The religion that was once two-thirds women is beginning a reversal of that trend, according to polls by Barna and the Survey Center on American Life. SCAL reports that women are leaving the church at higher levels than they ever have before, with Gen Z women leading the departure.
Increasingly taking their place are Millennial and Gen Z men. Barna’s report shows the widening gap between women and men in church attendance: 45 percent of men and only 36 percent of women, a complete flip from statistics recorded in the early 2000s.
Why has this flip occurred?
The Problems: Political, Vocational, Spiritual
Women being more socially and politically liberal than men is not new. However, this gap has dramatically increased amongst Gen Z, according to a survey by NBC News. Take, for instance, U.S. President Donald Trump’s approval rating. In ages 45-54, 56 percent of men approve of Trump’s presidency, while only 43 percent of women do. But in Gen Z adults, the gap increases: 45 percent of men to 24 percent of women.
Surveys also show young women are more liberal on LGBTQ issues and abortion than men, putting many women in conflict with the teachings of orthodox Christianity. Young women disproportionately cite abortion as the single most important political issue to them. LGBTQ issues are also increasingly polarizing, becoming one of the chiefly cited reasons why some people leave the church.
Young women also have different priorities than young men, with an especially large contrast between liberal women and conservative men. An NBC News poll surveyed Gen Z men and women about their definition of success. As a whole, men and women picked the same top items: a fulfilling career and financial success. However, stark differences arose when split by vote. While men and women who voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris were similar, the real difference came for those who voted for President Trump. Female Trump voters put children in the middle of their priorities, while male Trump voters placed having children first.
Gen Z women from both sides of the political spectrum, then, prioritize their career first and their families second. This clashes with a church culture that often encourages women to fill more traditional roles, such as housewife and mother. Further, many churches hold to complementarianism – the idea that men and women are equal, but created for different roles. Complementarians uphold leadership primarily for men, especially within the church. Young women thus find themselves going from holding successful positions of leadership in secular society to being unable to lead in church.
Church history itself has a complicated relationship with women. Some prominent church fathers have made dismissive and offensive remarks about women. Augustine of Hippo commented that women were of “small intelligence” and possibly more easily tempted by sin. In the same book, he posited that women were only created for the purposes of procreation. John Chrysostom, an Archbishop of Constantinople and revered in the Orthodox church, asserted that women were “weak and fickle.”
Of course, that is not the whole story. John Chrysostom had a close friendship with Saint Olympias, a deaconess, whom he loved dearly. Additionally, the early church is estimated to have been two-thirds women, a startlingly high amount. Early critics of Christianity even derided it as the “religion of women and slaves” because of its popularity in those demographics. Women had unprecedented social status within Christianity, holding positions as deaconesses, scholars, and evangelists. We have a wealth of female saints, with Catholic and Orthodox tradition holding special reverence for the Virgin Mary.
Unfortunately, this ambivalence persists to this day. Vocal minorities often act in ways that echo these negative perspectives. Reformed Pastor Doug Wilson, a firebrand figure within the U.S. church, wants to take away women’s right to vote and has referred to them as “people that people come out of.” The Center for Baptist Leadership, an unofficial advocacy group for the Southern Baptist Convention, published a piece deriding feminism. It included the author claiming that God does not allow women to hold roles where “characteristically masculine strengths are best fitted” both inside and outside the church. Similarly, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church’s report on women in church leadership states that women need to repent of “the unbiblical desire to usurp authority in the church or the home” and calls on its men to “protect our women from being overwhelmed or seduced by the lie of secular feminism.”
When faced with political differences, diverging priorities, and condescending rhetoric, is it any wonder these women feel unwelcome in the church?
Welcoming Women to the Church
I love my faith and believe that the Lord consistently elevates women throughout the Bible in ways that were revolutionary for that time. Jesus allowed an unclean woman to touch him and forbade husbands from divorcing their wives except for unrepentant infidelity (Matthew 9:20-22; Matthew 19:8-9). Hagar, a slave cast out by her mistress, is the only person in the Bible to name God (Genesis 16). Our God values us and empowers us, just as he did with Esther and Judith. Let us reclaim Christianity’s historic esteem for women and communicate it to those who are skeptical about the church.
Our Lord goes so far as to equate treatment of the poor and marginalized with treatment of himself (Matthew 25:31-46). Let us prioritize church ministries and efforts towards those things and promote a church culture of caring truly and deeply for the marginalized. We must demonstrate our love for people who aren’t living by traditional Christian standards but whom God obviously loves. And we can do so without compromising historic Christian doctrine. In fact, it commands us to share the Gospel with all.
