NEWS FEATURE: The perfect Valentine? A godly man

c. 1999 Religion News Service ST. LOUIS _ Ask Yvette Irby what the top quality of her”Mr. Right”has to be and her answer is simple: a godly man. Sitting over breakfast with friends, who, like her, are single, Christian and African-American, there’s immediate agreement.”If a man comes up to me and he’s talking about everything […]

c. 1999 Religion News Service

ST. LOUIS _ Ask Yvette Irby what the top quality of her”Mr. Right”has to be and her answer is simple: a godly man.

Sitting over breakfast with friends, who, like her, are single, Christian and African-American, there’s immediate agreement.”If a man comes up to me and he’s talking about everything under the sun but the Lord and I say `Jesus’ and he’s looking at me like I got two headsâÂ?¦ the mismatch has occurred,”said Irby. The 35-year-old computer consultant said she’d give the guy her perspective on the weather. But her phone number?


No way.

Her girlfriend Denise Williams concurs.”If I have a man over my household that wants to honor God and the things of God, then he’ll honor me,”said Williams, 41, an HMO representative for an insurance company.

These women bear out a finding detailed in the recent book,”All the Man I Need: Black Women’s Loving Expressions on the Men They Desire”(Gateway Publishers). The authors found that spirituality and religious convictions ranked at the top of qualities African-American women value in men.

Co-author Anaezi Modu said the finding stems from the traditional reliance on God _ especially in the church _ in the black community.”It’s been a unifying element, a source of hope especially for a group that historically has been pretty oppressed,”said Modu.”When there’s no other answers and what is before you seems hopeless, everybody reaches for God.” Modu, the president of an architectural design firm in Rhode Island, and co-author Andrea Walker, a New Jersey attorney, placed a tiny item in two women’s magazines in 1997 seeking responses from women to a basic question:”How would you describe the ideal man?” The winner won a $1,000 prize and the authors got enough answers to _ literally _ fill a book.

Modu said 35 percent of the 1,850 submissions received from readers of Essence, a magazine with a circulation of 1 million catering to African-American women, focused especially on God, spirituality or religion. An even higher percentage made mention of something spiritual.

The co-authors decided not to include the far smaller response _ about 200 _ from readers of American Woman, a general interest women’s magazine with a circulation of 200,000. In those cases, though, spirituality rarely came up.

Why did Essence readers _ from ages 16 to 72 _ concentrate on this particular quality in men, ranking it above compassion, dignity, honesty and even romance?”I think that when we think of a mate, we think of a soul mate,”said Pamela Johnson, a contributing writer and former senior editor at Essence.”We don’t just want Mr. Look Good. We want someone who really has developed himself on an inner level.” Experts say research not only backs up the findings in the book, but shows that black women who link up spiritually with their partners may find more long-lasting relationships.”I think that African-American women are on to something important,”said David Dollahite, an associate professor at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, who has been reviewing studies on the merger of religion and relationships.”A man is more likely to want to stay married and want to stay involved as a father if he has religious beliefs and values,”he said.”There is this kind of mythology out there that religious guys are provincial, bigoted, sort of dominating and so on and it’s just not true.” Likewise, William Allen, a Minneapolis family therapist, said his research shows spirituality helps preserve black couples’ relationships.”Definitely, spirituality is not only important but is certainly a salient feature of relational interaction and relational health,”said Allen, who teaches at the University of Minnesota.

Both researchers said spirituality probably ranks higher for black women than white women, but Dollahite said it’s not as simple as saying one race is religious and the other is not.”There’s a large number of women who would be looking for a religious husband because they’ve grown up with that, they’ve seen the benefits of that,”he said.”If (white women) were asked to list the top three things they were looking for it may not make it … but for a significant minority of women it would make it.” Some of the 350 vignettes included in”All the Man I Need”hint that women have learned over time that spirituality has helped cement relationships.”I now know that the right thing to look for in a man is faith,”writes Dorothy A. Cunningham of the Bronx, N.Y.”Whether it’s God Almighty, Allah or Jehovah, it doesn’t matter. It matters that he believes that God is real and living in his life. It’s a tough and cruel world out there and even Mr. Right has to call on Him from time to time.” Karen Rogers, 45, a friend of Irby and Williams, said her idea of”Mr. Right”has changed from the”Cinderella”image of a man who would make everything perfect that she had when she was less mature.


Rogers, a St. Louis elementary physical education teacher, said she now thinks the average black woman should hope her mate is concerned about spiritual as well as material matters.”I need him to be deep,”she said.”I need him to be as deep as I am.” Bunny Wilson, author of”Knight in Shining Armor: Discovering Your Lifelong Love”(Harvest House), encourages spiritual depth in relationships when she addresses women’s conferences on the evangelical Christian circuit.”When asked the question, `What should you be looking for in a mate?’ my answer is, `Find someone who doesn’t want to break God’s heart because if he doesn’t want to break God’s heart, he won’t intentionally break yours,'”said Wilson, of Pasadena, Calif.

Sarah Thomas, a health industry paralegal who used”All the Man I Need”in a marriage enrichment session at her church, said black women _ and their parents _ often think the black church is the place to go to find Mr. Right.”That has always been the source of finding refuge and finding a husband,”said Thomas, a member and deacon of Elmwood United Presbyterian Church, a predominantly black congregation in East Orange, N.J.

But there’s a challenge to viewing the church as a meeting place: In many black congregations, women far outnumber the men. Thomas and others cite instances where churchgoing women have been greatly disappointed when an eligible bachelor in the church announces his engagement.”Whenever a man walks in a church and they find out that he does not have a wife, because the ratio is probably 10-to-1, everyone kind of looks at that person as a prospective candidate for their list of significant others,”said Thomas.

Allen, the Minneapolis therapist, said some black men stay away from the church because they think it is”dishonest spiritually”to go there solely to find a wife. But, he said, the lack of men in the pews does not mean they aren’t spiritual.”It’s not necessarily because men don’t believe,”he said.”It’s because they carry out their pursuit of faith and spirituality differently.” Although some women have succeeded in finding an earthly spiritual mate, others say they aren’t pining away, but rather, they treasure their relationship with God while they wait.

Williams, the St. Louis HMO representative, leads a singles ministry at her nondenominational church where she teaches that”you can be complete in Christ.””That satisfies me totally and wholly until he decides to manifest a man in my life,”she said.”But the man definitely has to be spirit-filled.” DEA END BANKS

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