Monday, March 03, 2008

Where are all the Men?

This post arises out of several conversations I've had in the last few months, most recently last night.

One of the tragedies of modern evangelicalism is the women. Or is it the men?

There seem to be far more young women than young men in many churches, which means that the women are often faced with a very difficult choice. Either they marry people they have big differences with theologically, often even non-Christians, or they stay single. I know people who have done each. Generally it seems that those who are struggling more in their faith tend to marry, but it is a horrible decision to have to make.

So the question is - where are all the men? In the discussion, we came up with three reasons why there are often so many more young women than young men (older women, there's a difference because of the different life expectancies, as in the population at large). There's probably lots more too.

Reason 1 - Friendships

An important part of how people come to faith is through friendships. Our society is a lot better on female-female friendships than on male-male friendships or male-female friendships. Women have friends. Men have people they do things with. So I might have friends I do sports with, or go to the pub with, or whatever, but they aren't friends I'd talk to about stuff or friends in the abstract. So because women have better friendships, they're more likely to come to Christ through their friends.

Proposed solution: church-based football leagues, church-based activities generally with a very gentle evangelistic focus.

Reason 2 - Lack of Acceptable Role Models

Christian leadership is seen more and more as being relational (and that's important). However, because the leadership is gentle, relational and so on, it's often also seen by society as being more feminine, and the men who do it are less accessible as role models for other men. It's notable that the one societal cross-section of British evangelicalism where men aren't under-represented is the one where there is a strong archetypal role model still in place - the posh public-school section.

Proposed solution: male leaders - listen to Mark Driscoll on this one.

Reason 3 - Feminisation of the Gospel

We tend to emphasise some bits of the Bible over others. Specifically, we tend to emphasise the bits about God loving us and accepting us, which can be seen as fitting in with stereotypically female concerns. And we don't tend to emphasise the bits which fit in with characteristically male concerns - the risk taking, the pictures of the soldier and the athlete, the heroes of the faith, the pressing on to win the prize, the eschatological goal of the faith, and so on. Which means that, because we present an unbalanced view, we get an unbalanced group of people in.

I'm not saying that the facts that God loves us and accepts us and so on aren't important - of course they are. I'm saying that they're not the whole story.

And a quick note on stereotypes - of course men and women do not all precisely follow their stereotypes, and some of the stereotypes are culturally conditioned. But they're still sometimes useful generalisations for getting a big picture.

10 comments:

Speaker for the Dead said...

There are a few groups I know of here in the US dedicated specifically to reversing this trend. They talk about the "masculine" side of Jesus and have men-only sessions to talk about things men wouldn't be able to talk about otherwise.

And my church personally does an insane number of sports activities.

benj said...

To what extent do you think the British disdain for intellectual comment on anything other than football and a fairly sucky system of discipleship in our churches (I know, huge generalisation...) have to do with this?

And could you clarify what you mean by
"Our society is a lot better on female-female friendships than on male-male friendships or male-female friendships." ?

Iconoclast said...

Have you changed the way comments are posted Custard?

Iconoclast said...

I meant to add that you cannot post any longer as 'anonymous'.

To your subject matter, I read recently (somewhere -I can't recall where), that in a family, a mother who becomes a Christian is less likely to have the rest of her family follow her into faith than if the Father comes to Christ first.

A Father becoming a Christian is more likely to lead to the other members of the family doing so although I am not sure what the reasons put forward are for this.

Iconoclast said...

Have you changed the way comments are posted Custard?

Iconoclast said...

whoops - dunno what happened here I seem to have posted twice.

John said...

Yes; I have changed the way comments are posted, due to one of my regular visitors posting as anonymous and posting comments which were abusive of other commenters. Abusive of me is one thing, but it's bad hospitality to allow people to abuse others.

John said...

To what extent do you think the British disdain for intellectual comment on anything other than football and a fairly sucky system of discipleship in our churches (I know, huge generalisation...) have to do with this?

A reasonable extent. But it's not the whole answer.

And could you clarify what you mean by
"Our society is a lot better on female-female friendships than on male-male friendships or male-female friendships." ?


It's accepted that women can be friends and can chat for a long time, stay in touch, trust each other, whatever.

I just don't see that with men and women in culture (unless there's sex), and I certainly don't see it with men and men, to the extent that if two guys are good friends in an absolute sense rather than just guys who play football together or go to the pub together, then they're often suspected of being gay.

Unknown said...

Where's Madeline Bassett gone? I liked her.

Blue, with a hint of amber said...

Excellent first post, again!

I would add in a suggestion - it certainly feels like younger men seem to leave the church in greater numbers too.

Sunday morning junior football is part of the issue, and other sports, definitely, there is a lifestyle choice, all my church friends who played sunday morning football never came back into church fellowship.

Secondly - many churches leave the teaching fo the children to women. Maybe a funky male youth leader when they are 13 is employed - but until then their primary link to leadership within the church and role models are female group leaders.

A generation of christian lads are growing up thinking that church is all about singing and being taught by women and sunday morning football is definitley more attractive.

I believe that this is a travesty, aside from how we relate to adult males the question of how we raise males within our christian family has to be analysed and responded to.