Will American Christianity Become Majority Male?

A steep decline in religiosity among young women could radically alter the character of American Christianity

The American Enterprise Institute’s Survey Center on American Life recently released survey results showing that young women are leaving the church in unprecedented numbers.

Over the last two decades, which witnessed an explosion of religious disaffiliation, it was men more than women who were abandoning their faith commitments. In fact, for as long as we’ve conducted polls on religion, men have consistently demonstrated lower levels of religious engagement. But something has changed. A new survey reveals that the pattern has now reversed.  

Older Americans who left their childhood religion included a greater share of men than women. In the Baby Boom generation, 57 percent of people who disaffiliated were men, while only 43 percent were women. Gen Z adults have seen this pattern flip. Fifty-four percent of Gen Z adults who left their formative religion are women; 46 percent are men.  

The author attributes this decline to a variety of feminist-inflected complaints: that women don’t feel that they are being treated equally by the church, that they are more career and less religiously oriented, that they are increasingly liberal and socially progressive. All of these put them out of sync with traditional religion.

But not only are more young women than men leaving the church, but in Generation Z, men are more likely to be religiously affiliated than women are.

This has the potential to profoundly reshape the church. What’s more, it’s being driven by underlying factors that the AEI survey does not fully explore.