Men and the Church

One recurring question in education in the UK has been that white working class boys are some of the lowest attainers. This has been a challenge to a culture that can assume that men oppress women and the white people oppress people of colour. In fact, the story only fits with the narrative that assumes the rich oppress the poor (but that can't fully explain it). The data shows that overly-simplistic narratives can be wrong in a world that is often much more complicated than our theories!

Now to make that kind of comment comes with risks. Do I think white people in the UK can be racist? Yes. Do I think that being in a country that is still majority white will mean that such racism will create all kinds of explicit and unconscious problems? Yes. Similarly, do I think that men can oppress women? Yes. Do I think that the, on average, greater physical strength of men will create all kings of explicit and unconscious problems? Yes. Furthermore, as a Christian, I want those problems to addressed in church and in society in godly ways.

But do I think that covers every question and issue? No. Presumably, if we care, we want to address how to help white working class boys attain. And presumably we want to try and nuance our assumptions to try and work out what the data is actually showing us.

Why raise this in a blog entitled "Men and the Church"? Well a few years ago the uncomfortable reality of the lack of men in churches began to be raised. If you were around church and ministry in the late 90s and early 00s you might remember the book Why Men Hate Going to Church for example. It presented readers with the statistics that most already knew anecdotally - church was dominated, numerically by women - and then went on to suggest reasons and solutions (maybe not all persuasive). The difficult issue with these kind of statistics is that for a good number of years, as part of the fight for equality in the church (especially in ministry), the picture painted of the church was of a male-dominated arena, which was oppressive to women.

Uncomfortable data like this is good for us. It challenges our presupposition and nuances our understanding. Or at least it can. In the following years, I think much good work was done. Some of it was a little bit clunky in defining masculine and feminine, but because we cared about the men in our communities we recognised the need to do something. Sadly, some bad work was done and it seems to be that which has become the focus as we see the toxic masculinity discussions, podcasts and so forth. I can understand that. When something is bad, well it's bad and it needs to be dealt with.

One of the reasons I wrote my last post, which I suppose could be considered to be about toxic femininity in the church, is that I want us to think more carefully. I want us to have a more nuanced picture of the data. I don't want us to deny the realties that have come to light over the last few years. For what it's worth, I think the way evangelicalism reverts instinctively to pragmatism ("who's been reaching lots of men, let's do what they're doing") repeatedly causes us problems like this. But it seems to me we are at risk of ignoring some deeply challenging problems for the church.

My last post was descriptive of being a minster in a denomination. In short, if that was a man's experience, what man would want that as a role. I could have written similarly about lay people and more specifically in evangelical churches. In many cases it's no surprise to me that men don't come to church and if we concentrate only on toxic masculinity we won't address this part of the problem.

And that's what concerns me. Twenty years on I think we have failed to address the issue of men and the church. We need to hear about the bad examples (and learn). But we also need to hear about problems on the other side (even if they go against our presumed narratives). We need to hear about good work and we need to work harder in being less pragmatic and more faithful. In it all, we mustn't ignore men, demean men or exclude men. Unreached men, which is the vast majority of men in the UK, are God's creation, made in God's image and can be fruitful and faithful members of God's people, because God so loved the world that he gave his Son for that whoever believe sin him (man or woman) will receive eternal life (John 3:16). Very often Galatians 3:28 has been used as a verse stressing the equality of women in salvation. Perhaps we need to hear it in relation to men as well!