The Beatification of St. Andrew Tate

Evangelicals seem surprised their sons give attention to the controversial influencer. Instead, they should be surprised that Tate knows their sons better than they do.

As Jesus taught, demons fill voids. That’s what they do; demons find an unoccupied place and move in. And sadly, evangelicals have left a need unfilled in the hearts of young men. And in that vacant space, social media influencers are setting up their tents.

Jesus explained that unclean spirits, “walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none.” Jesus also explained that demons also enjoy clean, tidy places, saying that they return to tidy spaces, when they “findeth it empty, swept, and garnished.”

Because Christian parents do whatever they’re able to make sure our sons’ hearts are swept and garnished, they are especially prey to those who want to set up shop, corrupting them.

ST. ANDREW

Over the weekend on X, Christian personalities ranging from Megan Basham to Joel Berry have opined how it is that young evangelical men seem infatuated - or at least, interested - in Andrew Tate. Some have questioned whether this is indeed an accurate presumption, but I’ll tell you from personal experience that my son’s friends - and plenty of them in evangelical circles - do indeed listen to and even appreciate the offerings of Andrew Tate.

The first time I heard his name was when at a family event (and all within deeply committed Christian households and clergy or clergy-adjacent) an adolescent boy shouted, “DO YOU OWN A BUGATTI?” The laughter was riotous.

“What the heck is that about?” I asked. I got an earful.

Andrew Tate is an American-British social media influencer who was first known as a professional kickboxer, dating back to the 2000s. He then became a social media sensation, after being booted from the show, Big Brother, thanks to an open rape investigation in the United Kingdom (it was later dropped, as all charges against him seem to inevitably be). Later earning him about 5 million dollars a month, Tate and his brother, Tristan, became webcam model ‘pimps,’ selling women online as masturbatory aids to men across the world. Both brothers have come into repeated tangles with law enforcement, who allege that the two have trafficked women for sex, money laundering, and witness tampering.

The lore around the Tate brothers has a simple explanation, from the perspective of the Tates and those who closely follow them; the charges are a product of corruption within the so-called “Matrix,” the system of international powers hell-bent on world domination and designed to control or enslave men. The Matrix, they preach, wants to emasculate men and stamp-out masculinity, because populations of eunuchs are easier to control or dominate than populations of men oozing testosterone and all jacked-up on Mt. Dew and nicotine pouches.

While I don’t doubt this is true - that there is a coordinated effort among the world’s elite to make men more docile and controllable - it’s more likely that the Tates’ statements of misogyny and apparent confessions of abuse have made them targets for prosecutors.

I researched the cases in Romania brought against the Tates last year, and it indeed seems that “corrupt” is an adequate description of the country’s prosecution. They are, for lack of a better word, tilting at windmills. It appears that, while being innocent of the particular charges brought against them in that case, given what the Tates have admitted to on camera, authorities want to get them for something, somehow, and no matter how (which is not how the legal system is designed to operate). Adding “targets of the Matrix” and “victims of the System” to the Tates’ impressive portfolios of influence, has been a tactical mistake.

Young men hang onto the Tates’ every video and tweet, as they lift weights in their boxers on Christmas Eve to demonstrate their commitment to physical fitness, smoke expensive-looking cigars while dropping N-bombs, and walk out to their fleet of million dollar super-cars (at least ten in total, including a 5.2 million dollar model that had been confiscated by Romanian police) to a post-production soundtrack that overlays the video.

With the laments on X that the Tate brothers have the attention of young Christian men being so numerous, it’s easy to presume that young Christian men pay them attention because they’re Christian. That presumption would be incorrect; the two are Muslim. Rather, young Christian men are paying them attention for a different reason altogether.

EVANGELICAL MASCULINITY

Claiming that masculinity is under siege in the Western World - and has been for a while - is a fair proposition. Of course it is, and if you don’t think so, you’ve not been paying attention. And the coalition of anti-masculinity forces indeed seems to be coming from a Matrix (an interwinding structure from many different sources).

The sociological and psychological establishment has been trying to “fix” human nature, as the trans-humanists always do. They play with the innate qualities of human beings, and especially between the genders, as though with enough reinforcement and shaming, they can file-down and whittle-away masculinity altogether. It is a post-war consensus of masculinity, in fact, with parallels to the ‘weak gods’ metaphor postulated by Karl Popper, who suggested that World War II was caused by strong leadership, self-actualizing nations, and citizenship that meant something. Whole weekend excursions are hosted by shrinks, designed to help men expiate themselves of their masculine qualities.

The men at these events learn to get in touch with their feminine side, how to repent of their patriarchal tendencies, and to hold other men in warm embrace without feeling gay about it. I’m unsure if there are tickle fights.

