Why don’t men go to church anymore? The decline of male church attendance

I most recently spent half a year at a PCA church, and then another half a year at a Southern Baptist church. I attended Sunday services as well as Wednesday night Bible study. I am now looking for a new church. For now, I just look around for a sermon I like and listen to that. In this post, I’ll explain why I think men don’t like church.

There are three areas where churches fail to attract men:

    1. Apologetics
    2. Feminism, sex and marriage
    3. Policy and current events

Apologetics

The PCA church discouraged me from becoming a member of the church because they said that conversion to Christianity due to reason and evidence was contrary to their teachings, and a “red flag”. Their words. I didn’t try to fight them on it, because they are Reformed Presbyterian, and this is their actual view. Their approach to apologetics was “pre-suppositional”, which is to say, they try to convince people to become Christians by asking them to assume that the Bible is infallible, without any argumentation or evidence. Naturally, this doesn’t work, so they aren’t trained to answer any serious questions from non-Christians. (1 Pet 3:15-16)

The Reformed Baptist SBC church is led by people like Russell Moore and Al Mohler, who take the “magic words” approach to evangelism. I.e. – they think that people become Christians just by speaking Bible verses out of context to them. So, when the atheist asks “do you have any evidence for God’s existence?” or “do you have any evidence for Jesus’ resurrection?”, their response is to quote Bible verses to the atheist, which have nothing to do with those topics. Christianity has lost so much influence in the culture under their approach, which is not even Biblical. (Mat 12:38–41)

These approaches to evangelism are not used in any other area of human endeavor. No one replies to questions about auto mechanics, or software engineering, or gardening, or cooking, by spouting Bible verses. In literally every other area of human endeavor, the laws of logic and supporting evidence are seen as assets when making claims to know something about the world to someone who disagrees with you.

Feminism, Sex and Marriage

First wave feminism simply asked for women to be given the same liberty and opportunity as men. That was good. But later versions of destroyed all distinctions between men and women. By destroying femininity, feminism directed women away from the traditional life plan of marriage, children and home-making.

Feminism changed how women voted. Today, about 75% of young, unmarried women vote for policies like taxpayer-funded birth control, taxpayer-funded abortion, no-fault divorce, affirmative action for women in schools and in the workplace, taxpayer-funded daycare, public schools, single-mother welfare, social security, etc. These policies and programs raised tax rates, and grew government, making it easier for women to have children without having to choose a marriage-ready man she wasn’t attracted to. Instead, she could choose men she was attracted to, and just use government programs as a substitute provider if it didn’t “work out”. Thanks to feminism, we have a 42% out-of-wedlock birth rate, and it’s rising. Few female college graduates are debt-free. About 5% of women emerge from college as virgins.

Under feminism, the traditional male roles and virtues were deemed “sexist”. Women were shamed for choosing early marriage, large families, and stable men who were good at being husbands and fathers. Instead, women today chose men based on appearance. They spend their 20s and early 30s giving men who will not commit to them premarital sex. The men who are getting sex thrown at them have no interest in Judeo-Christian values, chastity, fidelity, commitment or raising children. Women mistake the men’s willingness to have sex and cohabitate as signs that they are close to marriage. But in fact, chasing the hot bad boys just eats up the chastity, youth and beauty that could have made them interesting to the marriage-minded men they scorned. Later on, they realize that they’ve wasted their 20s on bad boys, but by then they are not attractive for marriage.

What has the response been to feminism from pastors and churches? They accept the anti-male, anti-marriage policies, that came out of feminism. They accept the promiscuity, and the marriage-delaying that came from feminism. Today, pastors just try to bully the men who were passed over to marry the women who had previously rejected them, despite the higher risk of divorce caused by the women’s past behavior.

Policy and current events

Most pastors are anti-intellectual, and they believe that this is a virtue, since they are focused narrowly on what the Bible explicitly says. Because of this, they aren’t able to understand which laws and policies allow Christianity and Christian families to flourish. I agree that what the Bible speaks about is of the highest importance. But we need to understand how to achieve the goals that the Bible states, as well as how to counter the forces that threaten the achievement of those goals.

For example, Christianity thrives when marriage thrives. Christianity is passed on from parents to children. Anything that threatens marriage, or interferes with parental authority, weakens the influence of Christianity. So, policies like higher taxes, no-fault divorce, SOGI laws, all harm the Christian family, while policies like lower taxes, protections for Christian businesses, protection for Christian schools (statements of faith, moral codes), etc. are all good for Christian families. But most pastors never talk about policies or laws, because they don’t think about how to defend the Christian worldview, how to educate Christian children, how to promote marriage, how promote Christian moral values in the public square. Even protecting the right to life of unborn children is ignored.

