Why men don't go to church: more perspectives

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In a comment on my post Why real men don’t go to church Bill recommended a similarly named but longer article, Why Men Don’t Go to Church, apparently by Neil Carter. The name of Neil’s site, Christ In Y’all.com, betrays his US southern states perspective.

Nevertheless I found the article had a lot to say relevant to my own experience and situation. I am among those who are

not happy with “church as usual”

– even though my church is wonderful compared with most. It’s not so often the preacher who boils my blood, more often the way other things are done during the service. Basically I am one of those men who

despise their passive role in the church, whether they have been able to label their frustration or no.

I probably haven’t dropped out of church altogether because my untypical Anglican church is rather like a Southern Baptist one in that “There’s just so much to do“, something to keep me busy most Sundays. But when there isn’t I find it hard to remain positive.

I was interested by this quote, which fits my own experience. Years ago I

felt a growing, general desire to do something important for the kingdom of God, which automatically precludes being a layman! Most ministers and missionaries first struggled for a while with a very general “calling,” only to settle on a particular ministry after discussing their feelings over time with folks already in “the ministry.” Many missionaries then leave this country for unevangelized lands because they cannot find established churches in this country that satisfy their need for church life.

Within my own Anglican setup in the early 1990s, this was in effect the only route into doing anything in the church other than being ordained, which wasn’t for me as I didn’t see myself as a pastor. I know many ordained Anglicans are not working as pastors, but in effect they are all expected to start as such. To cut a long story short, I ended up in an unevangelised land.

I would, however, consider that the distinction Carter makes between masculine and feminine preferences is a cultural one, not a fundamental biological or spiritual distinction between genders. Not all men feel like me, no doubt some women do, and that’s OK.

Here is how Carter finishes his main argument: a man

needs men who know him well, who will fight with him, and who can be his comrades along the journey he is on. And finally, through various and often unexpected means, the Church of Jesus Christ will be a place where the sacrificial dying of Jesus can manifest itself for the sake of His Bride. When a man has found Her, he will suffer the loss of everything for Her just as Christ did in the beginning. Man, this is what you want.

Carter finishes with a plug for his own loose association of house churches. I am not so convinced that this is the way forward, but that is really a separate issue, one that I want to come back to sometime. But there is a lot in Carter’s article to make me think, and I hope to make think any church leader who is concerned about a shortage of men in the congregation.

Meanwhile Dave Warnock has posted twice more on this matter, apologising for offending me (but he didn’t really) and giving more of his own thoughts, to which I have responsed in a comment.

A mystic or nothing at all

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In the days ahead, you will either be a mystic (one who has experienced God for real) or nothing at all.

Karl Rahner, as quoted by James Spinti from the forthcoming book The Furious Longing of God.

I agree. Faith that is based only on truth understood by the intellect will not survive difficult times. Only faith based on a real personal experience of God can endure the worst that life can throw at us and last into eternity.

Why real men don't go to church

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I was taken aback at the vehemence with which a pacifist Methodist minister attacked me for daring to suggest, in a comment on his blog, that

men leave the church … partly because the church has too much of a feminine ethos.

I made it very clear that I did not support the controversial assertion that A church should have a masculine ethos; rather I stated that

the church should be balanced in these matters.

Nevertheless Dave Warnock has responded with

There is a frequent and loudly stated view that men leave the Church because it is too feminine. … I believe this is complete rubbish and have done so for a long time.

Another Methodist minister, Pam BG, writes that she is

genuinely trying to understand the … comment … that the church has been ‘feminized’ and so it is unattractive to men – that’s why men are staying away from church. … I am puzzled by how an institution dominated by men can be either ‘feminized’ …

I must say I am puzzled by Pam’s puzzlement, and consider part of Dave’s response to be complete rubbish.

