Young Men Will Disrupt the American Church
Young Men Will Disrupt the American Church
As more young men than women attend church, that will challenge business as usual
The New York Times recently ran a very interesting piece about churches and ministries where the young men now outnumber the young women - the reverse of the traditional pattern.
Ross Douthat followed up on this with some commentary in his Times newsletter. He writes:
Since this is a newish trend, it’s amenable to all manner of speculative interpretations, but two competing ones stand out. A masculinization of American Christianity could be seen as yet another force driving the polarization of the sexes — the diverging ideological and educational paths of men and women that are probably linked to the declining rate at which they’re pairing off. Or it could be seen as a potential answer to that polarization, a positive sign for male-female relations in the long run.
As always, it’s worth reading his entire take.
I think it’s a bit early to tell how this dynamic will play out. To date, much of the reversal of the gender ratio has been from an accelerated rate of abandonment of the church by young women, not some great awakening among young men. There are some intriguing signs young men might be turning more to church, but I don’t think we can say too much yet.
But I do think there are reasons to believe that majority male attendees will have a big disruptive impact on the church.
First, religion is being overlaid on a pre-existing trend of gender polarization among young people. This is a global phenomenon, most advanced in South Korea, where young men are more conservative and young women more liberal. Again, this seems to be mostly driven by a shift leftwards among women, but I think men are shifting right as well.
See my newsletter about South Korea’s situation for a sample of what this is looking like.
Religion in the US is right-coded. So it’s easy to see how this translates into the following, especially under the conditions of the Negative World.
Male = conservative = religions
Female = liberal = non-religious
This dynamic would produce a male gender skew, and also fault lines between the sexes that could have an impact inside the church.
Second, young men coming to church today are pre-catechized by online men’s influencers. The Gen Z man coming to church today is likely to be very different from the Boomer, Gen X, or even Millennial man. Older generations came in with a view of the world and intersexual dynamics that came from traditional institutions. Young ones are coming in with one shaped by the digital world. Even if they aren’t “red pilled,” they probably have at least some exposure to that material.
As I’ve noted before, the church teaches things that just aren’t true about intersexual dynamics. It doesn’t give the straight dope on attraction, for example. It also blames men for almost everything, often completely inappropriately. And it edits out inconvenient facts that don’t fit the narrative.
It’s going to be much harder to do this with today’s young men. Older generations didn’t know anybody, so they’d take in whatever the Promise Keepers or whomever told them. Today’s young men have already heard the “minority report,” and aren’t going to be snowed as easily. They are more likely to know, for example, that women initiate about 70% of divorces, so will recognize it if their pastor fails to mention this fact.
These young men might well also be subscribers to a harder edge right wing politics as well. So similarly, they will be skeptical of the old Boomercon approaches and rhetoric.
The net result could be a more aggressive group of men in the pews who won’t passively accept legacy teachings from their pastors. They might be more apt to challenge them instead.
Third, young men could become the new “customer” of the church. David Murrow wrote a great book called Why Men Hate Going to Church. He noted that since there was such a female gender skew in the church, and an even greater skew in the consumption of Christian media, Christian organizations de facto treated women as their main customer base. Even for married couples, it was usually the wife who determined where the family attended church, and thus where the tithe money went. As a result the culture of the evangelical world was oriented around female preferences.
If the church becomes more male, and those men are the assertive type I describe above, this will put pressure on churches to be oriented more towards their preferences. Religion in the US is fundamentally a marketplace, as many people have noted. If men start being the ones making the decision about where to go to church, either as singles or families, that could have profound implications for the way things are done. And which churches succeed or fail in an era of religious decline.
David Murrow was a guest on my podcast talking about these issues if you didn’t give it a listen already.
Whether or not these exact scenarios play out, a shift in the gender ratio toward men in younger generations would be a key reality churches have to respond to.
Yes, seeing some signs of this in my local church. I'm very hopeful for Gen Z, if we can just keep them from self-destructing over the next few years.
A minor quibble: That 70% of divorces are initiated by women doesn't really tell us much, because divorce can be initiated because the initiator is a terrible person, or because their spouse is a terrible person. Until you know what percentage of the divorces initiated by women are because their husbands are terrible, and what percentage of the divorces initiated by men are because their wives are terrible, you have no idea what the risk for young men is.