As the churches lose relevance, it becomes tempting for pastors to accept what the secular left promotes as good and true and beautiful. The big one is pastors pushing for redistribution of wealth by the secular government as a solution to “poverty”, even though the Bible only sanctions voluntary charity. This diminishes the cultural relevance of the church and elevates the secular government. SBC leaders like Russell Moore champion amnesty for refugees and unskilled illegal immigrants, not realizing how it will harm Christian institutions and values down the road to import large numbers of people who will eventually vote for policies like higher taxes, bigger government, etc.

The woman who argued for legalizing abortion at the Supreme Court

Sarah Weddington argued for Roe v. Wade at the Supreme Court, and the majority of the male justices agreed with her. So, I thought it would be interesting to dig around and see what kind of woman she was.

United Methodist Pastor Kid Sarah Weddington

First, a bit about her background. She was a United Methodist pastor’s kid, and a leader in her church.

From far-left Wikipedia:

Sarah Ragle was born on February 5, 1945, in Abilene, Texas, to Lena Catherine and Herbert Doyle Ragle, a Methodist minister. As a child, she was… president of the Methodist youth fellowship at her church, played the organ, sang in the church choir…

Weddington graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English from McMurry University… [S]he entered the University of Texas Law School and graduated in 1967. In 1967, during her third year of law school, Weddington conceived with Ron Weddington and travelled to Mexico for an illegal abortion. From 1968 to 1974, she was married to Weddington. After her divorce, Sarah continued to live alone in Austin, Texas.

She had an illegal abortion in Mexico.

This is the kind of man she chose to have unprotected sex with before marriage:

Ron Weddington, one of the attorneys who drafted the brief for abortion rights in Roe V Wade, wrote a private letter to President-elect Bill Clinton arguing for the state to use abortion as population control. This letter was written in 1992:

“[Y]ou can start immediately to eliminate the barely educated, unhealthy and poor segment of our country.

[…]It’s time to officially recognize that people are going to have sex and what we need to do as a nation is prevent as much disease and as many poor babies as possible.

Ron Weddington is the husband of Sarah Weddington, one of the two lawyers who argued for abortion in Roe Vs. Wade.

She chose this man out of all the men in the world, probably because he wasn’t going to lead her spiritually or morally. She wanted to escape Christian morality and to escape being judged by Christians for her choice of man, and her choices with sex.

This is an interesting insight into her motives from a student admirer:

One of my all-time favorite lecturers was Sarah Weddington, the attorney who successfully argued the Roe v. Wade decision.

[…]After a couple of years, I… secured a date for my mentor to speak on campus. The lecture was brilliant. The event was successful, even though a few pro-life demonstrators stood quietly protesting outside the venue.

After the event, a group of students and I took her to dinner and were entertained by more exciting, interesting stories. Over dessert, I asked, “whatever happened to Roe?”

Sarah’s gracious demeanor and beautiful smile changed instantaneously.

“She’s a stupid piece of white trash. She’s pro-life and a Christian,” she snarled throwing in a few decidedly ungracious and unrepeatable curse words. “She’s a piece of trash. She was stupid when we found her and she’s worse now.”

Most people know that Weddington lied about “Roe”. Roe never had an abortion. Her child was given up for adoption. Weddington and Coffee just used Roe to get the abortion law they wanted.

By the way, Linda Coffee was also attending church at the time she filed the abortion legal challenge, as the pro-abortion Dallas Morning News reports. Today, Linda Coffee is living with a woman. No husband, and apparently no kids – just like Weddington. This is the feminist vision, complete with lesbianism, sold to women in those left-wing seminaries we call “universities”. And it’s worse in non-STEM departments.

Something else about Sarah Weddington. You might have read my previous post on the research about the link between induced abortion and breast cancer. Her induced abortion prior to pregnancy is a textbook case for breast cancer, and that’s exactly what happened to her:

After arguing for abortion, Weddington eventually became an advisor to President Jimmy Carter and pushed for research on breast cancer, a disease from which she is a survivor. Ironically, dozens of studies have linked induced abortions to an increasing risk of breast cancer and a top researcher says more than 300,000 women have died from breast cancer as a result of having abortions.

I think her abortion crusade was just her attempt to make what she did legal, so that she would no longer be judged for her bad choices with men, sex and pregnancy.

The hero of young feminists

Why do people listen to people like Weddington, who have failed at life so badly? Is she really a hero of “women’s rights”? Sex-selection abortions caused the deaths of 46 million unborn girls in India. Is that a triumph of “women’s rights”? All pro-abortion women support sex-selection abortions – and they are most often used on unborn girls, who are the “wrong sex”.