Both Dave and Pam make the point that the church is for the most part led by men, and so cannot be feminised. But by what kind of men is it led? Men who are widely perceived as being weak wimps, and often in their pronouncements seem to do their best to perpetuate this stereotype. Men who like to wear brightly coloured dresses, at least in my own Anglican church. Men who are often rather camp, feminine in their behaviour, and perceived as very probably either gay or paedophiles while often being hypocritical in condemning such people. Men who seem happy to spend their time doing feminine style things, i.e. most church social events, with groups of mostly women. Men who gladly consume the typical church diet of quiche with weak milky tea, who are therefore not real men.

There are of course among actual church leaders huge numbers of exceptions to these stereotypes. But sadly there are also far too many who fall into this kind of behaviour pattern, perhaps partly because they feel it is expected of them, by society in general and by their majority female congregations.

Anyway, I’m sure Dave and Pam have realised by now, even if they don’t want to admit it, that at the local level churches like theirs are not really controlled by the mostly male official hierarchy, but by the armies of mostly women volunteers who keep their churches running, and who exercise their control by implicit threats to quit their activities if the minister dares to do anything which they disapprove of – which would probably include almost anything likely to attract men to the church.

So the problem is a self-perpetuating one. Dave may be right that it originated during the time of the world wars. But the vast majority of the men who don’t go to church now are too young to have fought in them, or indeed in any protracted war except for the recent Iraq and Afghanistan debacles. The men of this generation have not so much left the church as never been there, at least for any regular service. Why? Because several generations ago the church was feminised and has remained so.

So what can be done about it? Here, I am glad to say, Dave does much better. He writes:

If we want men in our church, we don’t need to become more masculine, instead we need to:

  • become more Christlike
  • support discipleship that is routed in the teaching and behaviour of Jesus
  • build strong faith that understands how God will be in the shit with us
  • build our understanding that God is found in the shit
  • build strength and depth to our faith and discipleship so that it can survive hell on earth
  • be courageous in following the teaching that Jesus actually gave, not a version built on our cultural preconceptions.
  • tell and celebrate the stories of people who found Jesus in adversity, in pain, in suffering, in hell on earth. There are plenty of inspiring tales of people who gave their lives for others; of people showing love, & forgiveness; of lives changed for the better; of courage, steadfastness and determination of faith.
  • work at honest and integrated lives that reflect the life & teaching of Jesus ie be authentic.
  • do all this within a community that is strong enough to carry us when we can’t hear Jesus and accompany us carrying the Christ light when we are stuck in the shit of life and can see no light, no hope and no God.

And by the way if we got these things even half way right we might well see more women in church as well as men.

Indeed, Dave. But this is largely what I mean in practice by becoming more masculine, in the stereotypical way. For a start by using the s**t word, three times in this extract, you are being masculine, as people understand it, and certainly breaking that stereotype of the feminised minister. Actually, apart from the poor exegesis of 1 Corinthians 16:13, this is not all that different from the thoughts which originally raised your blood pressure.

Of course what we are talking about is not a matter of real masculinity. But those “real men” types will not go near a church which they perceive as feminine.

Dave, I join you in objecting to the stereotypes of masculine = courageous, feminine = wishy-washy like church tea. But these ancient identifications (going right back to the etymology of the controversial Greek word in 1 Corinthians 16:13) are still with us in popular culture, and are still a major barrier to a greater penetration by the church into western society today.

Results of being filled with the Spirit

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In a comment (the fourth one) on his own blog Mike Aubrey, while making a technical point about the participles in the Greek text of Ephesians 5:19-21, brings out some important teaching about the Holy Spirit:

Most believe that the participles denote the result of the command to “be filled with the Spirit.” … In fact, as far as I am aware every single interpreter of Ephesians since Markus Barth has taken the participles of 19-21 as participles of result rather than imperatival (key words: “as far as I am aware”).

But Mike also argues that there cannot be a break between verses 21 and 22:

What I found was that there is absolutely no other instance where an ellided clause either begins a new pericope or sentence – much less imply a change in mood.

