This is [likely] the first installment in The Jesus and John Wayne Series, me typing out and trying to make something coherent out of my continuing dialogue with myself re: the tangled messes that are masculinity, feminism, and Christianity.
On the same day Russell Brand riled up a quieting train of thought, I listened to CCM and enjoyed it.
In my Substack feed, I came across an article titled “The Christian Pivot,” which took Russell Brand to task for responding to multiple sexual assault allegations against him by converting to Christianity, and took the Christian church as an entity to task for its willingness to provide cover for abusive men’s reputations: Russell Brand, Kanye West, Shia LaBeouf, Mel Gibson, Donald Trump, etc. The author went on to explore how conspiracy theories and bigotry tended to come packed in with these men’s supposed seeing the heavenly light, but the initial focus–Christianity as a haven where bad men can shelter from accountability–is what’s stuck with me.
Part of the reason is because I wrote about the Christian world covering for one such bad man, Michael Tait, last summer. Part of the reason is this summer I read Kristin Du Mez’s Jesus and John Wayne like I’d been meaning to for the last six years.
And yet, with a 384-page explanation of how Christianity has been warped to justify a host of -isms and -phobias, plus a real-time example of Du Mez’s thesis fresh in my mind, not long after reading the article, I found myself first humming, then singing, then pulling up on Spotify some of the CCM I grew up listening to.
When I think of the headspace I’ve been in, I think of my favorite video game, God of War: Ragnarök, and the character arc for supporting character Freya.
Freya, for anyone unfamiliar with Norse mythology, is (depending on the myth) either the Norse goddess of love and fertility, or an alternate name/identity for Frigg, Odin’s wife and goddess of women, motherhood and the home. God of War combines these characterizations into the character of Freya. This version of Freya married Odin to end a war between the Aesir, the gods who rule over the Nine Realms, and the Vanir, the local gods of Freya’s home realm Vanaheim. Odin and Freya had a happy few years that bore a son, Baldur. Then Freya heard a prophecy that Baldur would die a needless death and cast a spell on Baldur that made him invulnerable, but took away his ability to feel anything. Odin, who was obsessed with finding a way to not perish in Ragnarök as prophesied, demanded Freya cast the same spell, and when she refused, cursed her, stranding her in Midgard and magically robbing her of her ability to defend herself.
In Ragnarök, Freya, with protagonist Kratos’ help, is able to break Odin’s curse and return to Vanaheim. After reconciling with her estranged brother Freyr, Kratos helps Freya on a personal quest: destroying mementos of her hellish marriage to Odin. After destroying two wedding gifts, the duo come upon the last relic: Mardöll, a sword that Odin and Freya drove into a stone at their wedding to signify the supposed unity between Aesir and Vanir. Freya tries to pull the sword from the stone, but can’t. “Asgard holds a part of me I can’t sever,” she realizes. For all of the misery Odin and the Aesir caused her, her family, and her realm, there are things in Asgard she wouldn’t trade for anything: her son Baldur and her sisters-in-arms the Valkyries. Only when she recognizes that something good came from the worst part of her life can Freya free Mardöll from the stone and wield it.
There’s no forgiving or excusing so much of Christian history. The Spanish Inquisition, the Trail of Tears, the chattel slavery system, the Ku Klux Klan, Satanic panic, the conversion therapy movement, anti-Muslim violence post-9/11, the Iraq War, the Church standing behind fascist leaders like Trump, Franco, Mussolini, Putin, purity culture, the sex abuse happening in churches, camps, youth groups, missionary compounds, church nurseries–it’s insulting, to our intelligence and to the victims ground under the Church’s boot, to dismiss all of that by saying “Oh ThEy WeReN’t ReAl ChRiStIaNs.” I believe 1 Samuel 16:7, “…man sees what is visible, but the LORD sees the heart.” I believe that every single person who abuses, rapes, steals, kills, makes the world worse in God’s name has an inescapable judgment waiting for them in the hereafter. But I understand people who don’t, people who leave Christianity behind because of the bigotry, the historical atrocities, the church covering the butts of awful human beings like Russell Brand or Michael Tait.
But Christianity holds a part of me I cannot sever.
It was in church and at a Christian college that I met my closest friends. Some of my most treasured memories are from church camp or Youth Convention. For all of the terrible things done in God’s name, it would be a disservice to gloss over the figures who did God’s will, truly: the MLKs, the Dietrich Bonhoeffers, the Óscar Romeros, the Nelson Mandelas.
A while ago, I was talking on the phone with Brooke, and somehow the topic of the American flag came up. She said that, even though the American flag has waved over some of our country’s worst atrocities, she refuses to throw up her hands and let the white supremacists, the far-right, and the Christian nationalists turn the American flag into a hate symbol. Not without a fight.
I’m one guy. I can’t singlehandedly excise the many poisonous ideas that have tainted the Christian faith down to its deepest roots. But I won’t let the Westboro Baptist Church, the Trump administration, or any type of bigot warp my Lord and Savior into how Richard Dawkins profiles God in The God Delusion: “a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
Not without a fight.
I have a lot of thoughts about Christianity, masculinity and feminism. Today mostly focused on the former, but the latter two will be the topic of future posts in The Jesus and John Wayne Series. Until next time.
Image credit: God of War: Ragnarök
Noah Keene graduated from Calvin University in December 2021 with a major in creative writing and a minor in Spanish. He currently resides in his hometown of Detroit, Michigan. He spends his free time reading and putting his major to good use by working on his first novel. See what he’s reading by following him on Instagram @peachykeenebooks and read his other personal writing by going to thekeenechronicles.com.
