"I världen, men icke av världen" : Konstruktionen av kristen manlighet i Skånes Missionssällskap ca 1939-1945

The aim of this study is to analyze the construction of "Christian masculinity" during the modern era. This is made in opposition to earlier research that has claimed that masculinity could not be constructed religiously, that is, without at the same time being constructed as effeminate or anti-masculine. Using a wide variety of theoretical concepts - such as discourse analysis, class, secularisation, masculinity as constructed from countertypes, and finally masculinity as a homosocial construction - I analyze a free church in Sweden, the Scanian Missionary Society (Skånes Missionssällskap), during the period of ca 1939-1945 (the society was a district of the Swedish Covenant Church, or Svenska Missionsförbundet), in order to argue for the standpoint that masculinity, in fact, could be constructed religiously. The primary source is the society's weekly journal Sydposten. The main results in this study can be summarized as follows: 1) The leading men in the Scanian Missionary Society did, in fact, construct a Christian masculinity, i. e. a masculinity whose core values and ideals were Christian, e.g. faithfullnes, spirituality and prayer. In this sense, Sydposten viewed the popular culture as the direct opposite of true manliness, and a source of evil to young people. 2) But, this masculinity was ambivalent, for, at the same time that Sydposten rejected military ideals and the war in general, it proclaimed that a Christian man should have military attributes, such as a military posture. The Christian man was, furthermore, also a warrior, but, he fought for God and the eternal kingdom, thus making his war endlessly more valuable than the earthly soldiers