The Feminization of the Church

Warning - long post ahead!

Touchstone Magazine - January/February 2001

Leon Podles, author of The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity summarized and followed up the book with the above mentioned article in TouchStone magazine. My interest in this article is due to the fact that I am leading a workshop at our church's men's retreat this weekend on the godly man as a man of the church.

Here's Podles' opening salvo in the article:

You may have noticed that, in general, men are not as interested in religion as women are. There are usually more women than men at Sunday mass, and there are far more women than men at devotions, retreats, and prayer groups. The men who do come are often there because wives or girlfriends have put pressure on them to attend. In fact, if men speak honestly, they will tell you that men have a general feeling that the Church is for women. They may add that women are more emotional than men are, or that religion is a crutch that a man doesn’t need, as Jesse Ventura, the candidate of young white men, said in Playboy.

Here are some supporting statements for that:

James H. Fichter asks, “Are males really less religious than females? Most of the studies made on the question seem to indicate that they are, and this appears to be true for all the Christian churches, denominations, and sects in western civilization.” Michael Argyle generalizes, “Women are more religious than men on all criteria, particularly for private prayer, also for membership, attendance, and attitude.” Gail Malmgreen points out the disparity between the gender of the clergy and the gender of the faithful: “In modern Western cultures, religion has been a predominantly female sphere. In nearly every sect and denomination of Christianity, though men monopolized the positions of authority, women had the superior numbers.” Christianity is a religion of and for women.

Nor do women simply join churches more than men do. They also are more active and loyal. Of Americans in the mid-1990s, George Barna writes that “women are twice as likely to attend a church service during any given week. Women are also 50 percent more likely than men to say they are ‘religious’ and to state that they are ‘absolutely committed’ to the Christian faith.” The differences seem to be increasing rapidly. In 1992, 43 percent of men attended church; in 1996, only 28 percent. Patrick Arnold, a Jesuit of liberal theological leanings, claims that at churches he has visited, “it is not at all unusual to find a female-to-male ratio of 2:1 or 3:1. I have seen ratios in parish churches as high as 7:1.” Women are more active in all activities of the church, both in public and social activities, such as peace and justice committees, and in spiritual activities, such as prayer and Bible study.

Church attendance in the United States is about 60 percent female and 40 percent male. The more liberal the denomination, the higher the percentage of females. This phenomenom is not limited to America:

Wherever Western Christianity has spread, the Church has become feminized. Rosemary Reuther observes: “In Germany, France, Norway, and Ireland women are 60 to 65 percent of the active churchgoers. In Korea, India, and the Philippines, women are 65 to 70 percent of the active churchgoers.”

Western Christianity has become part of the feminine world from which men feel they must distance themselves to attain masculinity.

Anecdotal evidence indicates that this pattern of greater female piety goes back far before the Reformation. Even medieval preachers made reference to women as being more active in the church. Berthold von Regensburg noticed that more women than men attended church. He preaches to “you women, who are more merciful than men and go more willingly to church than men and say your prayers more willingly than men and go to sermons more willingly than men.”

A closer analysis of the sociological data shows that it is not exactly being male or female that makes the difference, but being masculine or feminine. That is, men who have feminine personality characteristics tend to go to church far more often than other men do. Women who have masculine personalities tend to go to church less than other women do.

What intrigues me about this last quote is that it corresponds to some I have read who refer to clergy as "the third sex." To these folks, clergy are neither male, nor female, but something in between. For instance, Douglas Jones of Credenda/Agenda says this:

The men in our pulpits for many years have been simply jury-rigged women; when the request comes to bring in the real thing, on what principle will the request be denied? We cannot say that we must have masculinity in the pulpit because we do not have that now.

For well over a century in the American church, the norms of spirituality have been the standards set by a saccharine Victorian feminism.

Jones goes on to say:

a standard of feminine piety has been accepted as normative in the Church as the standard for all the saints, both men and women. Clergymen, trying to live up to their reputation as the third sex, have labored mightily to be what they need to be in order to maintain this standard.

Similarly, Podles tells the following story:

A pastor called me about my book. He had been ordained in the mainline Presbyterian Church. When he entered the seminary, he had to take a battery of psychological tests and talk to a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist looked over the tests, and the first question he asked the candidate was, “Are you a homosexual?” The candidate responded, “No, I’m not, and why do you ask?” The psychiatrist replied, “You have the psychological profile of a homosexual. But don’t worry, all the successful ministers in your denomination have this profile.” The problem, as the minister realized after reading my book, is that pastors too often become pastors because they enjoy working in a feminine world, and they adopt the mental attitudes of women, who are their principal audience. In men, such a psychological profile is effeminate.