The education establishment has been in on this attempt to effectively castrate young men since the late 1990s, with those specializing in Early Childhood Education being trained to help suppress the masculine urges of boys, while encouraging the natural feminine qualities of girls. And if boys could be shown the benefits of actually becoming girls, even better.

Believing that the ideal teacher of “healthy masculinity” to young boys are actually female Kindergarten and elementary school teachers, the Cominterns in the National Education Association and the Department of Education spend significant time training teachers to help limit expressions of maleness in boys.

It’s unknown if they’re actually teaching boys to sit down to pee in the public school system, but I assume that’s a thing they do. Just kidding, of course they teach boys to pee sitting down. The reason is because leaving a mess on the toilet seat reinforces the idea that “men’s needs come first.” Think of this as a socially-reinforced version of “shut the toilet seat,” taken to extremes in the public school system. They would have our young boys believe it’s our duty to pee sitting down, because of the patriarchy and stuff.

Of course, it is an honor to be one who “pisseth against the wall” (1 Samuel 25:22). When men are uniquely described, this is one of our finer traits. Peeing standing up is one of the distinguishing qualities of maleness, proving that women can’t do “everything” that men can do. And hat-tip to my dad, who instructed me to ask my feminist 8th grade teacher, who always asserted this was so, if she could pee in a tin cup from 10 feet away. This is hillbilly philosophy in action, which is so unassailable it can’t be disputed.

The genius of hillbilly philosophy is that demonstrating women and men are not identical in smaller ways, is all that’s necessary to demonstrate the possibility that men and women are different in greater ways. And just like that, God confounds the wisdom of the wise, and makes wise the foolish (1 Corinthians 1:27). The sky devils know this too, so the principalities send out Kindergarten teachers to teach boys to squat instead of stand. Wisdom is knowing that small matters are often no small matters.

The evangelical establishment has reinforced the idea that masculinity is a concept to be suppressed, just as much as public education and the field of psychology. The difference between Mothers Day sermons and Fathers Day sermons are a stark contrast. The congregation is admonished on Mothers Day to honor the women in their lives and make sure they take time for themselves, while on Fathers Day, the sermons are admonishing fathers to stop being such worthless derelicts and try harder. Women get praised in the city gates within evangelicalism (Proverbs 31:31), and men get brow-beaten. After all, women are the “bearers of life” in evangelicalism, and they apparently are capable of asexual self-reproduction and don’t need men for this purpose at all.

On the rare occasion an evangelical church honors manhood, it offers mere caricature, perhaps hosting a wild game dinner while bass boats are parked outside to say, “Hey, we man in here. We man the hardest. You man. We man.” It comes across like not even the male pastor really knows who men are, and so like Tim Walz, they put on a camouflage hat and are like, “Look at me, with all my manness.”

Evangelical influencers will often beat their chest, demanding that “Biblical manhood requires protecting women” (usually in the context of #MeToo messaging). Of course, this is true; real manhood does require protecting women, but when this is the substance of manhood, it means that yet again, women are at the center core of manhood (and they are not).

Great pains are gone to in the evangelical church to highlight the vast swath of heroic women in the Bible or in church history, which comes across like trying to fill up the entire month of February with notable black Americans. Like, we got Martin Luther King, the guy who invented the peanut, Rosa Parks, that Olympian that ran fast in front of Hitler, and Jackie Robinson. But evangelicals will have you know this long list of women are all super important to evangelical history, and because men came along and named missions offerings after them, we actually know who they are.

But beyond the hyper-matriarchal messaging in the church, we have a long line of hyper-feminine men to deal with. From Russell Moore to Gavin Ortlund, they post selfies with Beth Moore, surround themselves with celibate sodomites like Sam Allberry, and give young men the impression that there is 100% odds they own Subarus with Co-Exist bumperstickers and a bike rack on the back.

When masculine evangelical leaders are presented, we’re told invariably that something is wrong with them, that they’re too bigoted, too racist, too antisemitic, too wild, too unruly, or too something-or-other to be listened to. It just so happens that masculine evangelical leaders would rather hike their leg on The Gospel Coalition than be seen with it. The evangelical establishment doesn’t have time for contrarians, which all men stand a high chance of being (it’s the same percentage who pee standing up).

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BACK TO ST. ANDREW

When I was a kid, my brother and I were friends with several other sets of brothers in our church’s youth group. The first-time I felt legitimate heartbreak for a kid, was listening to one set of brothers complain about their dad - with no pretense of respect - for coming home from work and flopping his fat self belly-down on the carpet in front of the television, his knees bent and feet kicked up toward the ceiling, spending his evenings watching television until he went to bed.

It had never crossed my mind before this that some boys don’t idolize their father, and even have contempt for their dads, when they feel that there’s a shortage of manhood they’re inheriting.

