Posted on 10/23/2011 6:23:05 PM PDT by hiho hiho
Gathered around the coffeepot in a church fellowship hall on a fall Sunday, a gaggle of men are talking with animation and passion, joking and bragging in the way of males. The topic? Football, of course. "How 'bout them Devils! D'ya see that pick six in the third quarter? Amazing! Hey, Joe, sorry about your Dawgs! Maybe you'll get 'em next week, if they don't fire your coach first!" In a few minutes, many will wander into worship, the married ones joining their wives. As the first hymn begins, some of them will stand and keep silent guard, staring mutely into space as the women beside them sing.
What is it with men and church? We men are famously outnumbered, to be sure. According to a recent survey, we make up only 39 percent of the worshipers in a typical congregation. This is not just because we die earlier and leave the pews filled with the sturdier gender. The percentages hold across the board, for every age category.
Even when we do show up for worship, we're often not particularly happy about it. This is not breaking news, of course. Study after study has shown that many men who name themselves as Christian feel bored, alienated and disengaged from church. When we drag ourselves to church, researchers say, it is not for ourselves but to fulfill the obligations of our roles as son, husband, father or pastor.
Why are men and the church often at odds? Sadly, many of the answers are as insulting as they are misguided. Some researchers are persuaded that the antipathy of men to church resides at the hormonal level. They argue that men, loaded as they are with testosterone, have a proclivity to impulsive, risk-taking, occasionally violent action—exactly the behavior disallowed in the soft world of worship. Given this theory, what enticements can the wimpy church possibly offer us men when we compare it to the joys of hiding away in a man cave, stuffing our maws with pizza and beer as we watch Da Bears and heading out after sundown to rip off a few wheel covers and rumble in the Wal-Mart parking lot?
Others propose a more political and historical explanation, namely that centuries of male control of the church have yielded to an ineluctable force of feminization. Pastel worship, passive and sentimental images of the Christian life, handholding around the communion table and hymns that coo about lover-boy Jesus who "walks with me and talks with me" have replaced stronger, more masculine themes. One man reported that the first thing he does when he walks into a church is to look at the curtains. One glance tells him all he needs to know about who's making the decisions.
Really? The feminine erosion of the church? As David Foster Wallace said in a different context, this is an idea "so stupid it practically drools." Even sillier are the proposed masculine remedies. One website suggests "Ten Ways to Man Up Your Church," beginning with obtaining "a manly pastor" who projects "a healthy masculinity." This patently ignores strong women clergy, of course, but it also denigrates the capacity of men to recognize and respond to able leadership regardless of gender or stereotypes. I recently visited a church with a chest-thumping manly pastor. After worship, one man in the congregation confided, "I feel like I'm on the set of a Tarzan movie." As for "manning up" worship, I know that if my church begins handing out NASCAR jackets with the bulletins, I'm going to look for a different church—maybe one with lace curtains.
Still, the numbers don't lie. Men are staying away from church. The reasons are undoubtedly complex, but perhaps a clue can be found in a Christian group that attracts men and women in roughly equal numbers: Eastern Orthodoxy. A cynic might say that men are attracted to Orthodoxy because it is conservative, with an all-male clergy, many of them sporting beards. The finding of religion journalist Frederica Mathewes-Green, however, is closer to the truth. She surveyed male adult converts and discovered that Orthodoxy's main appeal is that it's "challenging." One convert said, "Orthodoxy is serious. It is difficult. It is demanding. It is about mercy, but it is also about overcoming myself." Another said that he was sick of "bourgeois, feel-good American Christianity."
Yes, some churchgoers are satisfied with feel-good Christianity, but I think many Christians—women and men—yearn for a more costly, demanding, life-changing discipleship. Perhaps women are more patient when they don't find it, or more discerning of the deeper cross-bearing opportunities that lie beneath the candied surface. Men take a walk or hang around the church coffeepot talking in jargon about football: another disciplined and costly arena of life in which people sacrifice their bodies and their individual desires for a larger cause that matters to them, at least for the moment. Near transcendence is preferable to no transcendence at all.
Our congregation made sure watches were set to 11:40 during football season. He made sure the sermon was wrapped up so everyone could get home for the game.
He said getting the men to service was a decent trade off for that.
No refutation, just invective. I don't know if I'd point fingers at women in particular, but the concept is sound. Until I got off my butt and actually read the Bible, I bought the lie of the touchy-feely Jesus as described in this article. When you read the Gospels, he's anything but touchy-feely. He's an extremely intelligent, very judgmental, argumentative guy who also happens to always be right (which really pisses off the Powers-That-Be).
