In a First Among Christians, Young Men Are More Religious Than Young Women

[RandySF]

Among Generation Z Christians, this dynamic is playing out in a stark way: The men are staying in church, while the women are leaving at a remarkable clip.

Church membership has been dropping in the United States for years. But within Gen Z, almost 40 percent of women now describe themselves as religiously unaffiliated, compared with 34 percent of men, according to a survey last year of more than 5,000 Americans by the Survey Center on American Life at the American Enterprise Institute.

In every other age group, men were more likely to be unaffiliated. That tracks with research that has shown that women have been consistently more religious than men, a finding so reliable that some scholars have characterized it as something like a universal human truth.

The men and women of Gen Z are also on divergent trajectories in almost every facet of their lives, including education, sexuality and spirituality....

At the same time, they place a higher value on traditional family life. Childless young men are likelier than childless young women to say they want to become parents someday, by a margin of 12 percentage points, according to a survey last year by Pew. The young men at Grace and Hope churches “are looking for leadership, they’re looking for clarity, they’re looking for meaning,” said Bracken Arnhart, a Hope Church pastor.


https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/23/us/young-men-religion-gen-z.html

[bucolic_frolic]

1. "Need somebody to make my food!" /NT

[Think. Again.]

2. Hmmm, maybe head injuries from school sports?

[RandySF]

3. Boys are lost right now

I had struggles keeping my own son off a self-destructive path.

[Think. Again.]

5. I wish your son the best.

As far as the "salvation" of organized religion goes though, so many people, young and old, do tend to take the easy way out of the difficulty of navigating life's complexities by throwing in the towel and convincing themselves they can just "let jesus take the wheel", when in fact they're simply turning over their own individual agency to con artists.

[2naSalit]

4. Probably attracted...

To the misogyny.

[samnsara]

6. probably praying some woman will date them

[BlueSky3]

7. Perhaps they like the idea

of God as a man, of the New Testament advising women to be subservient to their husbands?

[Conjuay]

8. I don't know...

In first grade, when Sister Louise started telling us about talking snakes, I was quite suspicious.
Nothing in all the years since has swayed me that my original suspicions were wrong.

[leftyladyfrommo]

9. Having lived in Salt Lake City I can speak

to this. Men tended to be overly righteous and it was a real turnoff. Meanwhile the girls were going out with the bad boys.

There was a funny saying that if a virgin walked into the Temple grounds Moroni would blow his horn. (MORONI is the archangel on the top of the Temple).

[Scrivener7]

10. An interesting point is that it doesn't seem that more men are joining, just

that men are slower to leave. Which makes sense. The religion I was raised in considers me to have less humanity, much less value, than men. Most religions do consider women that way. There's nothing in these religions for us.

[Happy Hoosier]

11. That's a good point....

Men are getting less religious too.... just at a slower rate than women. And as you said, it makes sense. Religions tend to value women less, and especially the "flavors" of Christianity that are hanging on these days is a LOT more misogynistic than older mainstream protestant churches.

[LizBeth]

12. Men need it cause their excuse to be dominate nad controlling. Watching some show saying why men

are having such a tough time because they are not allowed to be the innate nature of men. You know... strong confident DOMINATE.
So so sad women are not allowing men to be dominate, but it is going against the mere nature of being a man. I just cannot believe watching men straight face say but being a man is dominate so you have to let us men dominate, hence control because that is the very nature on men..... waaaa.

[republianmushroom]

13. The young are praying that they can nail

those young woman.

[keep_left]

14. If you're looking for the culprits, they're largely incel "culture" and radtrad-ism...

...in the Catholic Church. When it comes to young men, those two very toxic streams merge together more often than not. That's encouraged by any number of far-right media groups that have noticed these cultural trends and are throwing gasoline on the fire. To wit: Nick Fuentes, Michael Knowles, Hannity, OANN, NewsMax, EWTN, Relevant Radio, it all runs together like mud.

By the way, it's hard to take anything seriously when it's from the "Survey Center on American Life at the American Enterprise Institute".

...there's definitely a subculture of young men, particularly in Catholicism--and especially in the conservative-to-radtrad factions--where the incel (or, to coin a phrase, incel-adjacent) mentality is too obvious to be ignored. You find them predominantly online; however, most of the larger cities have an otherwise defunct parish that has been renovated to cater to the radtrad Latin Mass crowd, and those parishes tend to attract some pretty maladjusted, scruple-obsessed young male radtrads.

https://democraticunderground.com/100219495849#post16

[Oopsie Daisy]

15. My first thought too. "Dear Lord, send me a wife."