When it comes to vocation, the whole church needs to uplift the value of the unmarried and the childless far more. Many of our saints neither married nor had children, and some faith traditions invite men and women to dedicate their lives to God and take vows of celibacy. It is not helpful to push young women in your church about their marriage plans. Not all are called to marriage, and many godly women pursue careers.
Our approach needs to be on welcoming and drawing these women to us, not condemning them. Condescending rhetoric about women being “misled by Satan” or “lost to worldliness” is unhelpful. Women are no more and no less fallen than men. Men and women have equal dignity in God’s eyes. Throughout the entire Bible, God listens to, elevates, protects, and liberates women in cultures that demeaned and exploited them. He hears their voices when they cry out to him. We must do no less. Let us celebrate the return of young men to church, while also ensuring churches are fully welcoming to young women.
More from IRD:
Jesus Feminists & Forbidden Discourse
Time to Smash the ‘Gynocracy’ Eric Conn Claims
Resurgence and the Future of the Church
Comment by David on October 30, 2025 at 8:55 am
“Many Gen Z men seem to be drawn to churches that nurture their sense of grievance, their disenchantment with society, and their victimhood. Then these churches tell them how great they really are and promise a return to rigid, traditional gender hierarchies that benefit them.”—Eric Sentell
Comment by Wilson R. on October 30, 2025 at 10:52 am
I regret that young women feel driven away from church, but I understand the reasons. They are so often treated as second-class Christians, and some churches (Southern Baptists, many nondenominational churches) essentially allow clergy to prey on young women with no real consequences while blaming the victims.
I do NOT celebrate the return of young men to churches that falsely teach them they are superior. Better they not attend at all than be led into a ditch.
Comment by Anon on October 30, 2025 at 11:21 am
“Young women thus find themselves going from holding successful positions of leadership in secular society to being unable to lead in church.”
Women experience this whiplash weekly. Monday-Friday, you can be a corporate CEO, but on Sundays, you’re relegated to nursery duty. My former congregation got a new minister who has never shared his complementarian views, and the congregation wasn’t told during his hiring process. His predecessor had female clergy for decades, so the congregation has assumed that the new minister feels the same. But he has quietly forced the female clergy out, and other leaders who support women clergy. The women congregants who have figured this out feel betrayed and lied to and are leaving. Good people can disagree on this issue, but there has to be respect and transparency.
Comment by DanW on October 30, 2025 at 12:56 pm
This will be a self-reversing trend. As soon as young women realize where the young men are, they will return.
Also, seving in children and youth ministry is a blessing. If any CEOs feel “relegated to nursery duty,” please comment. I would live to hear if they feel oppressed.
Comment by Wilson R. on October 30, 2025 at 2:44 pm
Believe me, nursery duty isn’t the same as children and youth ministry. And if running the nursery is such a blessing, how come you almost never see men signing up for it?
Comment by Qohelet on October 30, 2025 at 2:44 pm
This is a well written article. The only thing I’d add is that sociologists and educators have been very worried about Gen Z boys and men for quite some time. Since the 1960s, the prospects for men without a college education have dwindled with factories being offshored and such. Because our culture defines masculinity as being able to support a wife and kids, it’s led to a crisis in masculinity. Thoughtful men understand that this is a societal failure. But angry men are looking for someone to blame, and they lash out at wokeness, LGBTQ people, and sadly, women in leadership roles whose success seems like a threat to a male that questions their role in society.
So I guess my question about the church numbers is what kind of church are these Gen Z men supposedly flocking to? Is it a church that teaches them to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with their God? Or is it merely a room full of angry men pretending Jesus hates the same people they blame for their loss of masculinity?
@DanW
Maybe the men need to follow the women here. Despite the last 50 years being a disaster for the middle class, women are figuring out how to navigate this world and they’re not going to allow themselves to be put back into subjugation.
Comment by Mark on October 30, 2025 at 4:37 pm
DanW,
“This will be a self-reversing trend. As soon as young women realize where the young men are, they will return.”
Hasn’t happened yet and doesn’t seem to be changing soon. Along with the sharp disparities in church attendance and political affiliation, Gen Z marriages are also way down and have been for years now. Experience and lifetime of watching sitcoms leads me to believe women will win the waiting game.
