A resurgence of faith among men is changing the religious gender gap

Yahoo

30-03-2025

'It was the most transcendental experience I had ever had in worship,' says Nathanael Ginn, a 31-year-old from Indianapolis, recalling the first Eastern Orthodox service he attended at his local Antiochian Orthodox Church in 2017. This moment came during Ginn's spiritual quest.
Growing up, Ginn's family bounced between Baptist, evangelical and nondenominational churches. At 16, after losing his uncle to suicide, Ginn experienced a spiritual crisis. He distanced himself from organized religion and focused on his career and hobbies, but eventually, he could no longer deny the growing emptiness and questions about life's purpose and meaning. During his 'wandering years,' he explored neo-paganism and the occult, but none of these paths felt satisfying.
'I wanted to know what life is beyond endless consumerism,' said Ginn, an account manager at a tech company. 'In the modern age, stuff is constantly being delivered to our door, but life should be more than just what I'm paying money to consume. So I think that's the big thing — people are looking for something authentic.'
For Ginn, Eastern Orthodoxy provided an action-oriented approach to faith, one that emphasized discipline, fasting and spiritual growth. 'There is this element of the call to action of going and living a holy life and participating in the energies of God that really draws men in,' he told me.
Ginn's story is part of a larger trend.
While women have historically been more religious than men, there is evidence this pattern is eroding. In the past several years, more men have been turning to faith, while more women have been disaffiliating from religion.
Although women still report higher levels of religious affiliation, belief and practice than men, the gender gap in religiousness has been narrowing, according to the 2023-2024 Religious Landscape Study, conducted by the Pew Research Center, which surveyed about 37,000 Americans. For instance, in 2007, the percentage of women who reported praying daily was 17 points higher than men, but Pew found that this gap has narrowed to 13 points.
The shrinking gap is especially evident among younger generations. Among the oldest respondents (74 and older), women pray daily at a rate 20 points higher than men, whereas among the youngest adults (18-24), the difference is much smaller — 30% of women and 26% of men pray daily. And while the gender gap in religiosity is shrinking, young Christian men and women are increasingly divided on social and political issues, according to the report.
Despite these shifts, the study notes that 'there are still no birth cohorts in which men are significantly more religious than women. ' In every age group, women are at least as religious as men, and in many birth cohorts, women are significantly more religious than men,' the report says.
Ginn, as well as many others, noted that a crisis of what it means to be a man in the modern era may be why men are increasingly joining communities of faith. 'With rising housing costs, you can't just get the American dream that used to be sold,' he told me. 'The economic uncertainty and the broken promises of the social contract that Americans believed in is causing men, in particular young men, to look for something different.'
Scholars have observed for decades that women are generally more religious than men, with research dating back to the 1930s, according to Pew. However, it wasn't until the 1980s that academics began investigating why this gender gap exists. A cluster of theories have emerged, explaining the divide in terms of nature vs. nurture. For instance, nature-based theories suggest that biological factors such as hormones, genetics and physical predispositions contribute to women's greater religiosity. Nurture-based theories emphasize social and environmental factors, according to Pew.
Ryan Cragun, professor of sociology at the University of Tampa, explained that particularly during the Cold War, adopting a nonreligious or atheist identity carried social risks. During the Cold War, when religion and especially Christianity was strongly associated with patriotism and national identity, identifying as atheist or nonreligious meant risking social status and being perceived as un-American. Because well-educated white men faced fewer social and economic consequences, they were more willing to openly identify as atheists, he said.
Atheist women often chose to identify as 'spiritual but not religious' to avoid potential social stigma, even if they were not spiritual, according to a 2017 paper by Penny Edgell, a professor at the University of Minnesota, and her colleagues. This dynamic shaped the historical trend of nonreligious identification being more common among men, Cragun said.
Women who favored traditional roles in the family — clashing with the norms of the broader society — found affirmation of their values in more traditional churches, Cragun explained, which may partly explain higher religiosity among women. But this, too, has been changing. 'Women are getting educated in higher numbers, they're not finding validation for the values that they hold in religion, so they're leaving in higher numbers than men are,' Cragun said.
For similar reasons, men have turned to traditional churches recently, in part because these institutions affirm more conventional roles and a traditional vision of masculinity. 'A lot of men today feel marginalized, they feel emasculated, they feel like they have lost power and privilege in society,' said Cragun. This aligns with broader cultural shifts, such as discussions around 'toxic masculinity' and 'the masculinity crisis.'
But despite similar religious practices, young Christian men and women are increasingly divided on social and political issues. This divide is not due to differences in faith but rather broader cultural and social influences, according to Daniel Cox, director of the Survey Center on American Life, who wrote about the gender gap between Christian men and women.
