Rev. Janet Onnie
June 15, 2025
Reflection: My Grandfather’s Apron
My grandfather was a small, wiry man with a thick head of hair, a slow smile, and an emotional reserve expressed in silence. (Although he did become more animated when discussing the affairs of the church over Sunday suppers.) He was a reader of books and collector of relics left over from the former inhabitants of the Ohio land where he had our small dairy farm. Some of those relics turned up by his plow – arrowheads and empty civil war era shell casings – found a temporary home in his apron pocket.
I vividly remember his work clothes, especially his old leather apron. It hung on a hook close to the milking stalls in the barn. It protected him from the blows from large animal’s hooves. It provided some warmth on the cold days and a bit of protection on the rainy days. The apron had several pockets where he carried tools and the stuff he used to fix things. Occasionally I would find that one of those pockets yielded a piece of hard candy, studded with pieces of hay and tractor oil and who-knows what else. Including the aforementioned relics. More than once I watched my grandfather absently use his leather apron to swat a horse or a cow into its stall. It was so pliant that he could form it into a pouch to carry eggs up to my grandmother’s kitchen. It smelled like the barn, with undertones of horse manure, milk, and cats. It smelled like eternity.
The apron embodied what I used to think of as masculine traits: strength, security, discipline, bravery. But it embodied more than that: care giving, community, service, flexibility, and the sacredness of small things. My grandfather’s apron felt like life.
What Do Men Want?
This is a sermon title fraught with possibilities for disaster. In my twenties I thought I could answer this question with one, three letter word ending in “x”, then go into the closing hymn. (pause) But since then I have met extraordinary men with complex lives and overlapping gender roles, including and especially the man who has put up with me for 57 years. And I have come to see that describing men’s yearnings as simply a longing for sex is pretty demeaning. I think men want the same thing women want: food, shelter, safety, a sense of belonging and being cared for, self-esteem, and a sense that their life meant something. I think the way men and women get to what they want are different. And that’s what I want to talk about. Today I want to talk about sex and religion.
The May-June issue of the Harvard Magazine features an article on “Boys, Men, and the new Gender Gap”. As an aside, I don’t think it’s all that new. I think it’s been there and growing since the second wave of the feminist movement in the 1960s. What is fairly new is that there’s been significant research on why the male of the species is ‘falling behind’.
What does ‘falling behind’ mean? According to the author, Nina Pasquini, it means that employment rate of Prime-age Men – men between the ages 25 and 54 – has steadily declined since its peak of around 95% in the 1950s. The one unifying explanation for this showed that the men that had dropped out of the workforce were disproportionately non-college graduates. Men are falling behind economically, which portends all sorts of social fallout.
For example, you may have heard of the Incels. Incel stands for involuntary celibate. The incel ideology can be complex, with many different subcultures, but it is generally a group of mostly heterosexual men who feel they are forced to be celibate due to women denying them sex that they feel is owed to them. Some researchers suggest that “the incel ideology exhibits all the hallmarks of an extremist ideology”. This includes views around belonging and ostracisation (in and out groups) as well as the development of narratives to resolve the inherent presenting issue. As with extremist ideologies, the out groups (in this case women) are depicted in an extreme negative light and then further dehumanised by the language that is used. All this is considered to be very much in line with supremacist ideology. A representative sample of 900 American males and finds that subjects who hold incel beliefs are 124% more supportive of political violence as an abstract behavior. Forty-five percent of incels are more supportive of political violence when it is put into a specific context. A context like the January 2020 assault on the U.S. Capitol.
The Incel Movement is not the only indicator of male dissatisfaction influencing social structures. I have recently become aware of a theology called Complementarianism: A name for worldview that believes that masculinity and femininity are ordained by God; that men and women are created to complement, or complete, each other. Complementarians believe that the gender roles found in the Bible are purposeful and meaningful distinctions that, when applied in the home and church, promote the spiritual health of both men and women. The not-so-fiction of The Handmaid’s Tale in the backdrop of the nation of Gilead is an example of complementarianism. This notion begins in Genesis in the Hebrew Bible, then doesn’t appear again until the New Testament, specifically the apostle Paul’s letters to the Ephesians, the Corinthians, to Timothy and to Titus.
The opposing view is egalitarianism, which comes from Paul’s letter to the Galatians. Because all believes are one in Christ, egalitarians say, men’s and women’s role are interchangeable in church leadership and in the household. If you think Paul was talking out of both corners of his mouth you would be right. Generally, however, the Complementarians claim Paul as their guy because Paul, in the first letter to Timothy (2:15), cites the order of creation as the basis for his teaching: “For Adam was formed first, then Eve”. There are two problems with the Complementarian viewpoint. First is that there are two creation stories in the Hebrew Bible, and the second one has man and woman created at the same time and equally. The second problem is that fact that the authorship of the letter to Timothy is in scholarly dispute. Many scholars think someone other than Paul wrote that letter.