That hippy, Bee-Gees look-alike is deathly dull. I like the guy I read about.
That about sums it up.
btw, what I find insulting is the notion that all men want to talk about is football.
Vatican II and the feminization and egalitarianism of the Marxist “Gender hierarchy”....the stupid idea that there is no difference between men and women and they need to be treated exactly the same.
The idea of “girl” altar boys-—to make boys feel they are the same as girls. I could go on and on....it is Marxist ideology (progressive/feminism) that is destroying the patriarchy and family unit with the idea that men and women are the same design.....a scientific and stupid notion that is destroying Christianity...which is based on the patriarchy—and God the Father as strength and protector.
The nature of man is vastly different than the nature of women. The Christian churches are in denial and have tried to make men’s nature evil and obsolete and undermine the difference in women’s nature and the need for women to nurture and educate the next generation. All for marxist political correctness and to be “hip” and popular. Homosexual movement culminates in making men and women interchangeable—exactly as the Communist Manifesto wants.....The church adopted vulgar music and language and faddish kumbaya—feminism/earth worship/gaia cr*p. Return to traditional Latin and put some awe, respect, and mystery back into the church and elevate the position of the men and altar boys....no altar girls....it is ridiculous.
Too funny! I was thinking the same thing before I read your post.
As a young child in the 1970's, I remember the hippies with their guitars and tamborines doing all the refrains at the Folk Mass. Even at the age of six, I remember disliking it and thinking to myself "there is something wrong here..."
You still need fellow believers for edification and correction.
Maybe you can form a fellowship with like-minded believers.
Paragraphs 5 and 6 told me everything I need to know about this author, and this author’s agenda.
Game, set, match, trophy.
In 2 paragraphs.
There are more and more Latin Masses in the Catholic Church these days. I have my choice of three churches in the Chicago area that offer the Latin Mass each Sunday, and one of these Churches actually offers nothing but Latin Masses. At these Masses they only have altar boys, not girls, and the parishioners do not freely stroll around the altar. We don’t hold hands at the Our Father, and we don’t walk around greeting people for five minutes. We kneel at the altar to receive communion on the tongue, which is handled only by the priest or deacon, and we hear Gregorian Chants at every Mass.
How the bishops were so clueless is beyond me. I have yet to find anyone from that era who actually liked those Masses.
Here is a point in reasoning.
If Jesus is our Creator and he created men to be men, it would seem Jesus Himself is not into wussy-touchy-feely men.
The social justice message is driving us away.
Pray for America
LOL! Excellent description!
Smart, realistic pastor.
Its just my observation but I seem to think as people in Western societies become more wealthy, or disposable income, they've grown away from God. My church has just come back from Africa and the people the visited lived in literally mud huts but their faith in God was strong.
I think the point about football is not football, but that men are going to focus on things that interest them when the things of church don’t interest them.
The author has the answer, right in front of him, if he had the sense to read his own writing.
With the usual disclaimer of there being many exceptions: Men tend to be active. Women tend to be passive. Sitting in a pew listening to someone else talk, letting themselves be led by some arbitrarily appointed 'pastor', is perfectly suited to women. Not so much to men. Men seek purpose. In the real world and the world of work. Women seek nurturance. That's why so many develop crushes on their oh so unctuous and empathic pastors.
Men see their role as working hard in this world to support and take care of their families-- vocations for which the church has no respect. Any effort made to recognize the contributions of men boils down to lip service. Just be sure to make your pledge.
Bottom line, men don't go where they are not wanted, and let's be honest--churches don't really want men around. They lean toward women because they find women more malleable, less demanding of accountability, and more persuasible.
My former pastor, who had a ten person board of ministers, used to have about half and half men and women. By the time he retired, the Board was all women--except for the guy who pulled maintenance on the building. And the pastor seemed to like it that way just fine.
Fredrica Mathewes-Green may think that the appeal of the Orthodox church is that it’s challenging, but she’s also written that that challenge is what appeals to men; they make the move and haul their wives with them.
Really, who has curtains in church? (Not us Catholics.)
No sign of peace, I hope. (I despise that phoniness.)
Yep. I haven't attended any service, not one, by any denomination since the desecration of Jean Jean the preaching machine in 2003.
I'm still a believer, just refuse to put up with the watered down nonsense called "religion" these days.
He did do the typical leftists trick of leaving out the part where he supports his assertion and goes strate to the name-callign.
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