In other words, as I understand Mike’s argument, this passage and what follows up to 6:9 should be understood as follows (adapted from TNIV, 5:22-6:9 abridged):

Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit, with the result that you will:

  • speak to one another with psalms, hymns and songs from the Spirit;
  • sing and make music from your heart to the Lord;
  • always give thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ;
  • submit to one another out of reverence for Christ:
    • wives, submitting yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord …
    • husbands, loving your wives, just as Christ loved the church …
    • children, obeying your parents in the Lord …
    • fathers, not exasperating your children …
    • slaves, obeying your earthly masters …
    • and masters, treating your slaves in the same way. …

This doubly nested list may not be the normal way of laying out a Bible translation, but it does seem to reflect Paul’s intention here, at least on Mike’s exegesis.

If Mike is correct, this implies that we Christians are not to put our effort into doing these good things like submitting to one another, still less into making others submit to us. Instead we are to allow ourselves to be filled with the Holy Spirit, and as we do so the Spirit will produce in our hearts these good fruits, of worship and thanksgiving and also of the mutual submission which is, or should be, characteristic of the Christian life.

Hear my voice!

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Many of you have read this blog, but few of you have heard the sound of my voice. Now you have a chance to do so. You can listen to me reading David Ker’s Cyber-Psalm 33. This is the one which I said some nice things about when it was first published.

Months ago David asked me to record this for him, but my first attempt by toll-free telephone didn’t work out. So yesterday, in response to his urgent appeal, I recorded it again using the high quality sound equipment at my church (unfortunately it was sensitive enough to pick up the rustling of the paper I was reading from), and sent the result to David for all to hear.

The words “Hear my voice” have been in my mind this week also for a completely different reason. I was asked to lead a church home group meeting on the subject of hearing and obeying God’s voice. This was based on a chapter in the book “Receiving God’s Best” by Derek Prince. He wrote (p.62):

The success of our relationship with God and our walk with Him depends on hearing His voice.

I agree. But I discovered a small problem in that Prince quotes in support Exodus 15:26 and Deuteronomy 28:1, claiming that these are about hearing God’s voice. These verses start almost but not quite identically in Hebrew. In most translations the former refers to listening to God’s voice, and the latter to obeying it. Why the difference in translation? It is just one letter in Hebrew.

The Exodus verse (ignoring the speech introducer) starts im-shamoa` tishma` leqol YHWH eloheyka, literally “if hearing you hear to the voice of the LORD your God”. In Deuteronomy the equivalent words are im-shamoa` tishma` beqol YHWH eloheyka, literally “if hearing you hear in the voice of the LORD your God”. Contrast Genesis 3:10 where literally Adam “heard your voice”, the same verb and noun but with no preposition “to” or “in”.

It seems that there is a subtle distinction here in the Hebrew which Derek Prince may have missed: literally “hear voice” = “hear”; literally “hear to voice” = “listen to”; literally “hear in voice” = “obey”. But the distinction is largely lost in Greek, and so in John 10:27 “my sheep hear my voice” also means “my sheep listen to me” and “my sheep obey me”. Although Prince’s exegesis is simplified, perhaps deliberately, he finds the main point: the prerequisite for God’s blessing is not just hearing God’s voice but also listening to it and obeying it – a point he could have made more explicitly from Hebrews 4:1-2.

Please hear my voice and listen to me reading the Cyber-Psalm. But don’t obey me, obey God!

The Father Chaplin brothers?

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My readers are surely familiar with Father Doug Chaplin who blogs at Metacatholic (but has just hinted that he might stop – please don’t, Doug, your blog is great!). They may not be quite so familiar with Father Vsevolod Chaplin, although he has been described as a “heavyweight” in his own church. These two are brothers in the priesthood (even if they don’t officially recognise this), the first in the Church of England and of the Anglo-Catholic variety (hence “Father”), the second in the Russian Orthodox Church.

