> Andrew Sloane Case #76 Masculinity

On being a bloke (of a certain kind)

August 27, 2026

Andrew Sloane

I’m an old bloke, now (fairly) comfortable with my masculinity. But that wasn’t always the case. Indeed, that sense of now being comfortable in my skin is largely the result of the ways I have reconfigured my masculinity over my six decades.

You see, I grew up in the western suburbs of Sydney in the 60s and 70s. A time when (my sense and experience of) what it was to be a man was almost stereotypically toxically masculine. Sport (by which was meant football and cricket) and cars and girls and tolerance for alcohol toxicity were the marks of a man (think of the police station in Life on Mars, and you’ll get the vibe). And none of that was me. Well, OK, girls (and the mysterium fascinans et tremendum that being at an all-boys school generated). And I was, in fact, an accomplished athlete; but in my part of the world my sport didn’t count (no one cared about 200m breaststroke in Liverpool district in those days). Still, I had no hand-eye coordination, and even less interest in motors. I preferred reading and conversation to running around and chasing balls and hitting people, so I felt more than a bit of a sissy (you can look up a dictionary of archaic political incorrectness if you don’t know the word). I was far from comfortable in my skin in those days; nor were there alternative role models I could turn to. Even my father and his professional colleagues, for all their interest in art and music and learning, still largely conformed to the stereotypes.

Mine was an uncomfortable adolescence, and I was glad to escape it. So why bring it up now? Because there seems to be, in some circles at least, a hankering after those clear, well-defined notions of masculinity, a mourning for their loss in western culture. In the wake of feminist activism and movements like Me Too, particularly archaic and destructive forms have reared their ugly bearded heads—as witnessed by the bizarre social media profile of a man like Andrew Tate.

But it’s also seen in some theological circles, if, generally, with fewer hints of coercive sexual power. Some even advocate a return to those baby-boomer patterns that (they claim) reflect biblical masculinity. While this is not in the same ballpark as the misogyny of the Tates of this world, the role of theological hyper-masculinity in the rise and fall of Mars Hill has been devastatingly exposed in the Christianity Today podcast of that name.

That disturbs me. Not just because a return to those far-from-ideals would make me uncomfortable again in my now ageing skin (although it would), but because as far as I can see there is no ideal of ‘biblical masculinity’ (or femininity). There are a great variety of men (and women) who are praised and condemned in the Bible. But as far as I can see, they are praised or condemned for the generally human virtues or vices they exemplify, not whether they conform to a masculine (or feminine) ideal. Indeed, Christ’s call is for us to reflect in our relationships his own pattern of love (John 13), something Paul clearly echoes (1 Corinthians 13).

Now, you might say ‘What about the Household Codes—passages like Eph 5:21–6:9? It is true that particular forms of mutual submission are mandated for husbands and wives (and masters and slaves, for that matter). The question here is how much those roles are gendered, and how much they reflect faithful ways of responding to the call of Christ in particular family systems and social structures (again, as for masters and slaves). Either way, husbands are exhorted, not to the exertion of ‘masculine’ dominance but the exercise of Christ-like sacrificial love. If there is an enduring differentiation between men and women encoded in texts like this, it seems to be grounded in variegated forms of love within family and church, not binary patterns of masculinity (or femininity).

What is important are the various ways we as men and women reflect Christ-like sacrificial love. The pluriform femininities and masculinities of discipleship, if you like. And so, for me godly ‘masculinity’ consists in those traits and behaviours exemplified by godly men, not how well or poorly I conform to some ideal of masculinity.

That is not to say that my being a man has no effect on who I am, on how I live out my calling to follow Jesus. Of course it does. And that’s because like every other human I am a fundamentally embodied and relational being. For creatures like us our most important relationships shape our identity and our self-identity. Along with knowing God through Christ, being married to Alison (whose love is, I must say, one of the main reasons I’m now comfortable in my skin), parenting three daughters, caring for parishioners and students, has enabled me to develop some of those qualities that Christ values (and recognise my great need for so much more).

Of course, many of those relationships are mine because I’m a man—husbands and fathers are irreducibly male things in the world. How I engage in those relationships is necessarily affected by my embodied, social self. My relative height and muscular strength, and the hormonal environment that influences them and other physical and psychological and emotional traits change how I see the world and others, the kind of person I am, the ways I conduct myself in society and the world. Similar—and different—effects result from my wife Alison’s quite different relative height and muscular strength, hormonal environment and so on.

But what matters about all of that is not whether particular traits are ‘masculine’ or not. What matters is whether they exemplify Christ-like love. That’s biblical masculinity (and femininity). And that, as I’ve discovered, takes many forms (few of which look to my eye like the masculinity I grew up with), all of them coloured by grace.

So, if you want to see ‘biblical masculinity’ look no further than John 13 or 1 Corinthians 13. None of what you’ll see there is particularly ‘masculine’—or ‘feminine’ for that matter. And that’s precisely the point.

I’m now comfortable in my skin—or at least as comfortable as someone who has such a long way to go on the path of discipleship can be. Perhaps that’s because I don’t worry too much about how masculine I am, but about how Christ-like I am. That’s the kind of bloke I want to be.

Rev Dr Andrew Sloane is Dean of Bible and Theology, and Lecturer in Old Testament and Christian Thought, and Director of Postgraduate Studies at Morling College, Sydney.

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