Podles thesis (from a sociological point of view) is that men are born with an attachment to women, their mothers. At first, the male is not aware that he and his mother are different beings. It is only later that he begins to realize they are different. When he realizes this, he is in the position where, in order to attain manhood, he must break with the feminine. Hence, the male's psyche is such that he is always seeking separation. This leads to a proclivity for dangerous activities. There is some intense social pressure put on boys to make the break. If they fail to do so, they are called "momma's boy" or "sissy" or worse.

I am not sure I agree with Podles assessment there. I'm not sure I disagree. I'm not proficient enough in sociological analysis to render an opinion. However, at its roots, Podles is simply acknowledging the fact that "in the beginning God created them male and female." Men and women are different, and God has placed within us a desire to express those differences.

But, where this affects the church comes in this quote from Podles:

Western Christianity has become part of the feminine world from which men feel they must distance themselves to attain masculinity. That is why men stay away from church, especially when they see that the men involved in church tend to be less masculine. The most religious denominations, those that have the most external display, have the worst reputation. Anglo-Catholics were lambasted in the Victorian press as unmanly because they devoted themselves to lace and plaster statues (in some cases, this criticism was justified). Psychological studies have detected a connection between femininity in men and interest in religion. There may even be a physical difference. Among men, football players and movie actors have the highest testosterone level, ministers, the lowest. Success and self-esteem can even change hormonal levels.

Wow, there is a connection between femininity in men and interest in religion. It wasn't always this way.

God is called "Father," and He incarnated Himself as a "man." Podles mentions that Jesus Himself followed the classic masculine pattern of development. Podles says that the male is the one who is always separating himself. I am not sure I follow the line of reasoning here, but his thesis seems to be that the man has to separate from his mother in order to establish his masculine identity. Only when he has successfully done this can he re-integrate with the woman, as a husband and father. Again, I am not sure I see it that way, but Podles makes a big deal of the separation idea, and says that Jesus follows this pattern. He is "Holy" which is to be separate, set apart.

You'll have to read Podles article for some of the details of his argument as he talks about concepts like the Aristotelian view of woman, male as form and female as matter, and other things. But, what is of interest to me is how he accounts for the triumph of the feminine in the church. He says it began with Bernard of Clairvaux:

In his immensely influential sermons on the Song of Songs, Bernard of Clairvaux taught that the relationship of the Christian soul to God was that of a bride to a Heavenly Bridegroom. In this he continued an allegorical exegesis that goes back to Origen, but his preaching fell on fertile ground, and was taken up by popular piety, which had undergone a mysterious transformation into what we might call affective, or sentimental, piety, although these words are not exact. Emotions and sentiments had always played a part in Christian life, but now for some reason the emotions were those of women.

What interests me here is Bernard's apparent logical leap from the church as the bride of Christ to the soul as the Bride of Christ. Is this leap of logic valid? I question that. It seems, in Bernard's view, the ideal "Christian soul" was of a feminine nature, for men and women. Thus, the ideal Christian looked like a woman. Thus, to be godly, the man must become more womanly. He must take on the senimentality and emotionalism that is inimical to the female of the speciies.

I'm not arguing that women are somehow inferior because of their sentimentality or emotionalism. But I am arguing that the emotional life of a woman looks very different than that of a man, and neither are superior. A casual reading of Genesis 1 and 2 suggests that God created man with more of a task orientation (tend the garden) and the woman with more of a relational orientation (help the man). Those orientations will express themselves in different ways emotionally and neither is preferred.

So, getting back to my earlier point, it seems that Bernard, and his followers have deemed the feminine soul to be the godly soul, and this is a logical leap that is not necessitated by the biblical analogy of the church as the bride of Christ. Because the group is the bride, the feminine, does not necessitate that each individual must take on the character of the feminine.

Podles contends that, in the wake of Bernard, women gravitated to a relationship with Jesus that expressed itself in erotic terms.

Christ had revealed himself to Gertrude as “a youth of about sixteen years of age, handsome and gracious. Young as I then was, the beauty of his form was all that I could have desired, entirely pleasing to the outward eye.”
The bridal union of the soul with Christ is not simply other and higher than earthly marriage; it replaces it, and takes on some of the physical eroticism of the missing sexual union. Margaret Ebner feels Jesus pierce her “with a swift shot (sagitta acuta) from His spear of love.” She feels her spouse’s “wondrous powerful thrusts against my heart” and she complains that “sometimes I could not endure it when the strong thrusts came against me for they harmed my insides so that I became greatly swollen like a woman great with child.” Jesus had spoken to her these words: “Your sweet love finds me, your inner desire compels me, your burning love binds me, your pure truth holds me, your fiery love keeps me near. I want to give you the kiss of love which is the delight of your soul, a sweet inner movement, a loving attachment.”

