by Anna Fleck,
Nov 14, 2024
Younger generations of women are less religious than their male counterparts in the United States, according to data from a Statista Consumer Insights survey. This marks a shift, as historically, U.S. women have been the more religious group. As this chart shows, for both genders, religion is becoming less widespread overall.
Christianity is the dominant religion in the U.S. Statista data shows that 51 percent of Gen Z males self-identify as Christian, with the next biggest religious groups Islam (six percent) and Buddhism (two percent). Only six percent of Gen Z men are atheists and 17 percent non-religious. For Gen Z women, 48 percent said their religion is Christianity, while only two percent said Islam and two percent Buddhism. Six percent of Gen Z women are atheists and 22 percent identify as non-religious.
Not surprising given the emphasis many Christian denominations place on men as heads of household with final authority over their wives and kids. They want to dominate in the home and workplace, and when their church tells them this is God's will, why wouldn't they get religion? Or vote for Trump?
ReplyDeleteMore young people than previous generations are not religious at all, so it's not too surprising that fewer women claim to be religious.
ReplyDeleteAbout more young men claiming to be religious, we'll see what happens long term. I'm more interested in who does the work where the rubber meets the road. Historically it's been the Dorothy Days and St. Frances Cabrinis. I've a suspicion that some of the young men claiming to be religious are doing it for effect.
The exodus of young women from the RCC has been going on for at least 25 years. In the last ten or fifteen years young women have also been leaving evangelical churches. When young Catholic women were asked many said that they didn’t want to raise their children in a church which teaches that their daughters aren’t equal to their sons and could not be ordained if they wanted to be a priest. The RCC’s teachings on “complementarity” are actually very similar to those of the evangelicals, but male authority in marriage, while part of JPIIs teachings, is not emphasized as much as it is in the evangelical churches. So in recent decades, marriages in the church have dropped dramatically, and so have infant baptisms. Marriage arrangements are usually the choice of the bride, and if young catholic women don’t want to raise their children Catholic, they don’t get married in the church unless there’s too much pressure to resist from parents or grandparents. So not only are there fewer young families in the pews, once the older generation of women volunteers passes away, the men might have to learn how to arrange the flowers on the altar.
DeleteI was in Colorado last month for the second memorial service for my sister in law.Our son lives across the street from a Catholic church that is the parish of the university. I went in one afternoon to look around. They were preparing for benediction. Almost all young men - piously devout - on their knees on the hard floor in the entrance area, not getting up to go to a pew until the priest arrived. A couple of young women only by the start of the service. I left at that point, so maybe more arrived late.
I'm sorry to hear about your sister-in-law, Anne.
DeleteIt's been a long time since I lived in the Denver archdiocese, that was in the 1980s. At that time it was very progressive, almost jarringly so, to someone coming from a middle-of-the road diocese in Nebraska. Now the pendulum has swung to the other extreme, so not surprising that the university chapel had the rad trad vibe. Mood swings like that are disorienting to the people who have to put up with them. I think a lot of it depends on who is the bishop.
Two days ago would have been my sisters 82 nd birthday, the anniversary of her death will be Nov 29. She was my closest sibling. I miss her so. My/sister in law was my closest relative on my husbands side - the wife of my husbands brother. She stayed with me after my husbands injury while his brother slept in my husbands hospital room in the Shock Trauma ICU. My husband and his brother are very close.Sonja spent most of the year trying to encourage me with frequent texts. She was raised Catholic but became evangelical with George’s brother. Unfortunately she kept telling me that my husbands fall was part of God’s plan and to have faith. She stopped texting me as her heart disease progressed to a very serious condition, in spite of numerous surgeries and meds. Yet her death in September still shocked and saddened all of us. We loved her. I don’t remember if I already wrote about this, the deaths of friends and family have been so many this year.
