Liberating masculinities: a relational theology for wholistic transformation
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Abstract
Despite advances in the study of masculinities and social progress made in women’s equality in recent decades, the social disparities of patriarchy continue and repeatedly threaten to resurge. Among feminist and pro-feminist scholars these disparities are commonly seen as harmful to women, children, and society. Yet practical theologians have paid less attention to how masculinity harms men or to pathways for transforming masculine subjectivity. Nor have they adequately explored the ways that gendered subject formation is co-constitutive with domains of life beyond the personal/interpersonal, such as institutional, sociopolitical, or environmental domains. To address these gaps my interdisciplinary research engages social trinitarian theology, psychoanalytic theory, continental philosophy, qualitative research, and constructive practical theology. This dissertation proposes that a pastoral theology of liberating masculinities grounded in both a relational theological anthropology and in men’s lived experiences can suggest and guide creative practices to foster men’s transformation and to promote the flourishing of all people in all domains of life.The dissertation develops this theology in three moves. The first move is conceptual. In it, I first provide a critical diagnosis of stereotypical masculine ideology (SMI) as rooted in Cartesian, separative subjectivity and harmful across all of life’s domains. As a response to SMI, I then present a relational ontology developed in dialogue with social trinitarian theology, continental philosophy, and matrixial psychoanalytic theory. In this, I show that subjectivity is constituted by its relations in every aspect, whether narratival, material, cosmological, or psychological. The second move is descriptive. I undertake a qualitative investigation of the lives of Christian men who have experienced transformation in their experiences and perspectives of masculinity. Through individual interviews and group discussion interviews, I identify themes from the men’s reports that describe their experiences of transformation. In my analysis of the data, I have identified their experiences as changes toward what I came to describe as liberating masculinities. The third move is constructive and begins by putting the conceptual and qualitative insights in dialogue to analyze the dynamics of liberating masculinities. I conclude with practical wisdom and imagination to promote transformational practices suggested by the men’s experiences. I explore relationships across difference, pastoral care/psychotherapy, aesthetics, and political engagement as practices by which psychotherapists, educators, pastors, activists, and scholars might promote the development of liberating masculinities among their various publics and across all of life’s domains.
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2025