Do Women Make Men Do Things? 1A, "Feminizing the Church"

Have women, by being Christian women, made Christianity unappealing?

Photo by Josh Eckstein on Unsplash

Before we move into part 2 of this series, “Do Women Make Men Do Things,” I want to interrogate a point I drew attention to in part 1 a little further. Specifically, I want to deal with this common but fairly nebulous claim that women are “feminizing” the church, and the broader culture, and thus making church unpalatable to men and discouraging them from being involved.

This section emerged from reading a few recent articles on the phenomenon of reviving the “church for men” idea, which seems to be recirculated every few years. Among them, there is a general agreement that the church as it currently exists, with a focus on service, community, and care, is feminized by the influence of women. I think this argument is, in itself, very difficult to maintain. It looks to me either this discourse is based on vibes, not data.

By “feminized,” I assume critics mean the church is “influenced by femininity.” By “femininity” critics mean something related to women, though the exact nature of what this means is not quite clear. We’ll get there in a bit.

Ten Theses on the Feminization of the Church: How Femininity Makes Men Stay Away

1) Feminization of church is invoked to explain why men don’t go to church. But it’s also closely associated with churches having events for women. Churches host quilting bees, scrapbooking parties, and women’s teas, which is how we see the church is feminized and men don’t want to be there. This is a false equivalence. There's no mystery as to why men don’t go to women’s ministry events -they’re not invited.

If you google any article on why men don’t go to church this is the same idea that shows up every time.

You can’t point to a women’s quilting bee on Thursday to explain why men don’t go to church on Sunday. The only way they are connected is if there is something inherently dangerous about women’s events to the health of the church. Put a pin in that.

2) The primary evidence that the church is feminized is the same fact as the results of a church that has been feminized. How do we know the church has been feminized? Because women go there. What has changed about the church now that it’s been feminized? Women go there.

This is tautological. Either the church has always been feminized (and that’s bad), there is some other cause that feminized the church and caused women to go there more than men, or men don't go/stopped going for unrelated reasons.

It seems that people who worry about the church being feminized think that the church’s femininity comes from some cultural influence that men respond to by not going to church-not that the church’s femininity came from men not being faithful church attenders. So, let’s find it.

3) There must have been some point at which the church became influenced by femininity, such that men stopped going. When did this happen? First wave feminism (1790s-1920)? Second wave (1960-80?) What changed about church buildings, services, or teachings in those years?

How did these changes reflect the influence of the feminist movement - as opposed to other cultural changes? Was there a shift in men’s attendance at church in response to major events in women’s history as this movement gained ground?

4) If the American feminist movement influenced the church in such a way that men do not feel welcome anymore, I’d expect to find evidence that church architecture, services, liturgies, sermons, etc in the US changed in ways that are recognizably connected to feminists movements.

I’d also expect to find these changes followed by a decline in men’s attendance at church. If you have that data, it would be fascinating to see. But I suspect you don’t. If the cause is earlier (industrialization around the Victorian era), then it certainly does not seem that empowered women are causing this, and in fact rigid gender norms are not useful for making the church more appealing to men.

Nonetheless: even if this data exists, we still need to explain why a) ancient women attended church more than men (if attendance is how we are measuring a feminized church, suggests the church was feminized from the outset without a feminist movement behind it) and why b) women outnumber men at church in every country in the world for which we have data. Why do far more patriarchal cultures still have such feminized churches? Why does patriarchy in a society not seem to prevent feminizing of churches?

5) If the mechanism by which churches become feminized is not a national feminist movement (and it can’t have been in 90 AD), then what is this mechanism, and what steps can a church take to prevent it? Women outnumber men at the same rates in evangelical, mainline, and Mormon churches. This suggests that restricting women from clerical positions or seminary teaching/education is not sufficient. What else can churches do about it?

6) If patriarchy in a society can’t prevent feminization, and restricting women’s leadership in the church can’t either, maybe we’re stuck with a more foundational question: what is femininity? Pundits on the subject insist that feminizers are not necessarily women – indeed, that women are not required for the process at all. A seminarian who reads only men, studies under men, joins an elder board of men, and then leads a church where only men can lead – all of them, from authors to elders to teachers to elders to pastors, could be feminizing at this very moment. You could be feminizing and not even know it.

So whatever femininity is, it’s not the influence of women - or at least, it’s at most the very, very distant influence of women.

7) This is further evidence by the fact that good women don’t feminize churches either. Good women keep the church masculine. They themselves don’t masculinize it. They restrain femininity so that men can fix churches. The difference between bad men, good men, good women, and bad men isn’t really related to who is feminine and who isn’t. A feminine woman is still a liability.

The essential trait that good men and and good women share is that they all understand that femininity is bad for churches and needs to be contained.

8) So I think these are the things we can pin down in the discourse:

Femininity in this discourse isn’t really a gendered trait. It’s more like a pollutant. Men need to be aware they could carry it and protect themselves from it. Women usually carry it, and so need to be aware they could spread it. This is why women’s leadership is dangerous for churches.

But keeping women out of churches is not even remotely sufficient. Women's influence is just as bad. Church buildings shouldn’t look like women go there. Women enjoying women’s activities together needs to be kept in check. Music shouldn’t sound like something women would like.

Men’s clothing can’t remind people of women’s fashions - they need to physically resemble women as little as possible.

9) All this is despite the fact that the evidence that men don’t go to church because of feminism is, as far as I know, basically unsearched for.

It’s taken for granted that the reason men don’t go to church is women's fault, not men's. Men do not need evidence their problems are caused by women, or womanhood.

10) You can call this system of blaming women, erasing women, and treating women and whatever is reminiscent of them like nuclear waste, by many names. The name I would not use for it, however, is “complementary.”

Once again, we have a system where women are isolated as a cause of men’s actions: women are the ones who cause men to avoid church. Does this make sense? No. Does the evidence support it? No. Why do we believe it? Because we think women cause men’s actions.

But what if they don’t?