The Church must disciple young men before the manosphere does

The manosphere has become a refuge for emotionally displaced boys, says Jody Goldsworthy. The Church needs to recover Jesus’ model of forming young men through deep relationship into love, not fear 

If you want to understand the crisis facing young men today, you have to begin in places the Church rarely looks.

Not in youth groups or Christian conferences, not in the familiar rhythms of Sunday gatherings or the well‑intentioned programmes designed to keep boys occupied, but in the digital spaces where they gather when they feel they have nowhere else to belong.

Louis Theroux’s recent Netflix documentary Manosphere opens a door into this hidden world, and what spills out is not the rage‑filled caricature that headlines have taught us to expect, but something far more fragile: a generation of boys who have been left alone with their wounds.

Researchers such as William Costello, and psychologists Dr John Barry and Dr Martin Seager, have been mapping this emotional terrain with a clarity that…