Chapter 1: The Road to Mars Hill
In some ways, this is the book’s most important chapter. It describes the process of how American religious organizations interact with (or against) the broader culture to formulate gender doctrines. Beginning with the upstart sects of Colonial American Protestantism, the chapter illustrates how social structural changes in the wider culture change interpretations of gender to form gender theologies that accommodate or react against the perceived dominant culture. The chapter situates Mark Driscoll and Mars Hill Church in a particular historical moment that facilitated the rise in hypermasculine theology as historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez’s did in Jesus and John Wayne.
Jennifer explains how and why, over time, religious organizations change their gender theologies using sect-church theory and the concepts of tension and strictness. Sects are religious bodies with higher moral demands on their members, setting them apart from the culture at large. This within-group strictness leads religious organizations to becoming exclusive, extensive, and expensive.
Because the group’s doctrines are exclusive, they impinge on all aspects of life, from defining who members associate with to how they spend their leisure time, making commitment to the group extensive. The exclusive and extensive nature of the group makes belonging to the group an expensive proposition, imposing nonnegotiable demands on members’ beliefs and behaviors, limiting activities outside the group. The meaning and identity members get from paying the high personal cost of belonging are balanced by higher personal satisfaction.
Mark Driscoll and his Mars Hill Church encapsulated the hallmarks of strictness with their innovative hypermasculine theology. Driscoll’s gender theology stood in sharp tension to Seattle’s progressive culture. Jennifer writes, “Driscoll’s compelling, contentious, and charismatic persona reinforced a sense of his church’s having the one and only true gospel, creating an energy that spurred remarkable growth. (pg 30)
Chapter One provides evidence of the two predominant gender narratives in Christian history.
The Leave it to Beaver Model of Family came about when the transition from a postwar manufacturing economy to a service and information economy to place. This transition ushered in the gender ideals of the breadwinner/homemaker narrative.
The following three chapters address Driscoll’s rhetoric regarding men, women, and families. Jennifer organizes chapters into two parts. The first part of each chapter analyzes Driscoll’s gendered rhetoric (“the talk”) and then tackles how members of Mars Hill interpreted and negotiated his gender theology (“the walk”).
Chapter 2: Real Men (Don’t Wear Sweater-Vests) analyzes Driscoll’s rhetoric constructing (operative word) “real” Christian men. Driscoll targets feminism and the feminization of the church with portrayals of hypermasculine Jesus and apostle Paul to show men how to be truly masculine. The chapter then addresses how that rhetoric both helped and harmed men at Mars Hill.
Chapter 3: Real Women: Wives, Mothers, and Lovers focuses on how a hypermasculine doctrine constructs roles and expectations for women as “homebuilders” and “helpers” to their husbands. Mark Driscoll and Mars Hill Church tied women’s worth and usefulness to their marital status, as illustrated by their primary roles as wives, lovers, and mothers. The chapter then describes how women negotiated the lived reality of these expectations.
Chapter 4: Real Family: Dating and Marriage discusses relationships between men and women through dating and marriage and the central role of sex in marriage relationships. The chapter discusses the repercussions of these arrangements in helping or hurting relationships.
While co-pastoring a church in Shoreline, I met with women from Mars Hill Church. These women told me stories of engaged couples having to confess their entire sexual sin history to their fiancé and in front of a male Elder. The impulse to engage in this has a goodness to it. Yet, it doing so in an environment that was not safe (professional therapists) is sadistic in the sense that excavating shame to relieve shame (in a misogynistic structure) is an incredibly dark and damaging process.
When I met with them, their marriages were in serious trouble, yet, at Mars Hill Church, they had no agency to make decisions. Instead, their Elder instructed them to be silent and pray for their husbands. As a result, they feel belittled, criticized, and degraded by their partner’s words and actions, resulting in a loss of self-esteem and self-worth.
Chapter 5: Real Consequences addresses the consequences of what it means to be “real” men and women in the context of Mars Hill and explains the success of Driscoll’s gender theology in creating boundaries that helped Mars Hill grow (at least to a point). The chapter also explains how and why such strict gender theology could be so successful in one of the nation’s most liberal cities and why the theology became a touchstone for a growing hypermasculine evangelicalism.
As America (like the world) is in a time of enormous transition and change, Driscoll’s brand of evangelicalism helped shore up a nostalgic view of a Christian nation with strong families by seeking to reclaim men’s power within American Protestantism as a bulwark against social change – the unsettling economic effects of post-industrialization and globalization lead to people seeking security. Religion that seeks to reclaim nostalgic ideas of order by adhering to separate spheres ideology can help men and women feel safe.
We have not seen this affect more significant structural issues – Driscoll’s authoritarian Leadership and hypermasculine theology sowed the seeds of Mars Hill’s destruction, creating an environment where all others were subject to his authority and unable to check his destructive impulses.
Why did “men of character” fail to stop Driscoll? The members of MHC believed in patriarchal authority, with Driscoll holding the position of ultimate authority at the church. The leaders disciplined, humiliated, expelled from the community, and shunned members who did not fall in line.
Mark Driscoll was the Mars Hill brand.
Conclusion: Question Mark ties Driscoll and Mars Hill Church’s gender theology to our current political moment, Christian nationalism, and what it means for the future of American evangelicalism.
Jennifer closes the book with this: Driscoll and Mars Hill Church provided a template to understand how a hypermasculine religious movement dovetails with an increasingly mainstream evangelical movement.
White evangelicals will continue to attend churches like Mars Hill, support pastors like Mark Driscoll and vote for politicians like Donald Trump who promise to “Make America Great Again” because they see the movement as “Making Christianity Manly Again.” (pg 193).
Jennifer McKinney has researched and provided a powerful addition to the literature on American evangelicalism, gender, and white Christian nationalism in the Trump era. Her thorough analysis of Mark Driscoll’s sermons and writings shows a telling picture of his misogynistic theology and view of the U.S. as a “pussified nation.”
I highly recommend this book, especially to clergy. I taught Leadership from 2011 to 2021 at a graduate school in Seattle. Every term, one class was on Gender and the Church. I used Mars Hill Church as an example of how complementarian churches subjugate women to men, and Mars Hill Church was an extreme case. I would get pushback from some students. I would tell them, “Mark my words, Mars Hill Church will be a case study for seminarians one day.”
This book is that.