What Weddington did was not about “women’s rights”. It was about escaping moral judgement for her actions. Feminists today have so much hatred of being judged. They want to make poor decisions with men and sex, and then force people to not judge them for it. They want to chase hookup sex with hot bad boys. They want taxpayer-funded contraceptives and abortions. They want to eliminate any moral judgement of abortion. They want to silence the responsible, moral people. Feminists like Weddington call the moral, responsible people who disagree with women’s poor choices “trash”.

Abortion Women Feminists Feminism

Can chivalrous Christian conservatives end abortion?

Most Christian men don’t have the courage to challenge women like Weddington about their atheist, feminist, socialist worldviews. Look at the photo of the good United Methodist pastor’s kid and church leader. She’s so pretty. Men are very foolish. They judge women by their appearances. A pretty girl must be good, so they don’t want to disagree with her or persuade her or lead her on moral or spiritual issues.

Christian / conservative men think it’s “chivalrous” to make pretty women into victims. That’s why she was probably never confronted about atheism, feminism and socialism by her United Methodist pastor parents or church leaders. To confront a woman about her beliefs with reason and evidence is “harsh” and “unchivalrous”. Then at college, she was indoctrinated by those English professors and their red marking pens. She wanted good grades, so she wrote what they told her to write. She had never learned to develop her own views with reason and evidence. She just wanted to be liked. This was not a STEM program connected to the real world. She never formed her feminist pro-abortion convictions by writing code or doing lab work. Her non-STEM education was just indoctrination. Indoctrination that left her a murderer, a spinster and separated from God for eternity.

Nothing that’s going on in our churches teaches men to challenge young women about the atheism, feminism and socialism. The pious, chivalrous United Methodist pastors and parents were in a position to stop Sarah Weddington. But her parents and pastors failed to defeat ideologies like atheism, feminism and socialism with her. They were probably just focused on piety, feelings and community. They were probably just happy to have a pretty girl in their home and church. They probably didn’t want her to stress her out with having to learn logic, evidence or apologetics. They probably thought women were too dumb to learn those things, and put them into practice. Just send her to English professors and law school to be radicalized.

Social conservatives only want to stop abortion if it can be done in a way that allows women to keep radical feminism and the Sexual Revolution. The delaying marriage for careers must continue, they say. The shunning of spiritual and moral men must continue, they say. The drunken hook-ups with hot bad boys must continue, they say. Hot bad boys will change into good Christian husbands after they get hook-up sex, they say. No need to confront Sarah Weddington about her worldview with reason and evidence. That is too heavy-handed. That is not chivalrous.

And that’s why abortion is still legal.

Should Christian men consider single mothers for marriage?

Why Christians object to warning men about high-risk relationships?
Why do Christians object to warning men about high-risk relationships?

A while back, I explained my three concerns about attending church. One of them was that male pastors and church leaders have adopted the priorities of radical feminism, and have turned against men who want a traditional marriage in which the man leads and the wife supports. Well, I found something that really illustrates what I mean by that, so that everyone will understand it.

Above, you can see a tweet by Michael Foster, a pastor who hosts a podcast called “It’s Good to be a Man”. His web site states that his goal is: “Extending God’s house & father-rule by helping men to establish their own houses in strength, workmanship & wisdom.”

He explains in subsequent tweets that he is just urging men to ask questions to find out how the woman became a single mother.

Reactions to the tweet

Here are some reactions to the tweet:

The negative reactions are all anti-intellectual and childish, especially trying to refute statistics with “you hurt my feelings” or telling a single personal story as a counterexample.

Here’s a disclaimer. In this post, I am talking about single mothers by choice, and single mothers who initiated divorce. Widows are excluded.

The risks posed by single mothers

Now, let’s improve Foster’s warning, by looking at some evidence – is a marriage to a single mother really more likely to result in a bad outcome?

First of all, women initiate 70% of divorces. If you meet a woman who divorced her husband, she either had a defect in her ability to evaluate and choose a man, or she had a defect in her ability to maintain a commitment to the man she chose. Either way, a woman who divorced her previous husband has red flags. There are two possibilities. She either chose a good man or she chose a bad man. If she chose a bad man, then it shows that she didn’t choose a man with good moral character and spiritual leadership. That means that those things were low priorities for her when deciding who to get naked with. Alternatively, she married a good man, and failed to maintain the commitment. Then she has different problems: problems with male leadership, problems with responsibilities, problems with commitment, problems with contentment, etc. You need to ask questions to get to the bottom of what happened, and more importantly, what she has studied and done to change her worldview. Don’t take her words for it, look at her actions.

