Why Men Hate Going to Church

by David Murrow

Major national men’s ministries such as Promise Keepers used to pack stadiums—but now have trouble filling church auditoriums. Ethnic and overseas churches report gender gaps as high as 10 to 1. Christian colleges are becoming convents.

“Your system is perfectly designed to give you the results you’re getting.”

Men don’t hate God or Christ or the Bible or Christianity. They hate a system that’s perfectly designed to reach someone else. A system that makes them feel unneeded. A system that exalts the gifts they simply do not possess. As Albert Einstein once said, “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

But look beyond the relatively thin stratum of professional clergy, and you find a church dominated by women and their values. Dr. Leon Podles says it well: “Modern churches are women’s clubs with a few male officers.”

Of the planet’s great religions, only Christianity has a consistent, worldwide shortage of male practitioners.

self-described liberal churches were 14 percent more likely to have a gender gap than conservative ones.