One looks inoffensive, the other scary. Which is which, do you think? But perhaps it is just because in Russia, unlike in the west, it is not traditional to smile during formal photos. Friends have joked that this is because in England and North America we say “cheese” when our photos are taken, which makes us smile, but in Russia they say “syr”, with the same meaning, which can be pronounced properly only with a face like the one on the right above.

I thank Vara for bringing to my attention the second Fr Chaplin, in comments at Voice of Stefan starting here. See also the discussion in the following comments. Vara has blogged about Fr Vsevolod several times, most recently here, and it is her picture of him I have included above. His first name means “Ruler of all” in old Russian, but presumably this is not intended as a blasphemous claim; rather he was named after several ancient Russian rulers.

As Vara commented at Voice of Stefan, the Russian Chaplin doesn’t seem to be scary in real life, as he is quite a humorist. Like Vara I loved his commandments of post-christian paganism, despite the less than perfect translation and the same scary photo provided by the renowned Interfax news agency. And like Esteban I laughed at his jokes, especially this one which could give a glimpse at the eternal destiny of the other Fr Chaplin:

An Anglican bishop, a righteous man, dies. St. Peter greets him in Paradise and shows him around the Hell.
– Here we have murderers, blasphemers, here are robbers. Here are those who sinned against their confession. Here are Orthodox who did not observe their fasts, here are Catholics who criticized the Pope, here are Baptists who did not read the Bible.
– Do you have any Anglicans?
– Yes, we have one…
– What did he do? (Anglicans are known for their liberal treatment of dogmas and church practice.)
– He did not know how to hold a knife and a fork in the right way.

(Updated 09/03/2011 with a new photo of Doug Chaplin because the old one had disappeared.)

Most British people still believe in God the Creator, but why?

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Another post relevant to Darwin’s bicentenary …

The Christian think tank Theos has carried out a survey of public opinion in Britain on creation and evolution. Thanks to Doug Chaplin for the link to Andrew Brown of the Guardian’s article about this. The results are extraordinary, considering that this is not a survey of Christians, but of the full spectrum of the population of the highly secularised UK. Here are the questions and some of the answers (extracted from the results, averaged over age groups and regions):

Q1. Young Earth Creationism is the idea that God created the world sometime in the last 10,000 years. In your opinion is Young Earth Creationism:

Definitely true: 11% Probably true: 21%.

Q2. Theistic evolution is the idea that evolution is the means that God used for the creation of all living things on earth. In your opinion is Theistic evolution:

Definitely true: 12% Probably true: 32%.

Q3. Atheistic evolution is the idea that evolution makes belief in God unnecessary and absurd. In your opinion is Atheistic evolution:

Definitely true: 13% Probably true: 21%.

Q4. Intelligent Design is the idea that evolution alone is not enough to explain the complex structures of some living things, so the intervention of a designer is needed at key stages. In your opinion is Intelligent Design:

Definitely true: 14% Probably true: 37%.

These results raise several questions, not least that quite a lot of people must have said that two contradictory positions are definitely or probably true. The survey must have found many disciples of Alice’s White Queen, who practice believing impossible things before breakfast. Indeed the questions themselves raise questions, about the definitions used, as the British Humanist Association has rightly pointed out, but the research is still valid as long as the wording of the questions is kept in mind.

So, even in this highly secular country, the two most popular of these four positions explicitly involve the activity of a creator or designer, in other words of God or a god. The atheistic position comes in third place. More than half the population accepts the Intelligent Design position. This is perhaps good news for Christians, that despite the collapse of organised churchgoing in the UK there is still a strong residual belief in God. According to the detailed figures, this belief does not seem to tail off among younger respondents.

