Fred Rogers or John Wayne: Models of Masculinity

Mr. Rogers Day https://bit.ly/3BfOpE9 

Rev. Dr. Douglas Olds

20 March 2022 

“Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.” — Luke 5:10

John Wayne and Fred (“Mister”) Rogers offer a contrast in twentieth century cultural masculinity. Virtus culturally embodies the Latin word for “man” (vir) so that classical virtues prioritized pagan ideals of masculinity: physical “strength, vigor, aptness, power, obstinacy, military talents, courage, valor, fortitude.”

            As demonstrated by Piper (below), some Christians import secularism’s ideas of virtus revealed through masculine agon. Later, in Machiavelli, Nietzsche, and beyond, the taming of the supposed “ontology of chaos” by masculine force continued to be its ideal of gender character.

             A trope is a common device to escape nuance and shoehorn cultural expression into a defined pattern. Piper relates the tropes of masculinity to the surrounding culture in a way that many Christians have idealized in John Wayne (Du Mez 2020). Yet as a representative fantasy of Hollywood, Wayne does not have anything approaching a primary claim to Biblical masculinity.

          The masculine ideal can be encompassed within the character of chivalry, an outdated term that allows for its beneficial recapture and reapplication of meaning without the degeneration toward vulgarity to which more contemporary tropes are susceptible. “Chivalry” derives from the “religious, moral, and social code—the medieval knightly system of courage, honour, courtesy (especially that of a man towards women [and the striken]), justice, and a readiness to help the weak.”[1] None of this is meant to suggest that women are not also called to chivalry. This presentation proposes that men are more in immediate cultural need of its redirecting virtues and hermeneutics.

         Chivalry’s etymology comes from the French word “chevalier” which itself involves working with horses. Gen. 1:26-28 puts a set of crucial questions before us: what is the relationship of a horseman—a chevalier--and his animal (Prov. 12:10)? How do dominion and subduing function in domesticating nature represented in a horse, and do the choices of techniques involved extend socially into the masculine virtues of chivalry? How do we envision or image the act of subduing, as in the taming, of a wild or recalcitrant horse? Does the image of breaking the horse come to mind, or the act of its gentling (Kurutz 2017)? If the latter, what is the implication for dominion and imaging masculinity? Would a chevalier exert his will over an animal by the direct application of violent force? And if not, would his experience of taming his service animal influence his social behavior—his chivalry

            This aspect of God’s activity coheres with non-violent method heuristically recovered in the Genesis 1:1-4 Creation account. Should the surface of the “deep” in Gen. 1.2 rear up like a horse, God’s רוּחַ rûaḥ responds with a “gentling,” such as detailed by the patiency nuance of the “hovering” Spirit.[3] The images of ontology in Genesis 1 support any ideas of dominion over and subduing of nature in non-violent terms. As always, divine activity is a mirror of ontology that includes a karma-like justice where intentions in acts are returned in kind upon the agent (Gen. 9:6; Luke 6: 38c; Ps. 62:12). Living by violence (agon) involves dying by same (Matt. 26:52). And working toward shalom rewarded with the same.

            A chevalier would be most effective handling his horse and in society working within such a shalom. “Gentling” a horse rather than “breaking” it would be the masculine pattern and virtue of chivalry.  Like all redirection of agon, personal acts designed to break are themselves indicators of the cultural cycle of brokenness. The aging warrior David’s final prayer (Ps. 72: 20) reveals that he too comes to understand that dominion (Ps. 72:8) is directed toward wholeness in chivalrously meeting the needs of the weak (72: 12-14).

The chivalrous person like Fred Rogers notices the presence of another where that other could be missed, which is an act of insight and kindness. Chivalry humanizes the social desert by hospitality, welcome, introductions, and modest courtesy. Kingly and impartial priestly chivalry reveals masculinity’s stature in spiritual knighthood accoutered in virtue and rooted in the unalloyed, gentling, non-violent armor of God.

From these considerations, it is clear that Fred Rogers rather than John Wayne embodies the moral stature of chivalry. Rogers is gentle, patient, playful, and courteous with the most vulnerable among us, enacting for their instruction narratives of communal shalom. His mien is calm, his features symmetric and ethics even-handed, his gaze respectful, and his words authentic and guileless. Rogers recognizes in children their potential for greatness and nobility. His chivalry is empowering, reticent, and dignifying.

