Norman Rockwell's Easter Morning pictures a young mother and her three children, dressed in their Sunday best, marching through the living room on their way to church. Dad, still in his slippers and bathrobe, is slumped down in a chair reading the sports page. Mom and the girls resolutely face ahead. The son, at the end of the procession, casts an envious glance at dad thinking, "I can't wait for the day when I won't have to go to church either."
Rockwell captured the common sentiment that religion is an affair for women and children. Leon Podles, author of The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity, notes that church attendance in America is about 60 percent female and 40 percent male. He adds, "The more liberal the denomination, the higher the percentage of females." Why do more women attend church than men? I believe there are a number of reasons, including the following:
(1) Some churches pressure men to express themselves in ways that women, typically, are more comfortable with. In some congregations there is a subtle pressure to be highly demonstrative in the way you worship God. Not all men are comfortable with overt expressions of emotion. Promise Keepers, a Christian ministry to men, regards the fact that men are not talking to "other men about intimate things" to be a problem (Promise Keeper leader Rod Cooper, "Into Me See," New Man, March/April, 1995, p. 42). Some men are comfortable talking to other men about personal matters. Others are more private. While the Bible calls us to mutual accountability, it does not require us to be “transparent” with others. The only person God requires a man to speak with about intimate matters is his wife (Genesis 2:24).
(2) A notable portion of the Christian music written after 1800s is sappy and sentimental. "In the Garden" is about an imaginary experience to which most men do not readily relate. Many contemporary Christian songs, Frederica Mathewes-Green observes, Christianize love songs by substituting the name of Jesus for the girlfriend.
(3) Popular religious art often pictures Jesus as an almost effeminate man -- gentle Jesus, meek and mild; a religious wimp surrounded by lambs and children.
Many women are uncomfortable with emotional transparency, highly expressive worship, sentimental music, and wimpy religious art. But it is more often men who regard these practices as an obstacle to attending church.
Churches that attract men resist these tendencies to feminize the church. Their music combines stately tunes with God-centered lyrics. They do not pressure men to communicate in ways that make them uncomfortable.
Churches that attract men do not speak of the Jesus’ love in isolation from his other attributes. Jesus is at the same time loving, righteous, good, true, and powerful. Recall him driving the money-changers out of the temple and excoriating religious hypocrites: "You snakes! You brood of vipers!”
Churches that attract men proclaim a gospel that calls them to athlete-like self-discipline (Philippians 3:12-14), to sacrificial leadership (Ephesians 5:25; 6:4), to moral accountability (Matthew 18:15-17; II Thessalonians 3:10), and to “share in suffering as a good solder of Christ Jesus” (II Timothy 2:3).
In other words, churches that attract men preach Jesus Christ as he is revealed in Scripture. That is good news to both men and women.
Peter Kemeny, Pastor
Good News Presbyterian Church
P.O. Box 1051, Frederick, MD 21702