Over the past decade, young Christian women have become more supportive of abortion rights, while young men have grown less supportive of LGBTQ issues, widening the ideological divide. Young Christian women are more progressive, with 61% supporting abortion rights (compared to 48% of men) and 75% believing homosexuality should be accepted (versus 49% of men), according to Pew. Women are also more likely to favor a larger government providing public services.
What seems likely, Cox wrote, 'is that young Christians are being exposed to the same cultural divides afflicting secular young people.' Even when attending the same church, the social context for young men and women differs significantly: Young Christian women are more likely to have close friends who identify as LGBTQ, which influences their views on policies related to these issues, he wrote.
Declining marriage rates also reduce opportunities for cross-gender understanding. While shared religious experiences may help bridge the gap, they are unlikely to completely erase it, Cox wrote. 'It's not the only way to counteract the social and technological forces pushing men and women apart, but it's a good place to start.'
A survey of Orthodox churches around the country found that in 2022, parishes around the country saw a 78% increase in converts compared to pre-pandemic numbers.
In some faith traditions in the U.S., men make up a larger proportion of the membership. For example, in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, men make up 52% and women 47%, which is a subtle reversal from the last Religious Landscape Study study in 2014, in which men and women breakdown fell at 46% and 54% respectively.
Among Orthodox Christians too, men comprise a larger group at 61%.
The Rev. Jonathan Ivanoff, archpriest at St. John the Theologian Orthodox Church on Long Island also observed an uptick in membership in his parish — between 20 and 30 converts in the past two to three years, which is a significant increase for a small congregation like his. 'Many of us theorized that Covid caused a lot of people to confront their own mortality and their relationship to God and fragileness of life and caused a lot of people to question those things and find meaning in life because of that,' Ivanoff told me.
Some young men in his parish have come from the Catholic Church, often after a stint of disaffiliation, he said. Others have atheist backgrounds. 'Coming to Orthodoxy, for many young men, is a rejection of nihilistic attitudes they had been facing,' Ivanoff said. 'It's coming to something that has depth, a foundation on which they could stand on, tradition and unapologetic commitment to truth.'
On a Monday evening in January, four men sat around a long table in a room with a crucifix on the wall, discussing a medieval devotional classic, 'The Imitation of Christ.' They were part of St. Joseph's men's group which meets at St. Paul's Parish, a Catholic church located near Harvard University. The men meet every week, discussing theological readings.(I learned the about the group, because my son attends the parish school and sings in the church choir.)
Going chapter by chapter, the men talked about freedom, selflessness and fasting, chiming in with references to writings by theologian David Bentley Hart and J.R.R. Tolkien.
The group started with the goal of helping men become better role models and Christian disciples, and to better understand how to navigate 'spiritual battles' in the world, Sung min Cho, a 24-year-old animator who leads the group, told me. He typically attends a Korean American Catholic church close to his home, but attends St. Paul's for special services.
'It's not just a glorified book club but also a way for us, old and new, to increase in fellowship, because, as it's written, it's not good for men to be alone,' said Cho, who described himself a 'cradle Catholic' who went through a period of disaffiliation. 'We're meant to be in a community, not just by ourselves.' St. Paul's Church has also seen an influx of converts in the past three years, the parish priest told me; many among them are men.
Among Cho's peers, there is lack of confidence in what truth and courage mean today, he told me. 'Modernity is always changing,' Cho said. 'You're like a mercenary — you don't know what you want the next day and the day after that.'
Ginn echoes this sentiment. Much of modern American Christianity, Ginn argues, has lost this depth, whereas consumerist symbols of faith — like curated social media aesthetics — are prioritized over worship of God. In Eastern Orthodoxy, Ginn said he found a more 'masculine' approach to faith. He contrasted the Orthodox chants with some Protestant worship songs, which to him seem overly emotional or romanticized, making it hard for him to relate to the spiritual experience. 'It makes me a little uncomfortable,' Ginn said.
A proliferation of podcasts on religion and theological questions has opened up more avenues for seeking answers to a wide range of theological questions. For Orthodoxy, there is an abundance of podcasts online, according to Ivanoff, whose own podcast 'The Transfigured Life' soared to 8,000 subscribers recently. 'There is a rebuttal to the rebuttal — there is a kind of ping-pong theology going back and forth and people have the opportunity to hear us in a crowded podcasting world,' said Ivanoff. 'That has been huge in helping people who are searching for something to search for us as an option, which may not have existed 10 years ago.'
With the rise of artificial intelligence and amid online interactions, what's real is getting harder to discern, Cho told me. 'Christianity, and religion as a whole offers the truth that there is more than just what we see,' he said. 'There is more to your soul than what's cost affective.'
Ginn is open about his Eastern Orthodox faith at work, but without being pushy. He follows fasting guidelines, prays before meals and has even displayed religious icons at his desk. Ginn and other young male converts he knows are reclaiming their religious identity, rather than downplaying their Christian faith.
'In my case, I feel that I shouldn't have to hide my faith,' Ginn said. 'For a lot of us converts, we want to live the faith out as much as possible.'