What can we learn from children about being liberated from Kendomland?
This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on April 30, 2024.
April 2024 has been the month when the Kens of the Mojo Dojo Casa Churches came out in full force to flex their patriarchy power in preach-offs.
It started with Josh Howerton telling women to crown dishonorable men as their kings and telling women to stand, wear and do whatever their husbands tell them on their wedding night. Then Howerton claimed it was a joke and gave a joke of a plagiarized apology that promoted male power.
Amidst these controversies, Howerton attended the Stronger Men’s Conference, which features men smashing cars with tanks, shooting fake machine guns, smashing chairs over each other’s heads while dressed up in superhero costumes and confronting one another from the pulpit.
In the weeks since their epic preach-off, the controversy has continued as Mark Driscoll and John Lindell took their fight online to the point where women who work at Lindell’s church are reportedly receiving death threats over it.
While much has been written about these men posturing themselves over women and one another, many who are criticizing these men have said they are acting like children.
As a stay-at-home father of five kids, I know how unbearable it may seem when kids are fighting with one another or trying to one-up the other. But it’s important for us to remember in critiquing patriarchal men that we must refrain from using metaphors that belittle children.
Jesus said, “Unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever then humbles himself as this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”
According to Jesus, those who are positioning themselves as the greatest are not acting like children. Instead, they should convert. And in Jesus’ mind, conversion isn’t submitting to a sacralized power dynamic but is being humble enough to reject the hierarchy of greatness and to become like children.
“Acting like children is not the problem. But becoming like children is the solution.”
Thus, acting like children is not the problem. But becoming like children is the solution.
This means liberation from hierarchy can be learned from children. So to learn more about how children bring liberation from the Kens of Kendomland, I interviewed child liberationist theologian R.L. Stollar about his new book, The Kingdom of Children: A Liberation Theology.
Rick Pidcock: I love how you refer to Jesus as “God the Child.” How does child liberation theology help us experience a relationship with God the Child through our relationships with children?