Why Men Don't Go to Church

See this article featured on House2House Online. This article was also cited in David Murrow's book Why Men Hate Going to Church.

It’s that time again. You get that dull ache, slowly growing in your stomach. The tension begins in your back and works its way up to your neck and head. After several minutes you realize that your hands are clinched into fists, so you try to relax them again. Then you realize you’ve been holding your breath, which explains why your headache came on. You reach for the Advil, hoping it will take effect before your condition gets any worse. You’ve come to expect this week after week, like clockwork. Once again, it’s Sunday morning and it’s time for church.

Ironically, the problem here is not that you have some burden of guilt, some unconfessed sin in your life. Your uneasiness does not come from any conviction that you should be doing more for the kingdom. On the contrary, you may be one of the leaders! But that aching in your stomach won’t go away, and somehow your church experience is behind it all. It starts now as soon as you wake up on Sunday morning, and it doesn’t go away until church is over and you do something to forget about it.

Your experience matches that of thousands of men around the world. The immediate causes for the "Sunday Morning Sickness" differ from person to person. Sometimes what the preacher teaches just boils your blood, or bores you to tears. Sometimes you discover that those in leadership do awful things, and no one else seems to notice or care. Sometimes you get under a pile of responsibilities that should not have been put on just one person. Through it all, a sense grows within you that things aren’t as they should be, yet nothing you do to fix it seems to put a dent in the situation. Welcome to the growing ranks of men who are not happy with "church as usual."

Men Don’t Like Church

Generally speaking, men don’t like going to church. "Women go to church, men go to football games," says Leon Podles in The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity. In this thought-provoking book Podles spends more than 20 pages summarizing research and presenting statistics which all point to this one fact: Men don’t care much for church (I would add, unless somehow they get to be in charge!). It has become proverbial that men go to church because of pressure from their families, while at every stage in life they would rather be watching or playing some sport. Women outnumber men in attendance and participation for both Catholics and Protestant denominations, with only a few exceptions. According to Podles’ research, women are twice as likely as men to attend a church meeting during any given week. Podles also argues (somewhat subjectively) that the men who participate are often effeminate men. This lopsidedness holds true for Catholics, Anglicans, Methodists, Presbyterians, Charismatics, and most other varieties of Christianity, with the exceptions of the Eastern Orthodox and the Southern Baptists. Why is this?

Podles argues that men and women shared an equal representation in church prior to the separation of Roman Catholicism and Greek Orthodoxy at the end of the first Christian millennium. He pins the blame for the exit of men on Bernard of Clairvaux, reasoning that Bernard redefined spirituality in feminine terms by applying the biblical bridal imagery of the church to Christians as individuals. Over time the Christian faith turned further inward until the focus of Christian thought came to rest on individual spiritual growth, to the exclusion of a greater vision and purpose in the church. Podles also contests that western Christian theologians borrowed too heavily from Aristotle’s concept of femininity as passivity versus masculinity as initiation. He concludes that this problem never influenced Eastern Orthodoxy so that they maintain a balance of men and women to this day. He then redefines masculinity in different terms and encourages the Christian church to reintroduce certain elements into church life that are necessary to provide for the psychological needs of men. While his identification of the problem cannot be denied, I would like to point out an obvious oversight in his presentation. This will bring us to the heart of what is wrong with men and church.

Why Some Men Like Church

At bottom, Podles’ orientation is ecumenical, so it is not surprising to read that he believes that church did not drive men away before the Eastern and Western factions of the "Catholic" church split apart. But he argues this from silence, pointing out that writers before the twelfth century did not mention a lack of male participants in their worship. He simply assumes that men participated more during the first thousand years of the church. However, aside from the existence of monasteries, I see no evidence to support his idealized claim that things were better for men in the church during the first thousand years. Nor does the modern preponderance of men in the Eastern Orthodox church surprise us, because this tradition continues to thrive among highly patriarchal ethnic groups, and men born into an Orthodox country will automatically report on a census that they are Orthodox by default. The same tendency applies to the religions of other patriarchal cultures, such as Judaism and Islam, who likewise report a noticeable majority of men.

The fly in the ointment of Podles’ thesis is the Southern Baptists. Step into a Southern Baptist church (especially an urban example), and you will often find as many men as women. Why is this? Rather than address this peculiarity of the largest Protestant denomination in the world, he dismisses the whole group as irrelevant because they do not fit his definition of "mainline" Christianity. Perhaps Southern Baptists are too "low church" for his taste. However, we must ask what draws men to a Southern Baptist church so successfully.