As for Young Earth Creationism, although this is the least popular of the four positions, it is only a little behind atheistic evolution, with nearly a third of the population considering it definitely or probably true. This is far more than the total adherents of any kind of religion which would teach this position. This may reflect in part widespread ignorance of anything to do with science, although only 8% admitted to “Don’t know” on this question. So Andrew Brown is surely right in his suggestion that this is a matter of “Science vs superstition, not science vs religion”. As Doug points out:

This has some echoes of Chesterton: when people stop believing in God they will believe in anything.

Personally I have serious issues with Intelligent Design at least as presented here, and also with Young Earth Creationism. But I would have answered “Definitely true” to this question about theistic evolution.

The Church of England upholds the uniqueness of Christ

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After last week’s outbreak of unity, more good news from the Anglican churches. Some of you will think “Of course, this is what any church would do”. Others of you, the more cynical, might be amazed. But, as The Times, in an article by Ruth Gledhill (see also her blog post about the debate), and Thinking Anglicans report, the General Synod of the Church of England has today approved (by 283 votes to 8 with 10 abstentions) a private member’s motion on the uniqueness of Christ in multi-faith Britain.

In fact technically the motion, as printed in full by Thinking Anglicans, does not quite affirm the uniqueness of Christ, but it does “warmly welcome” a long paper by Martin Davie (I haven’t read it!) which concludes, very sensibly,

The Church of England, and Anglicans more generally, have also taken the traditional doctrines of the Trinity and the incarnation as their basis for interfaith dialogue, holding that Jesus is the source of salvation for all people everywhere (whether they are yet aware of the fact or not), but also holding that Christians are called to be God’s instruments in bringing people to explicit faith in Christ and to membership of his Church.

So Ruth is justified in how she starts her article in The Times:

Anglicans were effectively mandated today by the Church of England to go out and convert Muslims and other non-Christian believers.

For decades, their fellow Christians have joked about Anglicans that it is unfair to say they believe in nothing. They believe in anything.

But in a move that led one bishop to condemn in anger the “evangelistic rants”, the Church of England yesterday put decades of liberal political correctness behind it.

(I note the confusion between “today” in the first paragraph and “yesterday” in the third, for the same event. Presumably this article is intended for Thursday’s paper, but the online version is dated Wednesday. The BBC is more careful in these matters in avoiding words like “today” and “yesterday” in its online news.)

Meanwhile Ruth, on her blog, notes that Facebook has penetrated further than ever before. She caught a bishop, Pete Broadbent who is well known to my readers here and has in fact been one himself, communicating with the Press apparently from the floor of the Synod during a debate. Now I wouldn’t dream of publishing comments on a Facebook friend’s status without permission from the commenter. Then I suppose if I was really concerned about the privacy of my comments I wouldn’t have any journalists as my friends. But as Dave Walker is my Facebook friend as well as Pete’s and Ruth’s I can confirm that Ruth has accurately quoted the episcopal comment:

Tee hee – surrender – resistance is futile…

Ruth asks:

Is it a scandal that a bishop is using Facebook while ostensibly listening to a serious synod debate on the place of Christ in the world today? Does anyone care?

I don’t! Perhaps the scandal is that I think this important enough even to mention in the same post as the uniqueness of Christ.

By the way, today the Synod also voted, by a clear margin well over the required 2/3 (despite Ruth’s miscalculations), to take the next step in the process towards allowing women bishops.

To conclude: I rejoice that the Church of England has taken such a clear stand on this important issue, reaffirming that salvation is found only in Jesus Christ.

Can God intend anything without predetermining everything?

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In his post A definition of Scripture that conforms to the realia of the text John Hobbins hides some nuggets about God and predestination, which deserve to be repeated in a post where they are not a digression (John’s own word). This is the central one:

an all-powerful, all-knowing God cannot intend anything without predetermining everything unless that same God is all-loving.

The argument seems to be that only an all-loving God, like the one we read about in the Bible, is able to

not allow what he knows will happen in the future to predetermine everything he does in the present.

