A Metrosexual Religion of Desire

Accusations that Church is feminine in nature are nothing new having been around for yonks, but its gaining momentum again.

A thirty–something theologian brings a contemporary twist to the fray based on the understanding the gender wars are part of a larger cultural war.

He coined the phrase metrosexual religion to describe a spin off Christianity where feminists join forces with hetero, feminized men and homosexuals, mirroring 21st century politics with its identity groups and partnered allies.

Basically he asserts Christianity is seriously skewed.

His criticisms focus on the feminine mindset dominating the Church; subverting it, believing the primary masculine trait of commitment to truth expresses itself through preserving and defending the faith, while generally speaking a dominant feminine trait is compassion.

He stresses the modern church is dominated by empathy to the exclusion of all else, wrapped in a let’s all play nicely bow, while the male imperative to balance things out is ignored.

Ignorance is also a factor with millennials in particular picking up their religion from internet forums and the culture rejecting any theological basis, and adopting relativism in all its forms.

Author Walter Russell Mead writes in a review for the Wall Street Journal asserting “the struggle continues between Christian Republican virtue and the new Religion of Desire.

The word Republican meaning a constitutionally elected form of government not the American political party.

Now combine metrosexual religion with this new religion to get the gist of where this all leads.

The way we were

Up until the ‘60’s and 70’s at least, Christians and non-Christians alike, shared the same moral code.

In most European countries, secular law tracked classical Christian moral codes pretty closely, even though the number of Christian believers was inexorably declining the Christian foundations of public morality and public law remained strong, due a longstanding Christian heritage.

The 1960’s created a global cultural crisis that demanded a resolution — and just like that the Cultural Revolution took center -stage.

The bridge between east and west, specifically Russia and China, was too wide in the cultural sense; the east didn’t just shun religion but embraced an extreme skepticism or nihilism.

Differences between the two sides had to be leveled if the revolution was to succeed so the west’s Christian heritage was the first causality in the cultural war leading to its populations ditching its traditional ethics not far down the line.

The Plan Unfolds

The idea behind the cultural revolution, besides overhauling culture, was to swap the affection for religion with affection for the State making the latter the sole arbitrator of values, and the number 1 object of devotion, eliminating its main rival, traditional Christianity.

Seeing it would be difficult to outlaw Christianity without coming across as tyrannical the next big idea was to change it creating a new religion to fit hand-in-glove with cultural mores instead of religious requirements, turning the counter culture Church pro-culture.

Then came the emergence of an ethic based on the ‘desiring subject’ as the source of all value in morals and of all legitimacy in politics according to French political scientist Professor Olivier Roy.

What humans desire to do, they have an inalienable right and even a duty to do — on the condition that they refrain from injuring others.

This was a genuine revolution in civilization, one whose profound effects, Mr. Roy argues, we have yet to fully understand.

This was more than a change in sentiment, slowly at first and then with increasing force, laws and institutions were transformed by the religion of desire.

The legal and cultural revolution continues today; ideas like gender fluidity represent the progress of a new understanding of humanity’s place in the world.

Nothing could be further from both traditional Christian ideas and the rival European tradition of civic republican virtue than the cult of the desiring subject, but the appeal of the idea was so strong neither religious nor secular practices could stand for long against it.

Under the force of the revolutionary youth in the ‘60's and ’70's old taboos against cohabitation before marriage, homosexuality, abortion and much else lost their hold on the public mind…… and so a new religion was born.