Big Boys Don't Go to Church
Leon J. Podles
October 1, 1995
Men stay away from church in droves. All the Christian churches in the Americas and in Western Europe (with the possible exception of the Orthodox) have congregations that are predominantly female, and, apart from the clergy, the most active members of the churches are female. To be masculine and to be religious are, if not contradictory, at least difficult to reconcile. What is it about masculinity that keeps men from the Christian churches? What is it about the churches that repels men? What, if anything, can be done about it?
A preoccupation with expanding roles for women in the church has distracted us from the absence of men. The absence is not new. When Cotton Mather in the seventeenth century surveyed his congregations, he concluded, "Indeed, there are more Women than Men, in the Church," and sociologists have documented this disproportion down to the present in all churches. The Jesuit James Fichter asked, "Are males really less religious than females?" and concluded "they are, and this appears to be true for all the Christian churches, denominations, and sects in western civilization." About the Catholic situation Kenneth Guentert decided: "The Roman Catholic Church has a rather rigid division of labor. The men have the priesthood. The women have everything else." In analyzing recent polling data, George Gallup and Jim Castelli found that women "continue to place a higher value on religious involvement and to be more active in religious activities than men." Ed Wilcock complained that "the average Catholic man considers religion a thing for women and children," and this applies to the average Protestant as well.
Called to Separation
Unlike the Christian churches, the Jews, eastern religions, and possibly the Eastern ...
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