(RNS) — The legions of dudes who crowded into the Nice Southern Financial institution Enviornment in Springfield, Missouri, for the latest Stronger Men’s Conference, sponsored by a Pentecostal megachurch, had been handled to a monster truck, a boxing match, pyrotechnics and a standoff between a pair of celeb pastors.
Ladies who attend James River Church’s girls’s annual convention later this 12 months, in contrast, will get what looks like a Holy Spirit Barbie party.
A promo for the boys’s convention begins with photos of a roaring bike, a wrestling match and a shouting preacher pacing throughout the stage like a lion, urging males to get able to battle. The promo for the ladies’s video begins with the picture of a pink record participant, adopted by the voice of the late televangelist Kathryn Kuhlman, urging girls to provide their worship to God — then breaks to scenes of joyful girls wearing fashionable pink, dancing with pleasure as balloons and confetti fall from the sky.
The 2 conferences reveal each the showmanship of charismatic megachurch worship and the rival messages given to women and men. Males are warriors full of fireplace and vinegar, whereas girls are icons of femininity — dressed to the nines and anxious with constructing a cheerful house for his or her husbands.
The James River Stronger Males’s Convention made nationwide headlines not too long ago and launched viral movies over the inclusion of an act by Alex Magala, an acrobat and sword swallower who has appeared on “America’s Acquired Expertise” and has had a facet hustle as a dancer at clubs.
After Magala’s efficiency on the convention, Mark Driscoll, the previous pastor of Seattle’s Mars Hill Church who has reinvented himself as a Pentecostal preacher in Arizona, denounced Magala from the stage, saying his efficiency was homoerotic and an indication of pagan worship and a “Jezebel spirit.” (Jezebel is the title of a biblical queen and the enemy of the prophet Elijah whose title is usually invoked to denounce somebody as a temptress.)
In response, James River pastor John Lindell kicked Driscoll off the stage.
“You might be completed,” Lindell mentioned. The 2 later appeared to mend fences throughout the convention however any truce was short-lived, with the church sending the media hyperlinks to a video of Lindell calling Driscoll to repent. As of Wednesday (April 24), the link is now not public however clips of the decision to repentance are still posted on YouTube.com.
A spokesperson for the church didn’t reply to repeated requests for remark.
The dust-up between Lindell and Driscoll had all of the earmarks of a pro-wrestling-style feud, resulting in hypothesis that it had been staged — an accusation fueled by Driscoll promoting his book, “New Days, Previous Demons,” which warns that an “evil Jezebel spirit is destroying America,” after the convention.
Driscoll, who once paid his method onto the New York Occasions bestseller listing and crashed a John MacArthur convention to advertise one other of his books, is thought for his preaching about hypermasculinity and his willingness to criticize fellow pastors.
Scholar and creator Jessica Johnson is amongst those that are skeptical of the controversy over Driscoll’s look on the Stronger Males’s Convention.
“Realizing that Driscoll is the promotional grasp that he’s, it simply had very a lot a wrestling sort of really feel to it — the place the entire thing was staged,” mentioned Johnson, creator of “Biblical Porn,” a study of Driscoll’s former evangelical empire on the now-defunct Mars Hill Church in Seattle.
Johnson mentioned the gendered conferences at James River Church replicate a theology the place males are aggressive and in cost and girls are each joyful and submissive. She discovered the promo for the ladies extra disturbing than the spectacle of the boys’s convention as a result of it despatched the message that ladies’s solely function is to worship and be feminine — whereas leaving all of the management to the boys.
“I imply, what had been these girls doing aside from dancing?” she mentioned.
Dan Mathewson, a professor of faith at Wofford Faculty in Spartanburg, South Carolina, mentioned that regardless of its resemblance to professional wrestling, Driscoll’s conduct at Stronger Males was seemingly not an act.
“That’s Driscoll being Driscoll,” mentioned Mathewson — who had a facet gig as a masked wrestler named Mr. Canada whereas studying the ties between faith and wrestling. “That’s simply who he’s.”
Mathewson, who retains his sequined purple and white masks in his workplace, mentioned the James River conferences reveal the significance of Pentecostal and charismatic faith in American life. He worries that nobody pays consideration to church buildings like James River till one thing loopy occurs.
Spectacle, he mentioned, is a traditional a part of their world.
“The power in American Christianity proper now could be on this nook of evangelicalism,” he mentioned. “The tales you learn within the information are concerning the decline of American Christianity, which is true in mainline Christianity, and even evangelicalism. However when one thing like this occurs, everybody wonders, ‘What simply occurred?’”
Mike Prince, a former Assemblies of God youth pastor, worries that could be a dangerous factor. Prince mentioned he attended the Stronger Males’s Convention from 2017 to 2019 after his spouse signed him up for the occasion — she’d attended the ladies’s convention for years.
Prince described the occasion as a circus, designed to be sure that nobody was ever bored. However in some unspecified time in the future, he mentioned, the occasion overshadowed the message.
“If you wish to attain the misplaced,” he mentioned, “the entire distraction from the spectacle does precisely the alternative. The spectacle utterly overshadows the reality you’re attempting to get individuals to listen to.”
Evangelical creator and Bible teacher Hannah Anderson sees one thing extra within the James River Designed for Life girls’s convention than meets the attention. The video for the convention — very like the latest “Barbie” summer season blockbuster film that satirized gender roles — could also be about empowering girls, not limiting them, she argued.
“It seems to be like a promo for a Barbie film,” mentioned Anderson. “All the pieces may be very comfortable and female and completely satisfied and emotional. However Barbie can be an icon of empowerment for ladies on the earth. And as I watched the promo, it felt extra like, right here, girls are being empowered to know their true selves by way of realizing God.”
Anderson identified that James River Church, which hosts each conferences, is an Assemblies of God congregation with a female co-pastor and has featured women preachers up to now — not like different evangelical church buildings, like these of the Southern Baptist Conference, which bans girls pastors. Fairly than being shunted into the background, girls at church buildings like James River share the highlight, mentioned Anderson, and could be empowered as leaders.
“Ladies are displaying up remarkably empowered by way of their spirituality and their giftedness,” she mentioned. “And they’re taking over area within the room.”
Katie McCoy, director of girls’s ministry for the Baptist Basic Conference of Texas, mentioned there may be nothing unsuitable with selling a convention for ladies in a method that appears enjoyable or aesthetically pleasing.
“But it surely must be the icing on the cake and never your meat and potatoes,” she mentioned.
Creator of “To Be a Girl,” McCoy mentioned she understands why conferences for women and men are marketed in another way. However each, she mentioned, ought to give attention to non secular development moderately than a efficiency that overshadows the core message of Christianity.
“We’ve got been introduced from demise to life,” she mentioned. “We’ve got one thing that’s remodeling us from the within out by the Holy Spirit residing. Is that boring? Is the resurrection simply sort of passé?”
McCoy mentioned that conferences usually ask girls to devour Christian content material and experiences, moderately than rising spiritually. The thought is to make spirituality simple, moderately than one thing that requires effort and dedication. Sadly, she mentioned, that may ship a message that Christian discipleship isn’t definitely worth the effort.
When she asks girls what they consider once they hear the phrases “girls’s ministry,” phrases like non secular development or studying concerning the Bible don’t come to thoughts first.
“My favourite reply is, ‘Robust fragrance and casseroles,’” she mentioned.
McCoy mentioned some conferences have moved away from a shopper mannequin of girls’s ministry to 1 centered on studying and empowering girls to take part in church.
“Ladies are on the lookout for a spot to contribute,” she mentioned. “And one of many tragedies is that they don’t all the time discover it inside their native church.”