masculine spirituality not enmeshed in patriarchy. To fully engage in these questions we cannot limit ourselves to patriarchy by itself but the kyriarchy of which it is simply one manifestation. Kyriarchy is any social system set that is based upon submission, domination, and oppression. This means that we must learn to ask ourselves not only how to ask questions from a feminine perspective or a masculine perspective but also perspectives that call into question the domination of those concepts themselves.

Which is what brings us to three men with viciously cut musculature in fierce high heels pressingly asking us about the inherent nature of our deepest spiritual selves. I am not sure if any church I have encountered is readily capable of engaging a conversation from this epistemological perspective.  Such epistemological perspectives do exist in our theological libraries but most seminarians pale at the thought of opening them. I do not know how far we are from being capable of actually asking questions from this perspective not as an awkward polemic but from a place of authenticity.

The problem is that sections of society are asking these questions from this very perspective. This is where this conversation is actually happening on multiple and confusing levels. So I wonder how is it that we can create a church that is able to not only continue to rebut the spurious request for a Masculine Christianity that rejects femininity while also beginning to engage those who are asking pressing spiritual questions from a perspective that undermines that very duality.

 
Lyrics of Kazaky “what you gonna do”

I know what

You want all your wish

I know you

Are you child or a beast?

I'll show you how deep in your soul

Just let me go down, go down to your...

What gonna do?

You have to know

I want to know

We want to know

Is it my choice?

You ask me once

You ask me twice

I said three times.