The years 2022 and 2023 have been great for nuanced books on femininity. Abigail Favale published her Genesis of Gender: A Christian Theory, with a specific focus on women in the context of developing a healthy understanding of gender. Mary Harrington published Feminism Against Progress, suggesting that a feminism that rejects the unique nature of the female body fails to result in flourishing. Most recently, Peachy Keenan published the female-centric Domestic Extremist: A Practical Guide to Winning the Culture War. These authors each approach the question of how to flourish as a woman from different angles and reach adjacent conclusions. Each focuses primarily on women, leaving open the question of how men can flourish. 

A vision for masculine flourishing has propelled former MMA star Andrew Tate into lucrative internet fame, with vast appeal specifically to young men. Tate proclaims a post-Christian vision of masculinity. His recent interview with Tucker Carlson (which as of this writing has been viewed 96 million times) makes clear that Tate has an ethical core rooted in the idea of responsibility, but he pairs that with a determined pursuit of pleasure outside of traditional morality. Tate does not encourage men to marry and remain faithful to their wives; instead, he describes a matrix of conspiracies designed to keep men weak, and encourages men to garner money and power to resist control. Men, in Tate’s view, should use their strength to build their own secure kingdoms. 

Tate’s vision is appealing when contrasted with a cultural lens that views men as alternately foolish and weak. In a post-Christian West, the options for men look bleak: either play Ken to fourth-wave feminism’s Barbie, or follow Tate’s neopaganism and make yourself into an ubermensch. Which way, Western man? Nancy Pearcey reminds her readers that another option exists.

Pearcey begins The Toxic War on Masculinity: How Christianity Reconciles the Sexes by opposing two archetypes: the Good Man against the Real Man. While this framing is a caricature, Pearcey asks her readers to follow her in the ideas. The “Real Man” is a man who seeks his own good, who takes what he wants, and whose strength is for himself. Pearcey contends that this image of masculinity is pervasive throughout contemporary culture and that this is the core of what feminism responds to when authors discuss “toxic masculinity.” The alternative framing, the Good Man, seeks the good of others, lives to serve his family and community, and sees his strength as finding purpose in their good. The Good Man, Pearcey contends, has bad press; he does not get songs, movies, or many novels written about him. The cultural narrative, Pearcey suggests, has no room for the Good Man. Pearcey contends that the health of American culture is linked to men developing a healthy masculinity, and that such development is impossible so long as the cultural narrative of masculinity is filled only with visions of the Real Man.

With these archetypes in place, Pearcey builds her argument through a historical survey. She argues that in Colonial America the Good Man was the normative stereotype. The household economy of pre-Industrial Revolution America favored fathers working alongside children, and being involved in raising boys into men through daily interaction. “The father of a household was like the principal of a school, the lead pastor of a church, the mayor of a city, or the manager of a corporation. He was responsible for the operations of the whole.” Manhood of this era “was defined in terms of duty and service,” and the experiential knowledge of how to be a man was transmitted from father to son through the structural realities of working together. As work moved from the household to the factory, Pearcey traces a bifurcation: Fathers left the home to work, leaving mothers to raise children in the home.

The Industrial Revolution became a watershed in the social definition of masculinity. By taking husbands and fathers out of the home, industrialization created the material conditions that made it more difficult to fulfill a biblical ideal of manhood. Men were no longer physically present enough to be fully engaged husbands and fathers.

Pearcey then traces the effects of this shift, arguing that cultural attempts to reign in “wild children” are connected to a diminished presence of fathers in the home resulting in a generational pendulum swing. One generation focused on women as the moral center which should attract men towards tamer living, and the next generation focused on the need for men to inspire boys towards the good. Pearcey considers multiple episodes that shed light on earlier views of manhood. She analyzes images of women outside bars praying for the men inside during the temperance movement, and discusses Billy Sunday and his “Muscular Christianity.” The founding of the Boy Scouts of America is fascinating as part of the drive to reconnect boys to nature. Public conversation about raising boys across the twentieth century moved back and forth in blaming one sex or the other for problems, with a range of proposed solutions. Pearcey extends her analysis into the present, suggesting that the rise of feminist scholarship and negative portrayals of men and fathers in media, has flooded the cultural zeitgeist with images of the Real Man, ignoring the enduring presence of those following the Good Man model. 

