Jeff Hambrecht and Mitch Parsons #crackpot #fundie #sexist baptistnews.com
Men-only gyms seek to protect Christian men from lust
To reach that peak, the Christian manosphere believes men need to be in top physical and spiritual shape. So one way they’re proposing to accomplish that is through “lust-free” gyms.
“Why are we men’s only? Who are we?” asks Jeff Hambrecht, founder of Proverbs 27:17 Fitness in Oklahoma City. “In a nutshell, one of the No. 1 places affairs and infidelity occur, cheating, is the gym. Byproduct is someone who had an affair in my previous marriage. Doesn’t work out well for you fellas.”
According to the gym’s website, “There was a season of his life marked by homelessness, addiction and spiritual emptiness.” In another video, he admits, “I had a pornography addiction for almost 20 years.”
Mitch Parsons, founder of Youth Group for Men and Remnant Men in Denver, had a similar experience. “I quit four gyms before I built one,” he says on the Remnant Gym website. “I realized the problem wasn’t the gym. It was that no one had built what I actually needed, or what I wanted.”
“I was tired of having nakedness shoved in my face every time I walked into a gym to train,” Parsons claims. “I had to choose between honoring the Lord, honoring my wife, and guarding my eyes, or training my body. So I quit four gyms.”
Both male-only gyms take inspiration from Proverbs 27:17, which says, “As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.”
Rather than having a gym where “nakedness” supposedly gets “shoved in his face,” Parsons dreams of “a place where Christian men gather, sharpen each other, and are formed under the fear of the Lord.”
His vision is for men to “sharpen each other in brotherhood” and suggests, “Real sharpening requires daily proximity to other faithful men who refuse to let you drift.”