A Man’s Gotta Do . . .

As one who grew up in (and left) this tradition, I can easily say: There’s just so much to do in a Southern Baptist Church. They form committees for everything, delegate leadership for numerous and varied functions, and just about anybody can become a leader of something. In a highly liturgical church like a Catholic or Episcopalian church, only the minister and one or two others get to do anything that "matters." In a Presbyterian church, there can be a handful of elders who share leadership responsibilities. But almost any and every man in a Southern Baptist church can become a Sunday School teacher or a deacon, both of which involve the same kinds of responsibilities that are found in the presbytery (and to some degree, the priesthood). Even the ministerial staff of a Southern Baptist church has been expanded to include everyone from the music leader, to the preschool director, to the Business administrator. In short, a person stands a much better chance to FUNCTION in a Southern Baptist church than most other places. No wonder men are more likely to attend a Southern Baptist church than a Catholic one.

Perhaps Podles overlooks this reason for the scarcity of men in church because he is not willing to question the very existence of a priestly hierarchy or a clergy. Instead, he simply observes that the only people in a typical church meeting who assume a masculine role (an active role, by the popular definition) are the clergy. All others must then take on a passively "receptive" role, which by popular understanding fits the feminine role. But rather than wrestle with this fact, he chooses to redefine masculinity along different lines, using Homer and Beowulf rather than Aristotle. While his new definitions provide a complementary understanding of the two opposite gender roles, we need not jettison the initiatory aspect of the male psyche as if we had to pick one or the other.

In fact, men despise their passive role in the church, whether they have been able to label their frustration or not. Indeed there is something emasculating about just sitting, listening, and then going home. Gene Edwards puts it this way:

No wonder men would rather fish, or hunt, or watch the game! These activities provide a small measure of purpose, of action, and of accomplishment, even if that means yelling for your team while you sit in your favorite chair.

What Is Your "Calling"?

So what is a man to do who burns with a desire to contribute something to the life of the church? He can become a minister. That is his only choice. I am convinced that a very large portion of men (and women) in the ministry pursued this avenue because it was the only option available for anyone who wants to participate in the functioning of the church. Most of the clergymen with whom I have discussed the "call to ministry" explain that they did not immediately sense any clear leading of God to become a pastor, or a youth minister, or a missionary. Rather, they felt a growing, general desire to do something important for the kingdom of God, which automatically precludes being a layman! Most ministers and missionaries first struggled for a while with a very general "calling," only to settle on a particular ministry after discussing their feelings over time with folks already in "the ministry." Many missionaries then leave this country for unevangelized lands because they cannot find established churches in this country that satisfy their need for church life.

I am suggesting that what these men sensed within themselves was not a call to "career ministry," but a call to brotherhood in the church. They are called to function, and they are driven to find whatever role in their church tradition will provide that opportunity. They will remain in their roles only as long as they feel they can continue this function, and leave when they are no longer able to serve their function. Most retired ministers do not regularly attend church once they are no longer in charge. It just bores them to sit there and do nothing. Until men rise up and reclaim their right to function in the assembly, they will be forced to express their manhood somewhere else.

This explains the overwhelming success of the Promise Keepers movement of the last decade. At Promise Keepers rallies men are encouraged to band together and encourage one another to lead their families and their churches in a godly manner. They pray together, they share with one another, and hey hold one another accountable. Men love it. But then they return to their respective churches and go numb within 6 months, without making any lasting difference in their churches.  No one thought to challenge the very existence of the system which emasculated them from the beginning.

A Man Must Matter

A man is driven by a desire to "matter" in the world, to make a difference. He needs his life to have some significance, some higher purpose that draws him out of himself. Notice how intrinsically men of differing cultures share a principle of self-sacrifice for the larger good of their tribes or nations. Podles points out that while women achieve transcendence through bearing and raising children, men rise above themselves by going to war, and laying their lives down for their country or people. During peacetime men turn to sports (and work) to satisfy this urge for sacrifice. It is through sports that a boy becomes a man, and when a man becomes too old to play the game, he learns to live vicariously through the sport of others. Whatever his occupation in life, he will completely draw his identity from whatever "battleground" he chooses.

