How Do You Co-Create A Show? Like This. Part Two of Our Conversation on Toxic Masculinity with a Live Audience

How much fun to co-create! How much fun to collaborate in thoughtful conversation!

Today’s show is a little shorter than our usual shows. It’s part two of a conversation that What In God’s Name facilitated on February 23rd, in Pembroke, New Hampshire. Our topic was one we have tackled before: toxic masculinity. It’s a topic that touches on many issues in our culture, and often in our news, today.

The nature of the gathering and the make-up of the group naturally led to a more Christian-centered conversation than usual. For our non-Christian listeners, it would be interesting to hear what resonates with you from this show, and what repels.

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Here are timecodes to help you navigate through today’s show:

01:49    In a short recap from Part One, we lead this show with Chris’s question: can Christian theology help us think about what is healthy masculinity/healthy femininity? Joyce from Dunbarton, NH, responds by inviting us to think of Biblical images of a nurturing God—the quality of supporting and feeding and strengthening the life of others.

02:52    Shayna shares her perspective that what makes for toxic masculinity or toxic femininity is when we feel unfree; when societal expectations, or messages within the family of origin about what is acceptable and what is shameful, constrict our range in expressing our gender. What is God’s relationship to wholeness and individual authenticity? Are there any spiritual dangers here?

04:22    David from South Newbury reminds us of the ambiguous nature of many of the men depicted in the Hebrew Scriptures, from Abraham through David. Is Scripture—by giving us some negative examples—pointing us to a more temperate, thoughtful, sensitive, ethically grounded vision of manhood?

06:00    Chris invites reflections on a theology of power as we find it in the New Testament.

06:22    Maureen of Amherst reflects on the ways that Jesus always lifted up the powerless, living out what he received from his mother Mary, and her faith as expressed in the Magnificat. Does Jesus give us the model of what a man ought to be?

08:49    Is a rule of American male culture that if someone “gets in your face,” that the proper response is to “get back in their face?” Do men express aggression more physically than women? If so, is this biologically-based, or nurture-based, or both?

09:38    Gail from Jackson reminds us that everyone in the recorded conversation is white, and that our understanding of masculinity and femininity is coming from inside one context only.

11:08    What In God’s Name is having a funding campaign: support the core values of curiosity, depth, and shining light into the public conversation by going to our website www.whatingods.com, and making a donation through Patreon, or through Filmmakers Collaborative.

12:48    Christine from Ossipee shares her reflections on working in a construction company. Talk is cheap; deeds mean something. Show people that you can do your job, and treat people good.