"Why men don't like to go to church"

[Norseman82]

Interesting article in the Chicago Tribune religion section today:

[url="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chicago/chi-0606160287jun16,1,3110034.story?ctrack=1&cset=true"]http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/c...ack=1&cset=true[/url]

2 interesting points made in the article:

1) Target audience of church culture observed by the author quoted in the article was 50-55 year old women.

2) Environment alienates both men and young people because they both are "challenge oriented and appreciate risk, adventure, variety, pleasure and reward" according to the author quoted in the article.

[curtins]

I can't read the article but I would say the author is complete bogus if he's saying the church's target is 50-55 year old women. The church's target is all of humanity. The problem is our culture teaches us men are supposed to get as many girls as they can and forget about everything else. The church says otherwise. That is not the church allienating young men- its young men allienating themselves from the truth. I'd take talking about theology or church affairs any day over talking about how many girls somebody got. and im 15 and a dude.

[scardella]

Article requires a registration... so I couldn't look at it.

Just a nitpicky note:
observed target audience might be different from the actual target audience. Usually this means that it's not doing its job properly.

To relate that to the argument... the prevalent culture has screwy values, so he's evaluating it from that prevalent (broken) culture. The difficulty in changing populations' values is that you have to make your community attractive to the whole population. If we're going to have an attractive Catholicism, we simply have to be attractive to people while maintaining our values. That is, we have to be joyful in living out our Catholicism. Joy radiating from holy people is naturally attractive.

Answer in short: If Catholics as a community get out of the wishy-washy business and into the kick-butt holy business, we'll attract everyone like bees to honey.

[Norseman82]

[quote name='scardella' post='1007148' date='Jun 16 2006, 09:14 PM']
Article requires a registration... so I couldn't look at it.
[/quote]

Sometimes you need to delete your cookies and temporary internet files first.

[prose]

Maybe someone could cut and paste it here?

[the 13th papist]

i completely agree, actually being a teen and and on the verge of manhood. read WILD AT HEART by John Elderidge. A man's heart is completely different than a woman's and it definately seems to me also that the mass in many parishes is not geared tward my heart. Everything is so nice and packaged inside a little box and handed over with a smile. what about the passion (no pun intended)? what about the martyrs? softly singing sissy songs in not exactly a soul moving experience.

i could really go on about how i dont identify with middle aged women because my heart is so far from theirs but ill spare you. i do however urge you, especially if you are a young man, to read WILD AT HEART


curtins, im gunna have to respectfully disagree with you...

i have to agree. i am not a teenage male who cares at all what society says and i dont subscribe to who mtv and society tell me what a man is but i have a heart that longs to be free, one that wants to love fully and dynamically, but i feel confined at church. i went to mass this morning where i was surrounded by older people, mostly women. ever song we sang was soft slow and unmoving. we even sang canticle of the sun by st Francis- it did nothing.

i think pastors and congregations could really learn a few things from steubenville masses, gregorian chants, lifeteen- music with some feeling and passion, something that attempts to be in the same universe as the sacrifice of the mass.

Peace,

Edited June 17, 2006 by the 13th papist

[morostheos]

[quote name='the 13th papist' post='1007192' date='Jun 17 2006, 12:14 AM']

i think pastors and congregations could really learn a few things from steubenville masses, gregorian chants, lifeteen- music with some feeling and passion, something that attempts to be in the same universe as the sacrifice of the mass.

[/quote]


That's an interesting list of music suggestions. You know what they all have in common? Not really any aspects of music, but the kick-butt holy business that scardella was talking about. When people choose songs to glorify God and sing them in the same manner with serious holiness in mind, you can tell. While what you sing is certainly important, how you participate in the Mass as a community is so much more important.

[Dreamweaver]

[quote name='Norseman82' post='1007132' date='Jun 16 2006, 08:43 PM']
2) Environment alienates both men and young people because they both are "challenge oriented and appreciate risk, adventure, variety, pleasure and reward" according to the author quoted in the article.
[/quote]

Haha, a 2 AM Holy Hour certainly meets all those criteria. Sometimes its a challenge, sometimes it feels risky walking around downtown during closing time, but the rewards and pleasure is immense.

I didn't read the article, but I don't see how all churches cater toward women in their 50s. What about those evangelical skater/xtreme Jesus groups? :

[Nathan]

There is definitely a great femininity to Catholicism, its devotions and spiritualities. There is a solemnity, gentleness, and sensitivity to the Catholic faith that could be characterized as "female" in spirit. I think this is one of the things that attracted me to the faith. For all of my red-blooded, aggressive maleness, I have a real feminine side. I've always tended to get along a little better with women, especially older women, than men.

Maybe men who do not possess a feminine side feel uncomfortable with many aspects of Catholicism; I don't know. Our culture has long told men to not be sensitive, to bottle up their feelings.

[Socrates]

[quote name='curtins' post='1007137' date='Jun 16 2006, 07:50 PM']
I can't read the article but I would say the author is complete bogus if he's saying the church's target is 50-55 year old women. The church's target is all of humanity. The problem is our culture teaches us men are supposed to get as many girls as they can and forget about everything else. The church says otherwise. That is not the church allienating young men- its young men allienating themselves from the truth. I'd take talking about theology or church affairs any day over talking about how many girls somebody got. and im 15 and a dude.
[/quote]
Since you didn't read the article (I couldn't access it either), it's not fair to critique what you think he might have said. I don't think the article says what you think it does.

I've read other things which have argued the points I suspect this article makes. It's talking about the sissified, feminized culture found in many contemporary churches and parishes (both Catholic and protestant), not about the mission intended by Christ's Church.