I have veered into the exegetical weeds on this to show you how easy it is to find Bible verses to support almost any worldview. Unitarian Universalists are egalitarians, although I’m not sure I’ve ever heard an UU describe themself that way. Many of the fundamentalist strands in Christian denominations are complementarians. They seek to preserve the biblical differences between men’s and women’s roles while valuing the quality and importance of both genders. The trouble is this ‘separate but equal’ business no longer flies. Rev. Erin Wathin writes that “…we finally woke up to the fact the “separation” is just used to elevate the privileged. If you teach masculine privilege in the church, that is systemically going to bleed out into other area of public life.”
In the evangelical culture, where many complimentarians reside, family is everything. The main goal for many is to get married so you can have sex and raise children. When marriage and sex are ultimate goals, every relationship with the opposite sex is colored by how it can help you attain this goal. Every relationship that doesn’t pan out obstructs what you believe is God’s plan for your life. Since you can’t blame God or your church, you blame women. There is an indirect correlation between rigid gender roles within the church and toxic masculinity in the culture at large that breeds incels. Let me say this again. There is an indirect correlation between rigid gender roles within the church and toxic masculinity in the culture.
I’m harping on this because I think one of the consequences of the women’s movement was leaving young men without a defined role. Many, many men – including the ones here in this room – have watched their wives, their daughters and their female friends thrive in roles previously filled by men. But some Christian denominations are still fighting it. Outside the religious communities you see female mechanics, attorneys, electricians, accountants, construction workers, airline pilots, and soldiers. You also see male nurses, teachers, and childcare workers. It’s not news that roles are changing. It’s not even news that women still have a way to go to achieve equal pay for equal work. Or to be judged, not by the shape or availability of their bodies, but by the content of their character. What is news is the organized ferocity of the backlash of men. What is news is that the ravings of disenfranchised men on social media erupts into violence in the real world. The world where bullets tear into human flesh because someone hasn’t been told that the best way to insure a sense of connection and belonging and meaning, including sex, is to get to know and care about your potential partners. And to be willing to be truthful about yourself. Which means being vulnerable.
Not only have young men been left without traditional roles to fall into, there is precious little guidance or ritual on navigating manhood or acknowledging male spirituality. Franciscan priest Richard Rohr has written about this, saying “A young man needs a valued group, a community on which he has claims and that has claims on him. This group will send him away, initiate him, and welcome him back. Without this home base, true initiation is unlikely. The group provides an accountability system that forces the young man out of his heady illusions and into concrete behavior.” He goes on to write, “Early cultures did not assume that young men internalized the community values and developed personal discipline on their own. It was expected that these qualities developed only as the result of mentoring and training.”
Researchers agree. Claire Suter hypothesized the “role model effect”. She found that in the few neighborhoods where poor black boys did well, many had fathers at home – and the presence of those fathers was a strong predictor of the neighborhood boys’ success regardless of whether their own fathers lived with them. That means male role models might play a significant role in shaping boys’ trajectories –whether as fathers, teachers, coaches, or others.
But lack of role models is not the only factor. Developmental psychologist, Niobe Way, shows that while boys form emotionally intimate friendships in childhood, those bonds weaken as they get older – not because they lose the need for close connections, but because they’re told masculinity means dominance, stoicism, and independence.
These stereotypes about masculinity limit men’s educational and work opportunities. The expectation that men should be breadwinners, for example, may explain their reluctance of spend time in degree programs that require general education in addition to career training. And the belief that men belong in physical or technical fields – not professions center on people – might explain their declining presence in “HEAL” jobs: healthcare, education, administration, and literacy. From 1980 to 2019 the proportion of men in HEAL professions decreased from 35 to 26%. Helping boys and men think more broadly about their roles in society would have practical economic benefits. HEAL jobs are among the fastest growing the U.S. It is projected that five years from now, in 2030, the country will need 400,000 more nurses and nurse practitioners. Four years ago, a 2021 survey found two-thirds of school districts reporting teacher shortages.
Reimaging what it means to be a man in 2025 and being supporting role models are tasks well-suited to Unitarian Universalists. Our values of Justice, Equity, Pluralism, Interdependence, Generosity, and especially Transformation remind us that we are have a history of breaking down stereotypes and exposing systems of oppression. Here’s my challenge and my prayer to the men of the Harrisonburg Unitarian Universalists: find a young man to mentor. You know how to be men. You’ve pursued careers, loved people, raised children, fought for principles, and been a loyal friend. You have lived long enough to see and overcome all manner of silliness, including your own. You know how to combine gentleness with strength, vulnerability with trust, fear with courage, humility with wisdom. I have come to know and cherish you as magnificent partners, friends, and fathers. This seems like a good day to acknowledge and thank you. And to pledge to you our gratitude for your steadfast companionship, your unique perspective, and your love. Happy Fathers Day. Amen.