By contrast, Wayne performs the crude and beefy audacity (Ps. 19: 13; Matt. 23:12a) of an acquisitive, grasping, broken so breaking, militarized and hierarchical society. His façade is dominated by a languorous and skewed smirk that is undissolved by the acidic wake of the raging sword that dies by the sword. Wayne simulates riskless courage from his perch on Hollywood film stages to convey to a gullible audience that courage derives from his non-pareil martial kit and character. The cherry on top of his confected persona is that smirk hammered into a sneer by his squint.  His smirk contorts, like gnawing on a large bone, whenever his mouth attempts articulation. Only ventured to crunch out the bone’s marrow in intimidation and threats, speech is indeed odd and irksome inside the staged peril and big-topped burlesques of counterfeit chaos. A quickly drawn and employed firearm would instead claim the shooting gallery prize of a distressed damsel. For many Christians, Wayne embodies the third-way pagan mythology of domesticated stability wrought by agon. This syncretic mythology sells big time in blockbusters of death-dealing showdowns structured as dramatic comedy—where all’s well is the destined end for the bullet-broadcasting orgiast and colonizing dragon (not lamb) within.

Culture is what is cultivated. We emulate what we admire. If distressed by the surroundings of selfish strife, we may model the virtues of selflessness: courtesy, recollection, reverence, gratitude, patience, moral courage and meekness, hospitality, and accountability to justice that lifts up the weak and oppressed. Culture is changed by individuals. Chivalry seeks the processive and motile dignity of alignment with the divine in its virtues and practices—to pacify the self and to instill in those to whom it reaches out. Men heal through Christ by cultivating chivalry’s virtues, attaining thereby the stature of resolute Christian gallantry, without artifice, that diffuses conflict with the conveyance of non-anxious, non-striving, and dignifying respect and generosity. Such men may then travel outward to heal our culture and world. We need not go along with the mania of crowds with its thirst for, and its prestige accorded to, violence and strife. The gospel communicates through the lives of all who align with Christ to bear the fruit of shalom in their households and neighborhoods.

---

[1] Soanes, C., & Stevenson, A., eds. (2004). In Concise Oxford English Dictionary (11th ed.). Oxford University Press.

“Courtesy” involves social tact and empathy that appreciates another’s tendency to shame and embarrassment, especially those derived from feelings of weakness or inadequacy. Courtesy forgoes eliciting such indignities in the neighbor. Courtesy takes care to avoid unmannered audacity and conveying any judgmental attitude of or remark upon the neighbor’s social and personal weaknesses or lack of such (contingent) things that society valorizes as merited. Courtesy is thus a necessary and foundational norm and mirror for neighborliness (including evangelism) in which positive virtues of generosity operate to build and solidify. Courtesy is a primary virtue in chivalry not natural to the child or to a vulgar man and hence, like all virtues, must be cultivated in habits.

[2] The Fabian strategy turns the other cheek in military engagements, though these appear tactical rather than a strategic posture of non-violence where the enemy’s violence redounds upon itself. Fabian tactics call for antagonism’s harassment short of full-on violent aggression. God’s Aikido seems certain to involve no primary agency of antagonism.

[3] NRSV confusingly translates Gen. 1:2’s Piel participle of רחף as "swept" when lexicons translate the Piel of רחף as “quivering, meaning to hover with fluttering wings, characteristic flying behavior” (Koehler, Baumgartner, et al. 2000, 1220). While Piel Hebrew verbs were traditionally thought to intensify the Aktionsart of the Qal verbal stem, more modern linguistics find that the “Piel tends to signify causation with a patiency nuance” (Waltke and O’Connor 1990, 355).

[“Aktionsart. n. The feature of … language whereby the quasi-objective quality of the verbal action is indicated (duration, repetition, momentary occurrence, etc.), both morphologically by tense forms and lexico-syntactically according to contextual features. Some older grammars used the term synonymously with aspect. pl. Aktionsarten” (DeMoss 2001, 16).]

 The Piel stem of רחף applied in Gen. 1.2 “represents God as the agent and the [wind] as having been caused to be put into the state of” trembling or fluttering” (Waltke and O’Connor 1990., 363). The English translation of “swept” neither adequately conveys the aspect of causative agency (medio-passivity of the divine verbal voice) nor the “patiency nuance” of the verbal aktionsart.