Dr. Du Mez, chapter 10. Is this the controversy? A little context might help. Who was John Eldredge’s audience? Ans: Men in the suicide belt. Conservative evangelicals rejected Eldredge. Who loved him? The emergent church. Eldredge was a saint at Mars Hill in Grand Rapids.
Eldredge is writing during a time when man in his state had extremely high rates of suicide. If you follow the book sales, they will like overlap. Men in the Deep South did not like the book. It was also hugely popular in Rust Belt and formerly industrial towns. 
Thus might seem counterintuitive but Eldredge was trying figure out a way to reach self-resigned men. To free them from resignation, depression, and suicide. That’s why almost all of illustrations related to men in the nation’s white male suicide belt and others hated it.
The main point of WAH was helping working class men become vulnerable about their “basic anxiety” (Karen Horney) by focusing on father wounds. He’s was trying to create a way to motivate checked-out men. He chose a framework that’s debatable but it really did help a lot of guys.
Here’s a question: why was Eldredge more popular at Mars Hills (Calvin and Hope students) while rejected at churches associated with Cornerstone University? PCA guys hated the book. SBCers hated the book. The emergent egalitarian churches in the suicide belt states loved it. Why?
His framework wouldn’t work in urban settings. But at the time, there was real desperation. I saw it. I was at Mars Hill at the time. I don’t know if “militant” is the right word but it was certainly intended to motivate resigned & lost men (mostly working class).
The college educated white male, generally did not embrace it. Also, Dobson’s book was a Christian response to Raising Cain published in 2000. Nationally we were already beginning to see today’s trends emerge. There was a larger national conversation. amazon.com/Raising-Cain-P…
I don’t know if Dobson was more helpful than Kindlon and Thompson, but the alarm bells were starting to ring. What do we see today? 61% of new college students are female. Suicide is the 2nd leading cause of death for men 15-24. Young men aren’t working about 3M at home today.
Is this the controversy? So the Eldredge book & the Murrow book were also about the tensions between college educated Christian men vs. working class Christian men(but that’s another book). If anyone led a WAH retreat back then what you saw was a group men spending 3 days crying.
*men in his state
Sorry “militaristic.”
*likely overlap
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