US Women leaving religion

[lpetrich]

The Exodus of Single Women From Christianity Continues | Roll to Disbelieve: Evangelical Churn Finally Reaches Gender Parity by Captain Cassidy

Hi and welcome back! One of this blog’s central concerns remains the decline of Christianity in America, especially what I’ve come to call its churn rate. For many years, that decline has resulted in a decided gender skew in churches. Nowadays, most of them consist mostly of women! But now, it looks like that tide has turned. Today, let’s look at the flight of single women from Christianity, and what that might mean for the religion moving forward.

So both sexes are doing it, and not just men.

• Professional and working women: Working Women Are Leaving the Church. Here's How to Bring Them Back., Five Factors Changing Women’s Relationship with Churches - Barna Group
• Black women: KTF REWIND: Young black women are leaving Christianity and embracing African witchcraft – Keep The Faith ® The UK's Black and multi-ethnic Christian magazine
• Millennials in general: Millennials leaving church in droves, study says - CNN, Millennials Are Leaving Religion And Not Coming Back | FiveThirtyEight
• Mothers and wives: 6 Reasons Why Women May Be Leaving Your Church | Facts & Trends
• Young adults and teens: Evangelical Churn: The Falling Away of the Young | Cassidy McGillicuddy
• Not just Protestants, but also Catholics: Women leaving Church 'in droves' warns McAleese

From the "five factors" link about unchurched women:

• 1993: 24% of adults -- 57% men, 44% women
• 2003: 33% of adults -- 60% men, 40% women
• 2015: 45% of adults -- 54% men, 46% women

From "leaving church in droves":

• Years 2007 to 2014
• Evang. Prot. 26.3% to 25.4%
• Mainl. Prot. 18.1% to 14.7%
• Catholic: 23.9% to 20.8%
• Others: 4.7% to 5.9%
• Unaffiliated: 16.1% to 22.8%

"Whereas 85% of the silent generation (born 1928-1945) call themselves Christians, just 56% of today's younger millennials (born 1990-1996) do the same, even though the vast majority -- about eight in 10 -- were raised in religious homes."

 

[lpetrich]

The black women becoming witches was a case of deciding to practice an alternative religion instead of no religion at all.

Captain Cassidy then takes on relevantmagazine.com/god/church/why-are-so-many-single-women-are-leaving-the-church/]Why Are So Many Single Women Leaving the Church? - Relevant

• Single women can’t find good husbands in their church communities. Once they’re ready to get married, they find very few marriageable prospects in their churches. Many eventually look outside the church for mates, which means a high likelihood of ending up with a husband holding different beliefs. (source)
• Their fellow Christians criticize, police, ostracize, exclude, and negate them if they don’t perfectly fit into stereotypically feminine molds.
• Churches’ prurient over-focus on sex and puritanical control-grabs over women’s lives and bodies alienates many women.

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• Single women feel like they have no place in a religion completely sold on the Cult of Family.
• Married women who feel threatened by their presence can be really unkind to their single sisters.

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• Constant streams of scandals involving men abusing their power over women.
• Church leaders blowing off their concerns and making pretty noises about caring but doing nothing whatsoever to alleviate the injustices against them.
• Political agendas that specifically and pointedly seek to destroy women’s access to human rights and civil liberties.

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• Single women tend to be younger than the married gals, which means they have decades of church service and tithing ahead of them. Christianity’s flocks continue to get older and older by the year. (source (p.5))
• Women in general do most of the volunteer work in churches, just like they volunteer more often overall everywhere than men. Just speaking in utilitarian terms, single women tend to have much more time to volunteer than married women do, especially once children get added to the married women’s lives. (source)
• Traditionally, women have always been more religiously-observant than men as well. If they leave, churches find themselves facing more men in the flock — who may not hold fervent beliefs or feel strongly about devotions. (source)
• When those single women marry, they’re going to be the ones dragging their kids and husbands to church. So if they leave before marriage, that’s a whole family the church loses. (source)
• Most importantly: Once Christians in general leave their churches, very few of them ever return. For single women, that principle may apply doubly to them because of the mistreatment they’ve almost certainly suffered while they were involved with church.

 

[lpetrich]

One last bit from that article:

Church leaders and fervent male congregants spend a lot more time whining about the “feminization” of churches than they do bending over backwards to thank women for all the stuff they do to help those churches survive. They’ll miss those women when they’re gone, but they sure won’t act now to ensure those women want to stick around.

Their ingratitude should speak volumes to the women in their flocks. After all, they tell women constantly and in no uncertain terms that they are happy to accept women’s money and labor and time, but want to make sure women don’t expect anything in return for those expenditures.