The typical church environment does not provide any opportunity for the kind of significant war for which men seek. Following the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, Western civilization grew increasingly individualistic, turning our eyes inward upon ourselves and our own "personal growth." Modern spirituality seldom rises above introspective "navel-gazing," and private religion holds little appeal for the man who needs to leave his mark on the world behind him. Podles relays this testimony from a young man who fought and later died in World War I:  "Religion has failed . . . It is clear why : because [it] has laid emphasis on man’s side, the saving of his own soul" (p.169). That is why evangelical churches like Southern Baptists, who lay great emphasis on world evangelization, attract as many men as women. Men need a purpose larger than themselves. What man doesn’t want to "save the world" in some form or another? Men will not frequent a church which exists within the myopic rat-race of individual self-fulfillment.

The Need for Brotherhood

Furthermore, a man will seek a brotherhood in which he may forge his significance. The church in which a man feels at home will have brothers whose relations with each other go deeper than theological discussions over coffee and doughnuts. Notice man’s compulsion to join groups of men with a common identity, and to endure hardship or death for the good of the group. Nations have their armies. Medieval men had the crusades (God forgive us). Early American settlers joined with the masons. Modern men link themselves together in gangs, fraternities, clubs, and teams of every kind.

Men enter these groups with the expectation (or even the prerequisite) that they suffer together to form a bond of brotherhood stronger than all other ties in life. "You have to endure something together, sweat together, bleed together, cry together"(Podles, p.168) Somehow the element of war lays the foundation for brotherhood. As Podles says, "Men often begin a friendship with a fight"(203). Stated succinctly, men need brothers with whom they may fight. Podles turns to ancient literature and psychoanalytic philosophy to explain how separation and differentiation lie at the heart of masculine identity. Whatever the reason, men need a place to fight. They will seek a place where they can speak and act with honesty, sincerity, and where they can live consistently with their convictions.

Allow me to interject a personal word. I do not know how to explain to you that I have experienced this very thing among the brothers with whom I live and meet. It is important that I said "live," and not just "meet." Brothers live together. Somehow that must be a part of your experience. Where I live, that takes the form of buying houses close to one another and finding a way to see each other often. Add to this an open church structure where everyone contributes to the direction and daily functioning of the church. You now have the soil in which true brotherhood can grow. Men must have a voice in the church, and they must use it. If they do not, they will find something outside of the church to satisfy this need. However, I have seen first-hand how a real and potent brotherhood can satisfy this longing within men.

The Return of Men in the Church

The Church of the Lord Jesus Christ, when living in a healthy expression, will manifest both sides of the character of God. As the Bride of Christ, the Church receives and enfolds her Lord in loving communion. That is the feminine side of the Church. She expresses the loving communion which lies at the heart of a God who is Himself a community (Father, Son, and Spirit). But as the corporate Body of the New Man, we are a race of men who express the nature of Jesus Christ, the only real Man there ever was. As sons of the Most High God, we will experience manhood together in its truest sense as we live our lives in the Church.

These are the ingredients for the church where men are men. A man has a need to act with freedom and determination. He must function where he is in order to satisfy his need to do something other than just sitting and listening. He also must serve an overarching purpose which gives meaning to his day-to-day existence. He will search for significance in his life until he finds something that lifts him out of himself. The church he seeks does something of eternal significance. In the process, he will find a brother hood to which he may belong and from which he may draw his identity. He needs men who know him well, who will fight with him, and who can be his comrades along the journey he is on. And finally, through various and often unexpected means, the Church of Jesus Christ will be a place where the sacrificial dying of Jesus can manifest itself for the sake of His Bride. When a man has found Her, he will suffer the loss of everything for Her just as Christ did in the beginning. Man, this is what you want.

I personally have found only one place where Christian men are free to be men in the body of Christ. I found a (very loose) network of churches planted by men who know that no one should stand in the way of the functioning of the brothers (and sisters) in each fellowship. These men make it their job to produce churches that do not require their presence for daily functioning. Incidentally, these churches draw a slight majority of men. Men in these churches carry a sense of weight and importance about what they are doing, believing that they are stewards of a calling that has been too neglected in every generation: the call to brotherhood. I have watched these men be brought to tears as they retell the stories of those before them who have taken the torch of this testimony and suffered the loss of all things for the Church to be seen in all of God’s glory. Here is a heritage of brotherhood worth living for, and even worth dying for.

I challenge you to find a place where everyone significantly contributes to the meetings, the planning, and the "ministering" of the church. Seek out a brotherhood of men who are truly involved in one another’s lives, then join it. Most of all, find a place where the Lord’s cross is meaningful beyond the mere forgiveness of sins, and where the Lord’s house means more than anyone’s personal agenda. When you find that place, sell everything and move there. True manhood will only be found inside the Body of that One New Man, Jesus Christ. What are you waiting for?