When Leavers Are a Sign of Church Health

Don’t be too quick to blame the church when people leave.

A survey of those “disaffiliated from religion” is getting some attention and evoking alarm also.

Young Women Are Leaving Church in Unprecedented Numbers

That younger generations have disaffiliated — which I presume includes ceasing or not starting churchgoing — more than older generations is not surprising.   But now Gen Z women are disaffiliated more than Gen Z men, 39% to 34%.

This is a reversal from previous generations.  Up to now, men have been more prone to not go to church than women.  There has been not a little concern about that, and there should be in light of statistics that fathers who quit church tend to lead to children eventually quitting church even when mothers remain faithful.  As I type, I see a token of that concern, a 2005 book titled Why Men Hate Going to Church.

But in Gen Z, it is women that are quitting church and religion more than men apparently.

There are many responses one could make to this.  Aaron Renn’s is worth a read.

Will American Christianity Become Majority Male?

My main take at the moment is that one should not be quick to presume that disaffiliating women is the church’s fault.  Nor should one demand that the church cater more to the views now prevalent among young women.  That would be just about the worst response possible.  But I am getting ahead of myself.

The blame, if you will, for people leaving the church varies from person to person and group to group and church to church.  Yes, that may sound banal, but it has to be said. Take people who have left the Roman Catholic Church.  One is

Rod Dreher

, who left not because of doctrinal issues but because the manner in which the Church of Rome mishandled the sexual abuse scandals was harming his faith beyond what he could endure.  That is one reason he is Orthodox today.  Some other very different leavers from Rome are feminists who depart because they insist on women priests and abortion on demand.  I would say Rome was culpable in Dreher’s case but not in the case of departing feminists.  The feminists should be blamed for their self-excommunication.

Among evangelicals, after the 2016 election we had the spectacle of some noisily leaving churches because those awful “white evangelicals” voted for Trump.  Some made a point to “leave loud.”  Jemar Tisby was one of the oh-so indignant leavers.  (To be fair, I think he and most of the other loud leavers attend other churches now, but woke ones.)

A correct response to the loud leavers was not hand wringing but instead, “Really? You are faulting evangelicals who voted for Trump over Hillary?  You should be thankful most evangelicals have that much common sense, much more than you have apparently.”  Well, maybe leave out that last phrase.

I can fault American evangelicals on several matters.  But the 2016 election is not one of them.  The blame for Tisby and others leaving churches over it belongs on the leavers. Yet I can also fault churches that have gone overboard on Trumpism, such as New Apostolic Revelation people and First Baptist Church Dallas.

I think I’ve already illustrated well that one should be careful about generalizing about the disaffiliated or about church leavers.  So forgive me when this post contains even more caveats and hemming and hawing.

At this point, readers are probably wondering if I am so awful as to blame Gen Z women who leave churches.  Be patient.  I will foolishly get there.  But first, it should be pointed out that generally the phenomenon of men of previous generations leaving churches is quite different than that of Gen Z women leaving.

As many others have pointed out, the feminization of churches has turned off men of earlier generations (including this man).  Emotion manipulating worship featuring Jesus Is My Boyfriend music, timid sermons from weak men, women priests, increased hectoring against “toxic masculinity” and now “whiteness”, and sheer boredom turned off any number of men.  And, yes, the church is mostly to blame for that.

At the same time, there remain more manly, dare I say patriarchal, churches led by manly men with bold proclamation of the Truth in creed, song, and preaching.  Many of these churches have healthy, even fun, men’s groups.  Those leaving men who did not at least make the effort to find such churches are to blame.  Being bored beyond endurance by a feminized church is one thing; being lazy in finding a sound church is quite another.

But what of today’s disaffiliated Gen Z women?  We should remember that many of them share the characteristics of disaffiliated Gen Z men.  Many of them were not raised as Christians or were raised as Christians in a very nominal, low-commitment fashion.  Most of them are going through a self-centered time of transition into higher education and/or careers that draw them away from what should be higher priorities.  Young single adults in such transitions are notorious for giving their families low priority; that is nothing new. It should be no wonder that church is often given low priority as well.

Of course, getting married and having children is often a quick reality check that church and family are important after all.  But I’m getting ahead of myself again.

The above is important to keep things in perspective.  But it does not explain why, now with Gen Z, women are disaffiliating from religion more than men.  I do not presume to know all the reasons.  But for some at least, I think it related to Gen Z women becoming more lib/left while Gen Z men are becoming more conservative/based.  The above survey on religious disaffiliation itself, confirmed by our exvangelical friends, concludes that one factor is leaving for woke reasons of “diversity” and the like, not unlike Tisby leaving over those deplorable white evangelical Trump voters.  At the risk again of over-generalizing, it could be said that the problem for them is the opposite than for leaving men of previous generations; some Gen Z women think churches are not feminized and woke enough!

I do not know how much that is the case.  And I know all too well that there are a number of valid reasons for leaving a particular congregation or denomination.  But I can assert the following with confidence: providing woke feminist young women and likeminded men are given the respectful space to grow as Christians and get their minds right (much as I was given space to learn and grow during the brief time I was both a professing Christian and pro-abortion), then any such leaving because they cannot endure the sound loving teaching of orthodox Christianity and its common sense application is a sign of church health more than of church failure. Faithful proclamation and living of The Faith, along with opposition to false gospels, has often repelled many as we see in Scripture. The blame in such cases is on the leavers more than on the church.

By the way, is there any “exvangelical” who does not have a book coming out on people leaving those awful traumatic churches that actually teach the Bible and The Faith?  But that’s a whole ‘nother post . . . or two . . . or . . . .

And the church should not chase after them and try to keep them by watering down the truth or by accommodating false gospels such as Critical Theory.  Do you think that odious?  Then Jesus was odious.  When his patient but hard teaching about Himself as the Bread of Life caused “many of his disciples” to “turn back and no longer walk with Him,” he did not chase after them or water down or reinterpret his teaching.  He let them walk away.  Then He even asked the Twelve if they wanted to walk away, too! (John 6: 25-69)

The church, too, should be patient in teaching and answering perplexed questions.  But it should never pander to those in willful error.  If such walk away, then let them walk away.  Proclaim, teach, pray, and love.  But “let the evildoer still do evil, and the filthy still be filthy, and righteous still do right, and the holy still be holy.” (Rev. 22:11) The church should not somehow try to be better than Jesus.  If even His teaching repelled people, faithful orthodoxy today most certainly will, no matter how loving.

Commitment to be faithful to the Truth, even when, nay, especially when it causes opposition and people walking away, is a sign of church health, not failure.

Still, I freely concede that the topic of why people leave churches and often stop churchgoing altogether is no simple one. I may return to it.