How to Love a Ho

On the Spiritual Bankruptcy of the New Patriarchy Movement

To understand complex subjects, it is often wise to start at the beginning. To understand the weakness of the current online iteration of the Christian patriarchy movement, and why it will fail, we must start at the very beginning.

With Adam and Eve. 

You’ve probably heard the story. Heard about how they ate the fruit God told them not to eat. Heard how they hid themselves. You may even have heard that when God asked Adam about it, he said the woman had made him do it, and when He asked the woman, she blamed the snake.

Normally, in evangelical circles, this last bit is taken as a symbol of how loathe fallen man is to take responsibility for his sinful behavior. People talk about this story as if they think the right thing for Adam and Eve to have said is, “Yep, I did it. I chose to do something wrong, because I love doing wrong things. I am entirely responsible and to blame for my wrong actions.”

God does not seem to think that.

If we look at the story without our individualistic assumptions, we see something different. We see that when Adam and Eve point the finger at others, God does not contradict them. God does not demand that they own up and take “personal responsibility.”  

Rather, he informs them of the consequences of their actions and makes them a promise, telling them that One would come from the woman who would destroy the serpent.  Christians have for centuries understood the One promised here at the very beginning to be Jesus.

The rest of the story is as familiar to us as the beginning. We know that Jesus won victory over the serpent and the evil it represents by dying.  Through his willingness to die, he demonstrated God’s love for the world and His fitness to rule.

You’ll see why this is important in a bit.

But first, we need to talk about “hoes.” 

“Ho”, of course, is a slang term for a woman, especially one judged to be sexually improper or indiscriminate. The word is short for whore and grows, not out of Scripture, but out of the rap music scene of the 1990’s . It is a word that reflects not so much the character of Christian doctrine as it does the character of Dr. Dre.

The sullied origins of the term have proved no impediment to its use by some very online Christian pastors in the patriarchy movement. Eric Conn, host of the Hard Men podcast, has shown himself particularly adept at using the term.  In a recent podcast appearance, he used the word to describe women at the gym whose pants he believes are too tight. 

In Pastor Conn’s world, a woman’s choice of attire qualifies her for this level of scorn. Thus does Pastor Conn inhabit a bizarre world in which a woman can simultaneously be both virgin and “ho”.  But, such a contradiction should not be surprising when we consider that the Christian patriarchy movement exists not so much to allow women to flourish as to allow men to vent their rage.

Pastors in the patriarchy movement offer men not absolution for their sins, but permission to rant about women’s. And that permissiveness is profitable. Pastor Conn, for example, has built a hefty following through his Hard Man podcast, posting videos of himself lifting weights on Instagram, and calling women “hoes” on Twitter. 

Particularly, Pastor Conn had a tweet go viral several months ago where he complained about woman in yoga pants. The attention that tweet earned him no doubt inspired his more recent follow up where he referred to women who had made regrettable sexual choices as “well used mattresses.” Such language, no doubt, hurts those at whom it is aimed, but the hurt they experience is, in Pastor Conn’s reckoning, a small price to pay to grow his brand.

Yes, Pastor Conn knows “hoes” when he sees them, and, apparently, sees them everywhere. One might think Pastor Conn would avert his eyes, but no, ho spotting is good for business.

Though he may be able to spot a ho from a thousand yards, Pastor Conn clearly does not know what to do with one. 

Here is where the confusion sets in.

It is indeed the case that many women in American culture dress in ways that might be considered by some to be immodest or revealing. It is indeed true that such choices do not elevate those who make them. What isn’t true is that calling them “hoes” is the proper, loving, masculine response.

The proper response from a patriarch is not verbal disparagement, but a commitment to bear the cost of lifting, not just hoes in their gym clothes, but everyone he encounters toward God.  And no woman is lifted toward God through the tearing down of her dignity.

The proper, masculine, patriarchal response when a man sees someone engaging in behavior he finds troublesome is not to lay blame but to take up responsibility. It was Douglas Wilson, the proto-patriach himself, who said masculinity was “the glad assumption of responsibility for the sake of others.”  Pastor Conn should revisit this lesson.

And here we must go back to the beginning to the promised One who defeated the serpent through loving to the point of death.  At the core of Jesus’ work is his assumption of responsibility for wrongs he did not commit. Rather than calling names, he bore the fatal burden of others’ wrongdoing.

He did so because that is what patriarchs do. He did so because that is what it means for a man to love a brother, the world, or yes, even a “ho”.  The mark of the Christian man is not that he calls out others’ sins in the most public and offensive ways possible. The mark of the Christian man is that he does whatever is necessary to shepherd others heavenward, even if to do so he must die.

Most of us will not have to face physical death in this pursuit, but to love well always requires a renunciation, a saying no, a kind of death. Pastor Conn, when he sees a woman whose dress offends him, could die if he wanted simply by looking away, praying and keeping his mouth shut. Using her shortcomings to shore up his online audience is the opposite of dying and therefore the opposite of love. 

What Pastor Conn does not get is that the moral authority to denounce or even to correct another’s behavior doesn’t come from a title, or from having a large platform, or even from being a man. It comes from the demonstrated willingness to die in the service of love. 

Not long ago, I bumped into a Franciscan Friar at the grocery store as one does. Brother Andre was his name. He was young, maybe in his late 20’s. His faced radiated joy and speaking to him was a pleasure. I could be wrong, but Brother Andre did not strike me as the kind of man who relishes calling women “hoes.”

Brother Andre has zero followers on Twitter, probably can’t deadlift much, and will likely never speak at a cool conference. Rather, bound by his vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, Brother Andre will spend his life in service and in prayer for the world, even for its “hoes”.

He has chosen a more difficult path, the path of death and therefore the path of life. Brother Andre in all his self-effacing discipline may never know the applause of an audience, but he knows, unlike Pastor Conn, that the only way to love a ho is by dying daily to himself, painful work he will pursue in obscurity unseen by anyone but God. 

It is a difficult path indeed to love the world unnoticed.

So difficult, in fact, it makes one wonder who the hard man really is.

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