Comment by Glenn Wheeler on October 30, 2025 at 7:43 pm
Just to put things into perspective, two denominations that have been same-sex affirming for around 15 years, and “reproductive rights” affirming for longer than that are the PC(USA) and the ELCA. Both are and have been open to female leadership, and arguably one could make the case that both are, for all practical purposes, female-led. Each looses, on average, around 50,000 members and 70,000 members per year, respectively.
Comment by Qohelet on October 30, 2025 at 9:42 pm
Glenn Wheeler just to put things in perspective from 2006 to 2024 the Southern Baptists lost on average 200,000 people a year.
Comment by Glenn Wheeler on October 30, 2025 at 10:51 pm
Qohelet,
Exactly! That’s exactly the point I hoped someone would get!
All of us are tempted to take statistics and weaponize them to make them “fit” our pet issues. But maybe the real reason for the decline is something much deeper and more complex than our pet issues, but maybe our fixation on our pet issues blinds us to the real issues.
I think that’s the case here.
Comment by Glenn Wheeler on October 31, 2025 at 12:22 am
“That seeing, they may see and not perceive, that hearing, they may hear and not understand…”
“Whose minds the god of this age has blinded…”
Comment by Wilson R. on October 31, 2025 at 1:38 pm
Glenn:
Not sure if this is what you are saying, but I would hardly call the role of women in the church a “pet issue.” It’s pretty fundamental to the life of churches. I would agree with you that the reasons for the decline in church membership go beyond this one issue. Nevertheless, it’s an important issue. As the author of this piece notes, scholars have concluded that women dominated the ranks of the first-century church (the article linked is by Prof. Rodney Stark, a highly respected scholar who is now at Baylor). Women didn’t flock to the early church because they were treated there as inferiors–in other words, like they were treated in the larger society. Instead, they were disproportionately drawn to Christianity by the proclamation made over and over by Paul and his fellow workers–that, in the body of Christ, there were to be no distinctions between male and female, Jew and Greek, slave and free.
Comment by Glenn Wheeler on November 1, 2025 at 1:08 am
This article is a prime example and illustration of two points I have made before.
1. Just give them time…and even seemingly “conservative” Christians will adopt what they in the past called ” liberal” positions.
2. IRD is solidly a part of the Christian left but capitalizes on wooing unsuspecting conservatives and especially capitalized on the homosexual issue that consumed the UMC for years.
Comment by Mark on November 1, 2025 at 12:33 pm
Glenn Wheeler,
I think you’re the only person here who considers the IRD part of the Christian left.
Comment by Glenn Wheeler on November 2, 2025 at 12:16 am
Mark,
Think about it. The UMC is a part of the Christian left. The IRD people are with the UMC.
2 + 2 =4
If they truly didn’t agree with the UMC, they wouldn’t be a part of it.
Comment by Mark on November 2, 2025 at 12:05 pm
Glenn Wheeler,
LOL!!! The IRD are not part of The UMC by any stretch of the imagination. Yes, Tooley identifies as a United Methodist who attends an old conservative congregation in D.C., but he has absolutely no standing in the denomination. The bishops hate him and almost anyone in the denomination who once listened to him has left or joined The GMC. Other members of the IRD attend other denominations, most of which are not liberal. There are a number of conservative Christians in left-leaning denominations who stay either because they identify closely with a specific congregation that defies the trend or in some hope of transforming it from the inside. I’m not saying Tooley and his ilk haven’t chosen a fool’s errand, but I have no reason to suspect them of being closeted leftists. Unless you can put to something in their actual writings to suggest as much, I think you’re off-base here.
Comment by Qohelet on November 2, 2025 at 1:05 pm
The UMC doesn’t hate conservatives. We don’t hate anybody. Hating people isn’t Christianity.
Hoping they would be able to take over the denomination, conservatives wrote a pathway for churches to leave with their property. The idea was to convince liberal churches to leave. After a few years conservatives got frustrated with the UMC and quit the denomination en masse. They weren’t kicked out. They left.
With them gone, the rest of us stopped discriminating against LGBTQ people. That has made conservatives very angry. This is unfortunate, but the anger and hatred never came from us.
Comment by Wilson R. on November 3, 2025 at 4:22 pm
My experience is like what Oohelet describes. The liberals did not intend to leave, nor did they want to push out the conservatives. They were trying to find a way to keep everybody at the table, even if it meant allowing different practices among different congregations regarding LGBTQ participation. It looked to me more like the conservatives wanted no part of a denomination where ANY congregation was allowed to chart a different path than theirs on this issue. And they didn’t want to wait to try to find a compromise everyone might live with. Some of them began leaving our conference in 2020.