Zachary M. Garris > Quotes

“Christianity is a masculine religion. Men have authority, and as go the men, so go the women and children. Yet we are facing a crisis of masculinity in the church. Men have failed to lead, including our pastors, and now our women are acting like men and our men like women. To recover from this crisis of masculinity, we must start with God the Father. We must start with worship. Christianity has a masculine message of a husband who laid down His life for His bride. But we have an effeminate church preaching an effeminate gospel, proclaiming Jesus as Savior while ignoring His command for male rule in His kingdom.”
― Zachary Garris, Masculine Christianity

“Men must also lead in training their children in the faith. God has commanded parents to teach God’s Word to their children—“these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise” (Deuteronomy 6:6-7). Paul echoes this when he writes, “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4). Notice the instruction is specifically to “fathers” [οἱ πατέρες, hoi pateres].247 Though children are to obey both “parents,” honoring both father and mother (the Fifth Commandment), fathers have a special responsibility to raise children in the Christian faith (Ephesians 6:1-”
― Zachary M. Garris, Masculine Christianity

“In discussing masculinity and effeminacy, it is appropriate to address a problem that plagues modern man—the sin of “niceness.” Many men, especially Christian men, just want to be nice to people—nice in the sense of being agreeable and not wanting anyone to dislike them. However, the Bible does not call for men to be nice. Men should be kind and gentle at appropriate times, as these are fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23). But kindness and gentleness are not the same thing as niceness. Niceness is weakness. It is people-pleasing. Niceness is men trying to keep peace when there is no peace.”
― Zachary M. Garris, Masculine Christianity

“Oecolampadius added, “Moreover the woman was drawn out from the side of Adam, not from a higher part lest she be deemed more worthy, not from a lower part lest she be able to be regarded as worth less, but from the side so that she would be at his side and so be his helper.”
― Zachary M. Garris, Honor Thy Fathers: Recovering the Anti-Feminist Theology of the Reformers

“Indeed the mother is inferior unto the father, as concerning the law of the subjection of wedlock: besides that, weaker also in nature and kind, so that she is not unworthily called the weaker vessel of the Apostle Peter.”
― Zachary M. Garris, Honor Thy Fathers: Recovering the Anti-Feminist Theology of the Reformers

“Do you value schooling that honors God and truly educates your children? Then leave the public schools. If we believe that God requires us to provide our children with a Christian education, then we will make sacrifices to make it happen. Surely the Lord will provide to make such obedience possible.”
― Zachary M. Garris, Thinking Biblically About Education: Why Parents Should Abandon Government Schools and Take Back Control of Education

“feminism is an ideology that seeks to flatten the differences between men and women, particularly in the home, the church, and the civil government.”
― Zachary M. Garris, Honor Thy Fathers: Recovering the Anti-Feminist Theology of the Reformers

“Bullinger said, “Let the husband be the head of the wife, to wit, her adviser and counsellor, her ruler and guide, her sweet yokefellow and admonisher in all her affairs, her assured aid and faithful defender. Let the wife be obedient unto her husband, even as we see the members obey the head: let her yield herself to her husband to be ruled and governed; let her not despise his honest counsels and indifferent commandments.”
― Zachary M. Garris, Honor Thy Fathers: Recovering the Anti-Feminist Theology of the Reformers

“Feminism has waged war on the traditional family by undermining male rule in the home and by degrading the roles of mother and housewife.”
― Zachary M. Garris, Honor Thy Fathers: Recovering the Anti-Feminist Theology of the Reformers

“On the right training of the generation now arising, turns not only the individual salvation of each member in it, not only the religious hope of the age which is approaching, but the fate of all future generations in a large degree. Train up him who is now a boy for Christ, and you not only sanctify that soul, but you set on foot the best earthly agencies to redeem the whole broadening stream of human beings who shall proceed from him, down to the time when men cease to marry and give in marriage. Until then, the work of education is neverending.”
― Zachary M. Garris, Masculine Christianity

“It is easy to praise a Knox or a Calvin of the history books. But if these men were alive today, many Christians would surely reject them for being too controversial and offensive.”
― Zachary M. Garris, Honor Thy Fathers: Recovering the Anti-Feminist Theology of the Reformers

“Rather, the church will win people to Christ by being faithful to Christ, which includes standing firm on His apostles’ teaching of male rule.”
― Zachary M. Garris, Honor Thy Fathers: Recovering the Anti-Feminist Theology of the Reformers

“And they have traded wine in the Lord’s Supper for grape juice, which is symbolic of the weakness and effeminacy of the modern church.”
― Zachary M. Garris, Masculine Christianity

“The basic duties of the husband were to provide for the welfare of his wife and children, to protect his household from any who would harm it, and to rule over his family and servants with a firm but just hand.” Ozment added, “Above all, the husband was supposed to rule. He alone was master of his house, the one on whom all domestic discipline and order finally depended.”1 However, the wife “was no maid or common servant of her husband,” but the husband was “father of the house,” and his wife “mother of the house”—“a position of high authority and equal respect.”
― Zachary M. Garris, Honor Thy Fathers: Recovering the Anti-Feminist Theology of the Reformers

“If we want to teach children genuine knowledge and wisdom, we must teach from a Christian foundation.”
― Zachary M. Garris, Thinking Biblically About Education: Why Parents Should Abandon Government Schools and Take Back Control of Education

“Simply put, masculinity is the glad assumption of sacrificial responsibility.”64”
― Zachary M. Garris, Masculine Christianity

“After studying our Reformed forefathers on the family and male rule, Christians must consider whether the modern church’s departure from the teaching of these men has been more faithful to the Bible and has produced a more orderly society.”
― Zachary M. Garris, Honor Thy Fathers: Recovering the Anti-Feminist Theology of the Reformers

“Reformed theology is not limited to God’s sovereignty in salvation or the unity of His covenant—it also provides a theology of the family.”
― Zachary M. Garris, Honor Thy Fathers: Recovering the Anti-Feminist Theology of the Reformers

“Benjamin Morgan Palmer says, “[I]n the Family are to be found both the State and the Church in embryo, perpetuated as they both are, through its continuance, until the end of time.”
― Zachary M. Garris, Masculine Christianity