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To this day, my old friends are fine people and their dad is certainly a fine man. But his objective softness led to a certain contempt from his sons who, struggling in their own adolescent masculinity, wanted a better role model to behold. Young men want someone to emulate that is better than fine, or perhaps fine is the problem, because fine is not far from soft.

When the Papists beatify a Saint, they require a miracle or two to exist in order to perform their black magic, which shows the Saint to be a hero of one kind or the other. St. Andrew Tate is short on miracles, but he’s done a lot of parlor tricks that make him look miraculous to young men.

LACKING OF APOLOGIES

I’d like to think I got in on the “based” fad, long before it was cool. Not caring about what people think, even if it means being offensive, is the heart of so-called “basedness.” But when men like Tate came along, they took what it meant to be “based” to a whole other level.

When Jackie Hill Perry declared on Twitter that “the gospel is not the exclusive property of rich, old, white men” I responded, “neither is the gospel the exclusive property of militant butch black lesbians” (because she is one). Evangelical Twitter then lost its mind, and I was left wondering if it was something I said. But fast forward a few years, and Andrew Tate simply tweets out epithets like “nigger” without a point to be found. He just wants you to know his fingers can indeed type it. Then it gets about 27k likes, largely from young men who apparently appreciate the boldness.

Tate is basically a walking contradiction of anything resembling Christian virtue, which as a Muslim, one might expect. To Tate, greed is good, if not god. His lascivious lifestyle is brag-worthy, and he speaks often of ‘hoes’ and ‘whores’ and ‘bi**ches’ that bear his children. There is no hint of blush from Tate, and that’s not only because of a skin-tone that is curiously dark for a white supremacist (Tate’s father was black, and an international chess prodigy; he mother was white, and a catering assistant).

In an age in which white young men have been inundated with calls of shame and guilt for their heritage, being told that they’re a part of an oppression conspiracy and have reason to hate who they are, Tate provides an alternative. Tate’s a wretch, and Tate’s an ethnic mutt. But because he’s proud of what he is - good, bad, and ugly - you can be proud too, is the message.

If Kindergarten sociologists were able to adequately excise toxic masculinity from boys under their care, and if what was sifted from their souls collected in a gutter like grease in a drip pan, it would put together a creature like Andrew Tate. And not only does Tate refuse to apologize for this, he wears it as a badge of honor.

Imagine the contrast, for example, between what a young man sees in David Platt and sees in Andrew Tate. The former will inevitably sound like he’s laboring to speak in panted breaths, a slight quiver in his lip, the sound of approaching sobs, as he dramatically whispers about starving yeomen in Yemen and fledgeling farmers in favelas somewhere. And then, Andrew Tate pulls up in a rumbling Bugatti Chiron Pur Sport, with an 8.0-liter W16 quad-turbocharged engine, rumbling with 1600 horses under the hood, rolling like thunder. And out gets Tate, shirtless, wearing nothing but kickboxing shorts, and American Badass by Kid Rock blasting from the speakers. Out comes a cigar and a lighter, and two buxom babes greet him on each arm.

Let’s say you’re an American teenage boy. Who you riding with?

The problem isn’t that random teenage boys follow the godless pagan as a righteous exemplar. The problem is that Christian teenage boys are following the godless pagan as a life coach.

The Holy Spirit leads young people to the knowledge of truth, just like the aged. Young Christian men aren’t under any delusion that Tate is to be followed as a moral example. And they certainly wouldn’t look to Tate to explain esoteric truths or exposit Scripture. Rather, they look to him as someone who knows what he wants and takes it. And by comparison, their youth pastor is inviting them to the Lynching Museum and for a quick hike for racial solidarity down on MLK Boulevard. Their pastor’s social media is full of MLB cross-chatter and pictures of new lambskin ESVs, which is obviously a hint to the three church members who follow them on X to get it for Pastor Appreciation Sunday, because they can’t afford it.

John Piper is talking about not wasting your life while collecting seashells, but simultaneously is talking about why God’s cool with pacifism (Piper even said he didn’t know what he’d do if someone broke into his home and was hurting his wife). Meanwhile, Andrew Tate is kickboxing someone in the face. See the problem here?

Chandler’s clip about God wanting the rose is still going around, as Christian young men are facing the reality that a virgin is harder to find than a straight man at Revoice. And then they hear Tate acknowledge what they already think true, that all women are hoes anyway, so don’t get caught up on them. That seems to make sense in the context of the chastity level of most girls in the youth group (so the young Christian men might think).

Why would Tate apologize for any of this? Young men don’t follow him in spite of these things, but because of them.

PAGAN VICE AND GODLY ADVICE

Tate’s wise counsel is not wise at all, and fairly atrocious. Some might even say that Tate’s advice is intentionally sabotaging. He lectures young men on the importance of buying cars instead of homes. And this makes sense, but only if your cars appreciate in value, because they’re priceless Bugattis. Tate advises young men to never buy that home, but to constantly move to wherever they think the money might be, to whatever country, and to just rent their properties or stay in hotels.