I'm sorry folks but, except in the case of homosexuals, men will just never gravitate to a religion in which they become the object of another man's erotic desires. Men will just not resonate with that. And, when the Christian faith is expressed in such sentimental and emotional terms, it will be a turn off to men. Along those lines, think of how it plays to men, when we call the Christian life a "love relationship with Jesus." That sure sounds something like a marriage relationship, but does this mean that I, as a man, am to have that kind of relationship with another man?

But, Podles does give another vision of masculinized Christianity that has some biblical warrant:

Men have sought their religious fulfillment outside Christianity. The Freemasons and similar organizations provided a confrontation with death and a rebirth as a new man. Sports became a new religion, as did war, nationalism, fascism, and Nazism. Men have sought and continue to seek the transcendent not in Christianity but in the new religions of masculinity. Men know the pattern of death and rebirth because they have all had to die to the boy and the safe maternal world so that they could be reborn as men. They know that to be fully masculine they must die and be reborn and they therefore seek this death and rebirth wherever they can find it. In seeking death, they may fall in love with it; they may become criminals and nihilists. Christianity is a religion of death and resurrection, but masculinity, separated from Christianity, too often provides an ersatz resurrection and a real death.

Men can grasp a form of Christianity that holds death and resurrection at its center. The popular gospel of today says that the reward of faith is a "love relationship with Jesus." What if men were offered "a chance to die daily" as the reward of faith in Jesus? I'm not talking about a works gospel, just a gospel whose effects will not be framed merely in sentimental, emotional and erotic terminology.

You can see that I have sidestepped a whole bunch of issues here. It is obvious that I am a theological conservative, so I believe that homosexuality is sinful. Thus, I take it, a priori, that a Christian man will not gravitate to an eroticized depiction of Christianity, because of its homosexual undertones. I also want to say that no value judgments are implied in saying that sentimentality and emotionalism are more characteristic of the feminine. I'm not saying its right or its wrong, it just is.

But I am saying that masculinity is a good thing, and it is something to be fostered, celebrated and appreciated in the church. The truth is that masculine sentiments will often offend feminine sentiments. When my three year old son climbed to the top of a 40 foot tree in our backyard, I looked and said "that's my boy." My mother-in-law was there that day, saw the same thing and said "oh no, if he falls he'll die," then insisted I get him down and not let him do that again.

One time my wife told me I needed to take someone out to lunch and get to know them and bond with them and become friends with them. This is what women tend to do - they get to be friends by talking and sharing of themselves with each other. I told her "I'll go out to lunch with him, but don't expect me to become friends with him through sharing our feelings at lunch." My best friendships have always been developed in conjunction with the performance of a task, preferably involving sweat, pain and some risk of injury.

I'm not even sure that some of our vaunted men's ministries in the church today are going to fit the bill. From what I can tell, a lot of our men's ministries are going for the emotional and sentimental. We are encouraged to get into small groups with other men where we can "share our struggles," and "open up," and "talk intimately." At a Promise Keepers conference I went to one time it seemed that the godly response to what we were being taught was to go down front, and start weeping and hugging other men. Thanks but no thanks. I actually want to do all of those things, but its just hard to do in a contrived situation. I'm more likely to share my struggles in the midst of a task or an activity that I am enjoying with some friends, in a setting where there isn't a lot of pressure to "open up." I've never opened up real well in a setting which was designed to get us to open up. I have opened up with my brothers in weight rooms, riding to a job with a co-worker, or doing something fun. And the opening up usually came out of the blue in an unguarded and unplanned moment.

In my first seminary experience (not at the seminary I graduated from) I took a counseling minor and there were many times where I got the feeling that femininity was superior to masculinity. Women were often praised as superior for their ability to open up and get in touch with their feelings. There were times when I got the impression that the ideal man was being defined as a woman.

Again, I'm not knocking the feminine here in any way. The purpose of this post has been to focus very narrowly on the causes of masculine flight from the church. We don't need a church that is exclusively masculine or feminine, we need a church that takes seriously the needs and dispositions of both. But, since men are in retreat from the church we need to take extra measures to reach them.