Second, the number of premarital sex partners a woman has makes her a higher risk of divorce. The more sex partners, the more risk. The problem with women who engage in sex with men who don’t commit to them is that they necessarily don’t see a man’s willingness and ability to commit as valuable when choosing a man. Women who have premarital sex with men who don’t commit see OTHER THINGS as more valuable. They are rewarding the man for his height, his muscles, his tattoos, his piercings, his entertainment of her, etc. A good man should be very wary when a woman who gave her best youth, beauty and sexual interest to men like that now want to “settle” for a boring, unattractive provider who they see as having lower value than the men they gave sex to without requiring a commitment. What they really wanted was bad boys, and they threw sex at those bad boys without asking for commitment. With the man they perceive as low-level, they are insisting on commitment first, because they don’t want this low-level man as badly as they wanted the bad boy. They are settling for less than they feel they deserve. This is where sex-withholding, feelings of unhappiness, and frivolous divorces come from. And by the way, hollering Jesus doesn’t fix that risk any more than hollering Jesus fixes student loans accumulated for a useless non-STEM degree. Jesus-hollering isn’t evidence that a woman has persuaded herself to change her view of which men are the most attractive. A woman’s lack of respect for men who prepare for commitment and who keep their commitments is dangerous for marital stability. The hysterical reactions to a man’s judging a woman for her past mistakes don’t cancel the damage and risks caused by those mistakes. They simply tell the man that this woman is unrepentant, and therefore unteachable, and likely unsuitable for goal-oriented marriage. She is not qualified for the job of wife: self-sacrificial love for her husband, respect for her husband, and supporting her husband in what he is trying to achieve for God.

Here’s what the Bible says about sex outside of heterosexual marriage and about frivolous divorce. Read the critical replies to Foster’s tweet. The critical responses show the default position of church-attending Christian women and pastors to the Bible in this culture. First, the critics don’t accept the Bible as an authority over women’s choices in any area of life. Second, the critics don’t believe that women should bear any responsibility for their past actions. Nobody believes that women choosing bad men is the woman’s fault in this society. So you should assume that single mothers don’t take responsibility for their own failures. And that means that she will have taken no steps to repent of her mistake, and change her character so that she doesn’t make the same mistake again. It’s up to you to look at what she has been reading, listening to, watching, etc. and to check her actions in order to find out what she really thinks about what the Bible says. You can’t marry a woman who responds to any mention of the moral law and moral obligations with denial of responsibility and insults. If she hasn’t become an active crusader against women who choose bad men, and women who choose premarital sex, and women who choose divorce, then you can’t really believe that there’s been any real repentance. The risks to you are too high to take a chance on someone who is not certain. I’ve only ever met one single mother (Kerri) who blamed her own divorce on her own bad decisions.

The culture opposes male leadership

Foster’s warning is intended to help men to make better decisions, so that their relationships will produce results for God. But his critics aren’t interested in what men are trying to achieve for God. They are only concerned that women get what they want, regardles of their past actions. In their opinion, men exists solely to serve the needs of women. Women don’t have to be good enough for marriage, men just have to give them what they want regardless of the woman’s suitability for wife and mother roles. The role of men in any relationship is not to lead and achieve goals for God. Their role is to let women rule over them, disposing of their earnings as they see fit, for the benefit of the woman.

When women are young and pretty, they are entitled to hot bad boys to entertain them. When they are older, have tons of sexual experience, and children from different fathers, they are entitled to a husband to financially support them. But a husband with no power to lead the home, since their past choices of man showed they have no interest in following a man who has good character. And the churches, pastors, courts, schools, hospitals, etc. are all there to enforce this view of men as clowns / slaves.

This is what women are told about the role of men in every area of society. This society, including the Christian parents, Christian pastors, Christian culture, etc. do not produce women who prefer early marriage to men who are good at moral leadership and spiritual leadership. Therefore, men who are chaste, sober, have good educations, good private sector jobs, good savings, etc. need to be extremely careful. Look at the responses to Foster’s tweet, and think: do these people care about providing you with a good wife? Or is their concern all about how to insult you and shame you, until you are submissive to her needs?

Your marriage is your enterprise for serving God

My advice to men right now is to read over every single critical tweet in that thread that Foster started. Imagine that you are trying to get these women to do something in a marriage that is part of your plan to make the marriage serve God. You’re trying to get her to watch a William Lane Craig debate. You’re trying to get her to stop spending money on 50 Shades of Grey and Harry Potter. You’re trying to get her to stop smoking and drinking. You’re trying to get her to talk about the sermon instead of essential oils. You’re trying to get her to read a Thomas Sowell book. You’re trying to get her to not put the kids in day care or public schools.

You need to assume that her response to male leadership like this will be the exact same as the responses that Foster is getting to his tweet. And then after you have assumed it, then you need to keep your hands off that woman. Keep your distance, and ask her questions to find out what her real views are, and whether she is interested in growing into the kind of person who is safe for you to marry. Don’t forget that chastity and sobriety are important during the evaluation process, so that you aren’t influenced away from your leadership role. Don’t listen to her words, look at her actions.