Be A Man, Go To Church

How the metric of Church Attendance explains so many things

Photo by Kristina Paparo on Unsplash

I had to leave off blogging about Nancy Pearcey’s excellent book, The Toxic War on Masculinity: How Christianity Reconciles the Sexes, rather suddenly yesterday because, true to stereotype, my child—who is not a very good driver—dinged another person’s car.

This seems a perfect moment to post this important public service announcement:

For the sake of the interwebs—that video is a joke, and so are all the others made by that guy. Still, my child, in great sorrow, explained that she had, in fact, not been thinking about the task of driving and who was around her in the parking lot but had been thinking about her Greek homework. I guess that’s better than furry kittens and embroidery, but still—gak. There’s no way she can quit driving because this is 2023 and I’m not rich enough to hire someone to do it for her, so what she’s going to have to do is concentrate her mind on the road, which, apparently, is a tedious and inconsequential activity.

So anyway, I was trying, yesterday, to say that The Toxic War on Masculinity is an excellent book and I have a couple of thoughts about it that I’d like to work out over this week.

The thought for today is that easy stories, especially ones that make basic sense of the data, are like a vat of caramel-flavored macchiato with extra sugar—they go down easy, but the sugar is basically poisonous. If you decide to accept an idea or a story that is not true, the result will be strife and misery. Telling the tales of the past properly is one crucial way to ameliorate the miseries of today.

One thing that has been extremely irritating about the last seven years, since 2016 when Donald Trump became president is that, in an effort to account for how such a terrible thing could have happened, a story was invented that had some bits of truth, but did not account for all the facts, including what people were saying at the time (and since) about their motivations. I’ve blogged about this story to the point of tedium because a lot of Christian Adjacent Influencers continue to tell it with such relish every single day.

That comfortable and yet untrue story is that Christians—white ones and conservative ones in particular—are hypocrites and liars. They voted for Mr. Trump, see, because they are racist and don’t care about women.

To validate this story, a lot of statistics about “Evangelicals” have been amassed and vaunted, proving, surely, that the story is correct. One reason I was so happy to read The Great Dechurching by Jim Davis and Michael Graham is because some of the layers of these various statistics are finally being drug into the light. It turns out that a lot of previously churched people on the right—that is, those who were more likely to vote for Mr. Trump—are no longer attending church. Something about actually going to church broke apart for this segment of the American population, and they aren’t bothering to make the effort at the same rates as before. Davis and Graham call it political syncretism, the mixing of religion with politics in an unhelpful way.

How could this happen? I think, if you examine the metric that Graham and Davis employ, the answer becomes too obvious to avoid. They call a person “churched” if they go to church “at least once a month.” I dearly wished they had spent more time digging through the rubble of church attendance, rather than focusing so much on the reasons people gave for why or why they don’t go. While it’s useful to hear what people think and feel, how they behave is far more interesting. They may say they believe in the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth but if they don’t go to church, their thoughts and feelings do not amount to much. Which is to say, in my estimation, there is a vast and almost insurmountable gulf between the person who goes to church once a week and the person who goes once a month, let alone once a year.

Pearcey illuminates that gulf, and the societal implications thereto, by unpacking what constitutes a “Christian” man:

When sociologists conducted empirical studies, they found that men who identify as theologically conservative Christians divide into two distinct groups—and these groups diverge dramatically…One consists of men who are religiously devout, defined as those who attend church at least three times a month. These men shatter the negative stereotypes. They are more loving to their wives and more emotionally engaged with their children than any other group in America. They are the least likely to divorce, and they have the lowest levels of domestic abuse and violence. (36)

But on the other side of the chasm:

Researchers went back to the data and discovered that nominal Christians test out with far different results. Nominals are defined as those who identify with a religious tradition because of their family or cultural background but who attend church sporadically, if at all…Studies find that nominal Christian family men do fit the negative stereotypes—shockingly so. They spend less time with their children, either in discipline or in shared activities. Their wives report significantly lower levels of happiness. And their marriages are far less stable. Whereas active evangelical men are 35 percent less likely to divorce than secular men, nominal are 20 percent more likely to divorce than secular men. (37)

The whole book (which I am so so close to finishing—hopefully today) painstakingly works through the historical record to discover where the idea of toxicity comes from. Why are fathers always the butt of every joke in every sitcom? How did we come to have the idea that women can never be wrong? For Christians, what is the source of the idea that “complementarianism” is actually wicked and the reason for all our cultural ills? You may feel in your bones, especially if you are a man, that none of this is true, but where is the data, beyond your own experience? Where is the reasonable narrative of the past? It’s right there in this book.

As I was wondering aloud a few weeks ago why I spent so much time on The Great Dechurching, and why it keeps coming to mind, Matt reminded me that on this blog, and all previous iterations of it, I have only one thing to say—Go To Church. It’s not that going to church is a fun, untroubling activity that makes you feel happy and ready for the long work week. It’s not that you will feel fulfilled if you just participate more. It’s not that it will cure all that ails. The reason to go to church has nothing, strangely, to do with all the world requires outside its doors. In fact, it is a perverse activity, contrary to all, in these latter days, “good” moral considerations.

But you should still go because it’s the place where God builds his Kingdom. If you want to find goodness, to seek for righteousness, justice, mercy, and joy, you have to humble yourself and go to a real church every week that you can. It is where God makes you into the image of the Son. It is where he redresses your sins and heals all your injuries. It is where he feeds you with himself. You should go—every week if you can—no matter whether you are a man or a woman, a toxic wreck or a paragon of virtue. After all, Jesus goes every Sunday, and he was a pretty good guy.

So anyway, have a nice day!