For about a century and a half now, women have outnumbered men in American churches. Look over the average American congregation on Sunday morning--more women than men. Even if you mentally remove the widows--women do live longer--and concentrate on the middle-aged and younger the results are the same in most churches.

Why? Perhaps no one answer can be given, but certainly a major reason is the "feminization of Christianity." Beginning in the 19th century, Christianity was feminized: emotion was valued more than reason, hymnody reflected a female perspective ("I Come to the Garden Alone"), and Jesus was portrayed in a feminine manner (Softly and Tenderly, Jesus Is Calling). The God of Wrath and Judgment was eased out he back door, to be replaced by the God of Compassion and Acceptance. The Augustinian/Calvinist God of Command was replaced by the Divine Lover. The "Hard Sayings" of Jesus were not highlighted in devotional literature.

This morning I attended an Antiochian Orthodox Christian church. My daughter and her fiancee were received as catechumens. He was the one first attracted to Orthodoxy. As I looked around at the congregation I noticed at least as many men as women attended. Why? This essay offers some answers.

Here are the first two paragraphs:

In a time when churches of every description are faced with Vanishing Male Syndrome, men are showing up at Eastern Orthodox churches in numbers that, if not numerically impressive, are proportionately intriguing. This may be the only church which attracts and holds men in numbers equal to women. As Leon Podles wrote in his 1999 book, "The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity," "The Orthodox are the only Christians who write basso profundo church music, or need to."

Rather than guess why this is, I emailed a hundred Orthodox men, most of whom joined the Church as adults. What do they think makes this church particularly attractive to men? Their responses, below, may spark some ideas for leaders in other churches, who are looking for ways to keep guys in the pews.


From 1987-1994 I served as pastor of a rural Reformed congregation that was traditional Dutch. We had about equal numbers of men and women on Sunday mornings, including complete families--husband, wife, children. What we had in common with the Orthodoxy of the essay was a conservative theology that emphasized God, strong expectations for the Christian life, relatively little emphasis on the trivialities of pietism (several of our men gathered outside the building to smoke, many of them drank beer at home), male leadership of the congregation, and worship that focused on God and God's Word.