I can’t fathom exactly the depths of how bad this financial advice is. It only works if you’re Andrew Tate. It’s like watching a prosperity preacher on television lifting themselves up as an example of God’s blessing, recalling their private jets and mansions, which the television listener can have too, if they just become a television prosperity preacher.

Most young men don’t contemplate that not everyone strikes it rich as an Only Fans pimp, social media star, and kickboxing influencer. But compared to the absolute lack of lifestyle advice from evangelical clergy, at least it’s advice.

The fact is, most evangelical advice to young men is “settle down, get married young, raise a family, and die.” And for the record, this is godly advice. But these things are not the end of adventures, but only the start. There is something between “raise a family” and “die.” Young men want to conquer nations and raise armies, and want to fight dragons and cast demons. They want to save damsels and duel monsters. There’s little messaging for that, because most of the examples put forward by evangelicals have done none of that. They just launch podcasts and write books.

If there is any evangelical instruction on how young men - if they were so inclined - could train their bodies, sharpen their minds, and apply themselves to their maximum potential, I’ve missed it. With young men, our training typically consists of things they shouldn’t do, not things they should. But I see a lot of evangelicals talk about the doors of opportunity to women outside the home, their career potential, and even their future roles in ministry. Perhaps if our pastors would focus less on making girls into men, we could help our boys become men instead.

SOME LIES ARE ONLY TRUE IN COMPARISON

The ultimate question for Christians, so far as manliness is concerned, is why we have a tendency to err on one of the two ditches on each side of the road. On one hand, we have those who claim that male genitals don’t make you a man (we call them psychopaths, which is the technical term). On the other hand, we have those that claim male genitals is all it takes to make you a man (we call them creampuff preachers). Both are in error.

While a man requires male genitals at a minimum, male genitals are not the only ingredient to manliness. Other ingredients are required also, including both physical and moral courage, the ability and willingness to fight (until age becomes such a factor, at which point only willingness is required), the ability to ponder and reason with the powers of one’s own cognition (not separating men from women, but separating men from beasts), and an intense commitment to provision. And more than all this, manhood requires loyalty to friends, faithfulness to spouse, and deference to Almighty God in all things.

These requirements of manhood are completely absent from Andrew Tate, who might be able to beat most men in an octagon, but what of it? So could a wild bear. And Tate might be worth more money than the typical man, but what of it? There’s a German Shepherd named Gunther IV who’s worth 500 million dollars, and inherited it from his doggy grandfather, who inherited it from Countess Karlotta Leibenstein. Tate has a lot of cool cars, but what of it? So does Kim Jong Un, but Kim Jong Un also has a fleet of MiG-29 fighter jets, and Un is a squinty-eyed bridge troll. None of that matters.

What evangelicals need to grasp is that they don’t have to put on the camouflage and do a new, masculine-themed sermon series. They don’t need wild game dinners, like this was a Promise Keepers get-together from 1996. They don’t need monster trucks. The thing about human biology is, it works because God designed it to work. Boys will indeed turn into men if you just leave them alone and take their cojones out of the vice. Stop stunting their growth.

Softened, emasculating evangelical dogma that shames men for anything reeking of manhood is the equivalent of spiritual puberty blockers. Giving adolescent boys a copy of Jesus Calling to read, or putting a female worship leader in front of them, is the equivalent of a bottom surgery.

It should be expected that the same evangelicals who give men female worship leaders to follow (men love trying to hit those high notes) or female Bible study teachers, are completely bewildered why men follow Andrew Tate. It’s not just a matter of evangelical leaders not being masculine enough (although this is largely true), it’s that we’ve been slapping women down in the church, saying, “follow her.”

Real men won’t do it. They may smile and go along, but in their heart, they won’t do it. They can’t do it. Men don’t follow women; women follow men. Not even women want to follow women. Everyone prefers a man for the task of leadership. Denying that is the same type of pathology that allows someone to deny that Bruce Jenner is a man; it’s a virtue-signal, not mental agreement. Deep inside, nobody thinks that.

I would suspect that most young men follow Andrew Tate because he’s the alternative to the Russell Moore clones that lead evangelicalism. Take a look at the new leader of The Gospel Coalition. That guy’s latte-blood content is over the limit, I guarantee it. They all appear this way; soft men with feminine hips, pot-luck guts and passive demeanors. They are tamed, and tamed men are not respectable men. And for every Russell Moore, there are a thousand pastors emulating his softness, right down to his mom jeans and forced, effeminate Southern draw.

We only look to Rambo for a model, when no other model but Mr. Rogers is visible. Most men would prefer to stop somewhere shy of knifing the North Vietnamese with survival bowie knives, no matter how cool it looks.

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