As an apologetics professor at Houston Christian University, Pearcey is attuned to debates about or within evangelical Christianity. Two of those debates became relevant for her book. First, she references cultural voices who connect Christianity to negative patterns in marriage (abuse, divorce, and so on). Second, Pearcey speaks to a debate with evangelical Christianity about whether husbands have specific authority as head of the home (the complementarian view) or whether husband and wife have equality in all ways within the marriage (the egalitarian view). 

Pearcey argues that both of these debates ignore the findings of contemporary social science. She demonstrates from multiple longitudinal studies that the relevant factor for predicting masculine behavior is sincerity in belief. Religiously devout Christian men, defined as those who attend church three or more times per month, “are more loving to their wives and more emotionally engaged with their children than any other group in America. They are the least likely to divorce, and they have the lowest levels of domestic abuse and violence.” In contrast, nominal Christian men, defined as “those who identify with a religious tradition because of their family or cultural background but who attend church sporadically … report the highest rate of [domestic violence] of any group (7.2 percent)—even higher than secular couples.” 

The same trend continues: “Regular churchgoers divorce at a lower rate than secular couples, whereas nominal couples divorce at a higher rate than their secular peers.” Pearcey explains that “The key factor, sociologists discovered, is that [regular church attending] men have a strong commitment to the family as the foundational institution in society. They believe marriage is not primarily about individual fulfillment but about forming a stable, loving home to raise a family. They hold to an ideal of fidelity and permanence in marriage.” Egalitarian or complementarian differences are not statistically significant; what matters, these surveys show, is that men who attend church three or more times per month have a high view of the family and are encouraged to be active and involved in their homes. Church attendance matters, Pearcey argues, because churches are one of the primary institutions that encourage men to be involved in the home. When men are involved in their homes in service and positive leadership, Pearcey sees the Good Man paradigm in action. 

Pearcey closes her book with suggestions for the contemporary economy and an acknowledgment that spousal abuse is a reality, specifically within evangelical churches. Her solutions for the problem of work are one of the weakest parts of her argument. Pearcey makes compelling use of several historians whose work focuses on the family, and offers strong analysis of the role the Industrial Revolution played in altering the conditions within which the family operates. At the same time, her examples of contemporary couples who have committed to reintegrating the home and work are not scalable. She paints idyllic pictures of work-from-home life, without noting the structural difficulties that accompany working from home, or the fact that such positions are primarily white-collar. Covid-19 did not so permanently change the conditions of work for Americans that the Industrial Revolution is undone. Pearcey is in good company when she notes that contemporary work patterns are not ideal for family life, but she lacks implementable solutions. The reader is left convinced that the Industrial Revolution was a limited good, but unsure of how precisely he could change his job. The closing chapter reviews recent cases of abuse within evangelical churches—Pearcey’s heart as a teacher comes out as she writes about pastors and elders whose refusal to admit that husbands could abuse their wives enables further abuse. 

In the final analysis, The Toxic War on Masculinity is a good book worth reading. It contributes a helpful paradigm to needed discussions about what it means to be a man. Pearcey shows that the Christian vision of masculinity contributes to stable marriages, parenting, and communities. In so doing, she mounts a defense against Andrew Tate’s siren call of self-centered masculinity. Pearcey shows a better way. She looks to Christ as the ultimate example of masculinity, arguing that if the greatest man to ever live laid down his life for others, that example sets the paradigm for true masculinity. Toxic War reminds readers that the choice is not just between Tate or Ken; there is a better way. Pearcey provides a strong contribution to the current conversation on masculinity, and a building block for future work on what it means to live well as a man.