The antidote.
Posted on 04/12/2021 3:58:14 PM PDT by tbw2
Men were falling away from church life. As sedentary life was becoming an industrial revolution norm, due to advances in technology and improving economic mobility, religious leaders introduced sports, fitness, adventure, and social justice as way to reconnect boys and men to the church. This explains the partnering of church life with the YMCA, the Boy Scouts, outdoor camps, and enlisting men in the Social Gospel Movement. As Clifford Putney explains in his book, Muscular Christianity, by 1899 women comprised three-quarters of Protestant church membership and nine-tenths of its attendance. Recent studies on gender disparities in American churches report that women regularly attend church more than men at 61 to 55 percent, respectively.
Over the past twenty years, much ink has been spilled raising alarms about the “feminization of the church” in evangelical circles as a way to explain the absence of men. Women naturally balk at these accusations because it is hard to conceptualize a feminized church when most, if not all, of the leaders are men. I believe this discrepancy makes sense because we have not been using the tools of human anthropology to analyze our society. Evangelical churches are actually not patriarchal, even with mostly male leaders. Nor are they feminized. They do not emasculate men in order to appeal to women’s sensibilities or desires. “Feminized” is the wrong word to describe the sermon content, music styles, programs, décor, and the like of many evangelical churches. The study of human anthropology provides another possibility: Evangelical churches are, in fact, matrilineal.
(Excerpt) Read more at mereorthodoxy.com ...
American Evangelicalism isn’t patriarchal or feminized. It’s matrilineal.
https://mereorthodoxy.com/evangelicals-matrilineal/
The Catholic Church has its own issues.
But the greatest catastrophe Protestants ignore is their own acceptance birth control. It is birth control that our society is anchored on. Not on women.
Acceptance of*
Let’s not get Cement-Shoe-ed by semantics.
People are saying more or less the same thing.
Seems inaccurate.
I’ve been in a great many evangelical churches in the USA and foreign nations - all were filled with men.
If you are interested in pursuing this subject in depth, consider reading the book “Why Men Hate Going to Church”, by David Murrow. I have read this book multiple times and also taught it to our church’s men’s group.
Murrow has insights about this issue that, in my opinion, are correct as well as somewhat profound. He discusses this “feminization” issue at great length and makes many points that can hardly be disputed.
Not just churches.... but society.. younger society.... have tried to feminize men for several years. Men lose their charm when acting like a woman.... for example.
One of my sons goes to church in NJ. They want the men to “get in touch with their feelings”. My son had all he could take and left. He is an attorney and being feminized did not fit in his male mind. Why can’t they who have time on their hands.. just leave well enough alone.
Men are supposed to be the hunter.. the strong one.. the math mind thinks logically... their feelings are something they know but do not declare it..
a job and taking care of their family is what they do.
woman are the nurturers and the one with “feelings”. if we all made decisions on our feelings, we’d be right maybe half the time. there is a place for feelings but it isn’t supposed to come from the one who logically loves and cares. feelings can be fickle anyway.
I have to tell you about my husband on this subject. He is gone to glory... but he lives on in my heart.
If we were ever in a game where I had to guess at his answers to simple questions on who we are.... we’d come in last. If I was asked what is his favorite color, I knew and would say blue. when he was asked, he does not know what it is and ya never knew what his answers would be.
It would be that way on every question... I would know the answer and he might answer anything that came into his mind. Another reason he would not know the correct answer is he didn’t consider it important. Now, ask him what kind of oil did he use in his car...he’d know that one and I would not know.
a perfect match..? not all the time...
Is it your experience that the churches where the biblical order that men are to be in charge is kept are the ones not so “matrilineal?”
It seems that way to me. Men don’t hold church office in my denomination.
Also I might think that the fact that men die younger, and work outside the home more, might skew the church attendance numbers. More are dead, sick, disabled or at work.
But yeah at the United Methodists or the Ya Ya Church of the Sisterhood I don’t doubt the women outnumber the men!!
Yeah, because modern American Catholics haven’t embraced birth control at all. /s
Official teaching vs practice. Not always lined up. True.
I bet my local Bible church has more large families than our local Novus Ordo megachurch.....
The antidote.
Feminism swept Russia, including passivity or outright adoption within much of the Russian Orthodox Church, prior to the socialist/communist revolutions.
Feminism, paganism, and homosexuality swept the EDU systems and culture, and was accommodated by churches across Germany - prior to the national socialist NAZI takeover of Germany prior to WWII and the Holocaust as well.
We will are “hand in glove” with history at this very moment.
In any denomination for that matter. And seems to be getting worse.
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