The "feminization of the Church" has been commented on by many Catholic and Christian writers.
In many cases, the Faith has been watered down into something into something weak, passive, and "non-threatening," emphasizing the meekness, mildness, and submissiveness, at the expense of the more challenging or "masculine" elements of Christian spirituality (the "Church Militant")
This is a genuine problem, which has led increasingly to a Church dominated by women and effeminate men.

This problem has been detailed in the book, [url="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1890626198/sr=8-1/qid=1150585789/ref=sr_1_1/002-8870616-7436002?%5Fencoding=UTF8"][i]The Church Impotent[/i], by Leon Podles.[/url]

Edited June 17, 2006 by Socrates

[CatholicCid]

[quote][center][size=3][b]Why men don't like to go to church[/b][/size]

By Kristen Campbell
Religion News Service
Published June 16, 2006[/center]


Churches wouldn't want pirates in the pews. But David Murrow, author of "Why Men Hate Going to Church," says a touch of swashbuckling spirit might not be the worst thing to happen on Sunday mornings.

"We don't have to have hand-to-hand combat during the worship service to get men there," Murrow said. "We just have to start speaking [their language], use the metaphors they understand and create an environment that feels masculine to them."

Today's churches, Murrow argued, just aren't cutting it.

"My background is in marketing and advertising, and one day I was sitting in church and all of a sudden it dawned on me that the target audience of almost everything about church culture was a 50- to 55-year-old woman," said Murrow, a Presbyterian elder who's now a member of a non-denominational congregation in Anchorage.

The gender gap isn't a distinctly American one, but it is a Christian one, according to Murrow. The theology and practices of Judaism, Buddhism and Islam offer "uniquely masculine" experiences for men, he said.

"Every Muslim man knows that he is locked in a great battle between good and evil, and although that was a prevalent teaching in Christianity until about 100 years ago, today it's primarily about having a relationship with a man who loves you unconditionally," Murrow said, referring to Christ.

"And if that's the punch line of the gospel, then you're going to have a lot more women than men taking you up on your offer because women are interested in a personal relationship with a man who loves you unconditionally. Men, generally, are not."

Concern about the perceived feminization of Christianity--and the subsequent backlash--is nothing new.

In the middle of the 19th Century, two-thirds of church members in New England were women, said Bret E. Carroll, professor of history at California State University, Stanislaus. Portrayals of Jesus around that time depicted a doe-eyed savior with long, flowing hair and white robes.

Then, around the 1870s and 1880s, came a growing emphasis on making religion attractive to men. The movement known as "muscular Christianity" extolled manliness and had its heyday from 1880 to 1920, according to Clifford Putney in "Muscular Christianity."

Around the same time, fraternal orders grew exponentially among the urban middle classes, according to an online article by Mark C. Carnes, author of "Secret Ritual and Manhood in Victorian America." Not only did the groups provide men with opportunities to cultivate business connections, Carnes wrote, but they also appealed to some who "found satisfaction in the exotic rituals, which provided a religious experience antithetical to liberal Protestantism and a masculine `family' vastly different from the one in which most members had been raised."

Fast forward to the late 20th Century, when Promise Keepers experienced enormous--if somewhat fleeting--popularity. Determining the lasting influence of this or any other movement in men's spiritual lives proves difficult.

But Rev. Chip Hale, pastor of Spanish Fort United Methodist Church in Spanish Fort, Ala., said he believes "real strides" have been made with Promise Keepers and other men's movements. Mission trips and hurricane relief work have also helped to make faith become real for some.

"These guys have really come out because it's something they can do," Hale said. "They feel like they've made a contribution. ... I think men like to do things that they feel comfortable doing."

Yet come Sunday morning, "we're going to sing love songs to Jesus and there's going to be fresh flowers on the altar and quilted banners on the walls," Murrow said.

Men aren't the only ones alienated by such an environment. Young people aren't that keen on it either, Murrow wrote. Both groups are challenge-oriented and appreciate risk, adventure, variety, pleasure and reward, Murrow wrote.




[i]Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune [/i] [/quote]

Edited June 18, 2006 by CatholicCid

[the 13th papist]

thanx for the article Cid,

im going to have to agree with the basic jist of what it says.
im not bashing the the sacrifice of the mass or the Church, but the current prevailing interpretations are rather lame.

Peace,

[MichaelF]

Time to liberate the Christian Lands (and points in proximity), again?

The Bishops at Clermont knew -exactly- how to channel a generation of underutilized males, in service to the Church.

A Crusade would hit the spot, and let's face it the Syrians and Egyptians arent exactly the Waffen-SS...

Edited June 18, 2006 by MichaelF

[ColinAH]

I do not agree at all with that article. The church offers men a chance to be real "masculine men". Wether in the priesthood, married or singal life, all men in the church are called to live their manhood to the full. Churches in my area frequently have groups targeted towards men. At mass father always uses anyalgies (spelling) that make men feel right at home.

The problem is not with the church alienating men, it is the society that alienates manhood from the values of the Church.

[1337 k4th0l1x0r]

Let's all be honest and move past the pleasant to hear theoretically true response that the Church reaches out to everyone because while in doctrine it does, in practice it doesn't. Or at least doesn't reach out to everyone equally or effectively. Take a church service, whether it be Protestant or Catholic, and look at what happens. You sing some wishy washy hymns, listen to a preacher tell you that you're not bad but you could be better, and hold hands and hug each other. It's absolutely directed toward middle aged women. If you take away the theological aspect then no man in their right mind would go there on his own. The thing is men really don't care about emotional or personal issues that much to spend more than an hour a week - if that much - doing so. Men want action in the sense of getting out and doing things. I know that some priests can give very challenging homilies but many don't reach out to men. One powerful aspect of the old mass is that it demands reverence in such a way that reaches to men.

And don't even get started on the church ministries. Thank goodness for KofC or else there really wouldn't be much for men to do.