On this episode of the podcast, I talk with Professor Nancy Pearcey about her new book, The Toxic War on Masculinity: How Christianity Reconciles the Sexes. It’s a rich conversation that draws on a wealth of social scientific and historical research about masculinity. Among the topics we discuss:

• The diagnosis of "toxic masculinity" and when the diagnosis itself becomes an attack on men
• The cultural perception of what it means to be a "good man" vs. a "real man"
• The significant divergence of research findings when it comes to committed Christian men and nominal Christian men
• Historical roots of the masculine crisis in industrialization and social Darwinism
• The significance of the rise of "alpha male" influencers like Andrew Tate
• Counsel for families, parents, and pastors in addressing the crisis of masculinity

Get the book, The Toxic War on Masculinity: https://www.amazon.com/Toxic-War-Masculinity-Christianity-Reconciles/dp/0801075734

More on Professor Pearcey: Nancy Pearcey's latest book is The Toxic War on Masculinity: How Christianity Reconciles the Sexes. Her earlier books include Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality, The Soul of Science, Saving Leonardo, Finding Truth, and two ECPA Gold Medallion Award Winners: How Now Shall We Live (coauthored with Harold Fickett and Chuck Colson) and Total Truth. Her books have been translated into 20 languages. She is professor and scholar in residence at Houston Christian University. A former agnostic, Pearcey has spoken at universities such as Princeton, Stanford, USC, and Dartmouth. She has been quoted in The New Yorker and Newsweek, highlighted as one of the five top women apologists by Christianity Today, and hailed in The Economist as "America's pre-eminent evangelical Protestant female intellectual."

On this episode of the podcast, we talk with Dr. Abigail Favale about her book The Genesis of Gender. It’s a conversation that seeks clarity about contested questions including feminism, womanhood, and gender identity. Among the topics we discuss:

• Dr. Favale's story of her journey from conservative evangelicalism to gender studies scholar to Catholic convert
• What it might mean to be a "feminist" and the distinctive characteristics of the four "waves" of feminism
• A clear definition of what it means to be a woman
• What it might mean to disagree with the gender paradigm while also caring for persons who have adopted it
• Wrestling with the contemporary issue of pronoun use
• What Dr. Favale would say to young women in contemporary society

Get the book: https://ignatius.com/the-genesis-of-gender-ggp/

Follow Dr. Favale: https://abigailfavale.wixsite.com/home

On this episode of the podcast, we talk with Dr. Fellipe do Vale about his book Gender as Love. Gender is a topic of ever-increasing complexity, and that complexity requires a guide who can take us into the weeds with conviction and compassion. Among the topics we discuss:

• What it means to pursue a non-reductive account of gender, that takes the body seriously as well as the ways we live socially and culturally.
• Why it is attractive but also problematic to see gender purely as a social construct
• Why solidarity and justice requires some sort of gender essentialism
• How the category of love can help organize the way that we think about identity, gender, and social goods
• Whether disability is an adequate category for dealing with difficulties in gender
• On what it might mean to move towards "friendship" with our bodies in the midst of the forces of sin and death

Get the book: https://bakeracademic.com/p/Gender-as-Love-Fellipe-do-Vale/516474

More on Dr. Fellipe do Vale: https://www.redeemer.ca/resound/god-at-the-centre/