A Switch in Time

Who gets to define what's proper fatherhood? A church leadership composed of people who are horrified by any sign of male domineering, and always on the lookout for it, always demanding more and more "servant leadership"? That is the practical condition in many churches today. But they won't last long, for they don't like men and won't raise them up. I suggest that "leading through sacrifice" is, in many modern conservative churches, a poisonous idea. The only place it is not is where men are encouraged to exercise their God-given authority in their families while avoiding cruelty and injustice.

In general, to hell with this notion of servant leadership as I've most frequently heard it used—its cash value is "wimp." And you can't make applying the biblical rod to the breech of your son anything other than pain by inserting the equally damnable adjective "loving." Just make sure the kid deserves what he is getting, completely forget the offense once it's paid for, and you've done your duty.

S. M. Hutchens is a senior editor and longtime writer for Touchstone.

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more on fatherhood from the online archives

30.2—March/April 2017

Keep Them from Idols

The Education of Children Takes Generations of Fidelity by W. Ross Blackburn

32.1—January/February 2019

Is Patriarchy Inevitable?

Answers Secular & Religious by Allan C. Carlson

22.2—March 2009

The Good Father

on the Manly Character of St. Joseph by Joseph R. Fornieri


more from the online archives

31.2—March/April 2018

Watchful Dragons

Neil Gaiman’s Brush with Narnia Lingers by Russell D. Moore

33.3—May/June 2020

Maternity as Theophany

Maternal Body: A Theology of Incarnation from the Christian East by Carrie Frederick Frost
Fertile Ground: A Pilgrimage Through Pregnancy by Laura S. Jansson by Agnes R. Howard

11.5—September/October 1998

Speaking the Truths Only the Imagination May Grasp

An Essay on Myth & 'Real Life' by Stratford Caldecott

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