Will Moore

Title: In Crisis? Rupturing and Reconstructing Masculinities and Theologies.

This thesis speaks into accelerating cultural conversations around the place of masculinity and its changing status. Offering a theological stance, I argue that the common claim that masculinity is ‘in crisis’ actually reflects the fluctuating nature of masculinities, and perhaps their ongoing rupturing should be welcomed. By surveying the ways in which theological constructions of masculinity have been wounding and sometimes queering, I utilise constructive trauma theology to argue that masculinist theology itself needs wounding from within in order for fissures to occur, through which fresh theological imagination can emerge. Troubling concepts of male power, sexuality, and violence, I resist the rejection of masculinity in theological discourse but offer, instead, its re-conception. Ultimately, in a constructive fashion, this thesis imagines masculinities as ‘in becoming’, enabling transformative potential for gender and for gendered theological constructions that have not yet been grappled with sufficiently through the lens of masculinities.

Supervisors: Dr Karen O’Donnell and Prof. David Tombs (University of Otago, NZ).