My husband put a copy of this article on my desk tonight, highlighting the paragraph about Orthodoxy and Frederica Mathewes-Green's work about this: Faith Matters Why do men stay away? by Thomas G. Long in "Christian Century" magazine, Oct 20, 2011.



I'd heard her full piece on Ancient Faith Radio some time ago.

My experience is that Latin Mass communities also tend to have equal numbers of men and women (and in fact, some have had problems attracting numbers of women to equal the numbers of men.)

Also, her study was of adult male *converts*, a group obviously more likely to like their religion because it is challenging.

Alexis

Actually. I have been a member of a number of Roman Catholic Churches in new parts of several cities and have never seen a disproportionately large number of women vs men. These have all been very active parishes, with younger, diverse congregations, with strong programs. They have had engaged priests who are spiritually strong and intellectually challenging. On the other hand I have been in a number of ethnic parishes with older congregations, a priest that rambles on unprepared for his homily and anxious to get on with the days activities. They always had many more women than men.

I am inclined to question any simple characterization of either Eastern or Western Christianity. I suspect the conclusions in this one as well. No serious social scientist would draw conclusions about the population of males in a church after interviewing "converts" who are by definition unrepresentative of the population.

One might consider that women now comprise a majority of the students in Protestant divinity schools, and that in some of the mainline denominations, women comprise a majority of the pastors and will soon occupy all of the significant leadership positions.

Even in Orthodox countries, it has been my experience for it to be about 2:1 women to men. The Protestant convert experience is an anomaly. I will say, though, that rarely does one find uninvolved men in Church in Orthodox countries, unlike the situation in America where the wives often drag the husband to Church.

Alexandr

I think it's a simple matter of difference between the sexes. Women are naturally more inclined to piety.

The paradigm is changing in Eastern Europe, where the congregations I saw were no longer just composed of old women, but of young families with children in tow. I think these people have looked around and want something more fulfilling for their children than the mindless materialism that has replaced communist orthodoxy. Real Orthodoxy provides it.

I agree with Stuart, in that the numbers of young families AND single young people in Church is growing remarkably fast. and I am 100% agreement with his observations as to why. The disparity in men to women amongst the older crowd is simply due to demographics: There are a heck of a lot more older women than men in the FSU, something like 18:1 widows to widowers.

Well, the men keep smoking and drinking themselves into the grave at 59, while the women live on well into their seventies. No wonder Russian women want a man like Putin.

My observations were based not so much on Russia (I haven't been there, but my daughter confirms the phenomenon is present there as well) as on places like Romania, Bulgaria and Ukraine, which I have seen for myself.