DeleteOur son lives in Boulder which is very liberal. Denver is blue. I don’t think the university parish is progressive though but I haven’t gone to mass there. I don’t know what kind of liturgy or music. The previous pastor had to leave because he was caught up in a controversy related to his counseling of a young woman who talked to him about realizing that she was gay. Apparently he and a nun were trying to get her into the kind of therapy that would allegedly make her straight. She ended up committing suicide and her family brought the story out. My son said there were protesters at the church after the story was publicized. I remember reading about it in America magazine and recognized the name of the church as being in my son’s neighborhood. Lots of students live in that neighborhood.
Anne, I read about that incident also. The priest sounded like a very strange person. He basically tried to blackmail the archbishop about being assigned to a parish. He was not reassigned (the archbishop had to issue a public statement about it) , and I don't know if he is even incardinated to that diocese (or any other) now. I don't think anyone was anxious to have him on board.
DeleteYour sister-in-law sounds like she was a good and kind person. Always sad to lose a family member, but especially so if they were close.
I am sure Anne is touching on one of the primary reasons, i.e. the perception that women are less than first-class citizens.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting that the share of men stays nearly constant from Boomers (if the oldest in the survey is 64, they're Late Boomers) through Gen X and Millennials, and then experiences a significant drop in Gen Z. By contrast, women show a more steady decline from one generation to the next.
I have to say, the picture in our parish doesn't really conform to the picture painted by the bar graph. I think there are fewer young men than young women who come to mass at our parish. But our parish's demographics may not be representative of the church as a whole.
The data is just people who identify as "religious." That could be anybody from Pentecostal snake-handlers to reformed Jews.
DeleteIn the local parish here, women are also more numerous as in your parish. Women tend to be the ones who bring the kids to church and keep coming into widowhood. Men stay home or sit in the car looking at their phones while the fam prays.
Among The Boy's cohort (age 30) all I get is that "church is boring, and my mom made me go." That view was clinched by the most dismal Confirmation prep imaginable.
The Boy still enjoys talking to us about faith matters, though I usually try to find something to do in the kitchen and leave it to Raber because I fear my ideas will do more harm than good.
Jean says: The Boy still enjoys talking to us about faith matters, though I usually try to find something to do in the kitchen and leave it to Raber because I fear my ideas will do more harm than good.
DeleteIf I had married and had children, I would have left the religious education to my wife and the parish. I can imagine the scene of my wife talking to a son or daughter. "Oh, you have been talking to your father about religion again. Remember that there are certain things that it better to wait until you are older, like in college, and then you can talk to your father about religion."
Most of religious development takes place during adolescence and begins to coalesce during the twenties. I would prefer to let the kids begin to figure it out from the rest of the world, and then when they think they have some answers we can talk about it.
Among The Boy's cohort (age 30) all I get is that "church is boring, and my mom made me go." That view was clinched by the most dismal Confirmation prep imaginable.
DeleteYep, the only thing I found more boring than the Latin Low Masses with hymns were the religious education classes. Fortunately, a seminarian who taught parish summer school introduced some of us boys (before our voices changed) to singing Gregorian chant. It was like rocket science to me. I was also into astronomy and space travel. The all-male choir in our
parish who did the Sunday High Mass was terrible, as was the woman organist who sung the daily High Masses, mostly Requiem. But Gregorian chant got me interested enough to become an altar boy, learn Latin and then to discover the Divine Office in English. I thought God had a lot of sympathy for my boredom. I thought he was bored, too. Isn't that what Isaiah says in his first chapter which is read at Matins (Readings) the first Sunday of Advent.
That is one of the reasons it would be unwise for my kids to talk to me about religion until they became college age.
"I thought God had a lot of sympathy for my boredom."
DeleteI think/hope that God is somewhat blind and deaf to the quality of the performance and sees only the hearts behind it.
But I used to imagine St Jerome commiserating with me when the homily was insipid or the music terrible or the coffee weak and tepid.
Clearly your musical imagination was an important way in for you as a youngster, and that's wonderful. What I hope for every kid is to discover thru the Church that he has a gift that brings him closer to the love of God. I don't think that the Church Ladies are very tuned into that. They want the kids to behave and feel awed by the authority of God as wielded by Church Ladies.