John illustrates this as follows:

like God, since I am a loving parent, I predetermine that I will not completely determine, for example, my son Giovanni’s choice with respect to where to go to university.

This is of course a completely biblical way of looking at the matter:

Do not be like the horse or the mule,
which have no understanding
but must be controlled by bit and bridle
or they will not come to you.

Psalm 32:9 (TNIV)

That is, God does not want to control our every decision as if “by bit and bridle”, but wants us to make our own choices based on understanding.

This is true of the big decisions in life as well as the small ones. And that means it is also true of the greatest decision of all, whether or not to give one’s life to Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord. Indeed we can only come to him if God draws us (John 6:44), but Jesus who is also God draws everyone to himself (John 11:32; I’m sure there is no real distinction between the Father and Jesus drawing people to him), so no one is left out. In this connection another equine proverb, although not biblical, is true:

You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink.

Similarly, God can lead lost human beings to the true living water, but he cannot make them drink, not without violating their humanity. He doesn’t want us to be “like the horse or the mule, which have no understanding”, so he allows us to make our own choices whether or not to accept his gift of eternal life in Jesus Christ. In his kingdom he wants not animals who are there by force, but persons who have decided for themselves to live with him in love for ever.

The Church of England's apology to, or for, Darwin

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The Church of England has marked the Darwin bicentenary by launching a new website about the great scientist. (Thanks to Ruth Gledhill for the link.) The front page links to several articles about Darwin. One of them shows how he began his life as a good Anglican. Another charts in his own words his loss of Christian faith:

disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete.

Yet another page shows how despite this he remained an active member of his village church in Downe, Kent.

The most interesting article on this site is Good religion needs good science, by Rev Dr Malcolm Brown, Director of Mission and Public Affairs of the Church of England. Brown seems to accept that Darwin’s description of evolution was good science, but is rightly concerned about the philosophcal “Darwinism” which has been built up around it. The whole essay is all worth reading and cannot be summarised briefly, but here is a taster:

It is hard to avoid the thought that the reaction against Darwin was largely based on what we would now call the ‘yuk factor’ (an emotional not an intellectual response) when he proposed a lineage from apes to humans.

But for all that the reaction now seems misjudged, it may just be that Wilberforce and others glimpsed a murky image of how Darwin’s theories might be misappropriated and the harm they could do …

Natural selection, as a way of understanding physical evolutionary processes over thousands of years, makes sense. Translate that into a half-understood notion of ‘the survival of the fittest’ and imagine the processes working on a day-to-day basis, and evolution gets mixed up with a social theory in which the weak perish – the very opposite of the Christian vision in the Magnificat (Luke 1:46–55). This ‘Social Darwinism’, in which the strong flourish and losers go to the wall is, moreover, the complete converse of what Darwin himself believed about human relationships. From this social misapplication of Darwin’s theories has sprung insidious forms of racism and other forms of discrimination which are more horribly potent for having the appearance of scientific “truth” behind them. …

Christians will want to stress, instead, the human capacity for love, for altruism, and for self-sacrifice. There is nothing here which, in principle, contradicts Darwin’s theory. … But the point of natural selection is that it is precisely by being most fully human that we demonstrate our fitness. And being fully human means refusing to abdicate our ability to act selflessly or lovingly and to challenge thin concepts of rationality which equate “being rational” to material self interest. …

The problem for all Christians is discerning where the surrounding culture is really a threat and where it is compatible with our understanding of God. …

Brown ends with these interesting words of apology:

Charles Darwin: 200 years from your birth, the Church of England owes you an apology for misunderstanding you and, by getting our first reaction wrong, encouraging others to misunderstand you still. We try to practice the old virtues of ‘faith seeking understanding’ and hope that makes some amends. But the struggle for your reputation is not over yet, and the problem is not just your religious opponents but those who falsely claim you in support of their own interests. Good religion needs to work constructively with good science – and I dare to suggest that the opposite may be true as well.