I'm at @CTmagazine today with an article about how Christianity is a girl's club and always has been a girl's club and always will be and church ladies are the best and "manly church" folks are *ahem* "theologically innovative." https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2020/september-web-only/single-women-manhood-church-growth-gender-ratios-church.html

I'm being flippant but basically I'm interested in responding to arguments like "Where men go, churches grow" or "Where men lead, women follow," the argument being that religious decline is due to feminization of religion.

This argument is definitely false. Indeed, Christianity today may be *more* male-heavy than early Christianity or even Medieval Christianity. I had to cut a bunch of data from this piece, but Medieval records such church attendance may have been 80/20 women among laypeople.

What we can see across numerous contexts, countries, and time periods, is that the best predictor of religious practice is work-outside-the-home: that is, men AND women who work more are more secular.

Historic societies were more religious possibly because the "home economy" dominated their lives. But men, who still worked outside the home more in contract/corvee labor, communal work groups, or seasonal labor, were still less religious.

The article has a lot of data and evidence on historic sex ratios. But folks, the mythology of the masculine church is fake. The church has ALWAYS been demographically dominated by women, and older women have always been mainstays of vibrant church life.

But the bigger question is: okay, but within that normal variation, are churches with relatively more men likely to grow fast?

Quantitatively, the answer is.... no, not at all.

I looked at the sex ratio in churches in 2007 and 1906, and then growth to 2014/2020 and 1936. And folks.... there's just no correlation *at all*. There's absolutely no relationship between gender balance and growth in the next decade or two.

I know that "where have all the men gone" is sort of a cherished narrative of conservative nostalgia within churches.... but the answer is "they were never there." Men have always been more secular. Them's the facts.

Now, this has interesting theological (non)implications.

Feminists will look at this and say, "Wow, all those conservatives moaning about not enough men are out of touch with church history! Women ruled the roost in most periods of Christian society!"

But here's the twist...

... Paul's letters were probably sent to churches overwhelmingly composed *of women*. If you assume the average church in the 1st century was small and lopsided (30-35 women, 15-20 men)...

.... and that of the men 1 or 2 were vowed celibates of some kind, 1 was the pastor, and 4-8 were deacons.... um, guys, *almost every man* in the church had a leadership role. The odd guys out were probably new converts or quite young.

As monasticism rose, this probably became even MORE true.

Which is to say, Paul is writing to churches where 1) strong majorities of the attenders are female, 2) and so virtually every man has to be on-deck to serve in a public/leadership/ecclesiastical capacity

Notably, Paul is writing to churches *as lopsided as today's churches* and yet does not envision female elders or a female pastorate. We shouldn't be reading Paul as writing to a big church with tons of men to choose from. There's like 4 guys there and Paul is like "it's on you!"

And all the ladies are like, "We are keeping this church ALIVE and paying all the bills and doing all the outreach you HAD BETTER learn to preach a decent sermon and memorize that liturgy OR ELSE."

So, conservative nostalgia about missing men is misplaced.

But I think this probably supports conservative views about church leadership and structure. The historic church faced the same gender balance problems we do today. They had tons of wealthy, influential women among them.

Indeed, "wealthy, educated women" is like the archetypal first century Christian. These weren't frail ladies unable to advocate for themselves, and many went to their death for the faith.... and yet Christian communities chose to have male leadership.

You can still make plenty of arguments against this conservative view from various directions.

But the argument from exigent circumstances, from the unique challenges of the modern church, is definitely wrong. Our challenges are not unique.