Aaron Renn writes Oct. 1, 2024:
young men could become the new “customer” of the church. David Murrow wrote a great book called Why Men Hate Going to Church. He noted that since there was such a female gender skew in the church, and an even greater skew in the consumption of Christian media, Christian organizations de facto treated women as their main customer base. Even for married couples, it was usually the wife who determined where the family attended church, and thus where the tithe money went. As a result the culture of the evangelical world was oriented around female preferences.
If the church becomes more male, and those men are the assertive type I describe above, this will put pressure on churches to be oriented more towards their preferences. Religion in the US is fundamentally a marketplace, as many people have noted. If men start being the ones making the decision about where to go to church, either as singles or families, that could have profound implications for the way things are done. And which churches succeed or fail in an era of religious decline.
