Off-topic: great interview between Kryptos and Jeremy Carl about Jews and Christians, but, to the point of an earlier post here, Jeremy converted not to Catholicism (which would be the common coastal elite intellectual move), but to Presbyterianism.
A minor quibble: That 70% of divorces are initiated by women doesn't really tell us much, because divorce can be initiated because the initiator is a terrible person, or because their spouse is a terrible person. Until you know what percentage of the divorces initiated by women are because their husbands are terrible, and what percentage of the divorces initiated by men are because their wives are terrible, you have no idea what the risk for young men is.
It's interesting that you didn't respond with some studies or facts around the causes of divorce, but merely try to explain it away by suggesting women might have reasons.
This is the kind of thing younger men are simply not going to accept, for a few reasons.
First, even if you can somehow explain it away, hiding one of the most critical statistics about marriage and divorce just looks bad on its face.
Second, pastors are actually communicating the opposite of reality. Feminist academic Valerie Hobbs analyzed the sermon language of a sample of conservative evangelical pastors on divorce and found that they describe it as a male initiated activity - the exact opposite of reality.
Third, I have never once heard a pastor say that a man was justified in divorcing his wife because of something she did.
You don't even need the internet to see that the reality of the marriage and divorce landscape in America is not what you would be given to understand in the church. Just read the Adele interviews in Vogue about her entirely selfish reasons for divorcing her husband (and causing what she herself admits is a lot of pain to her child). There's an entire genre of pieces by women in a similar vein these days.
I would certainly say that the online influencers are cynical, often anti-women, and other things. But at least they admit certain realities about the world that most men would consider very relevant.
I don't disagree with any of your reasons, nor would I suggest that the American church isn't really bad at actually understanding what is going on with the overall marriage landscape; I just don't want the American church to fall off the other side of Luther's horse on the issue.
The notion that the 70% stat could be misleading was at least halfway plausible before "Eat, Pray, Love" (the movie came out in 2010). The prestige culture has only been accelerating its support for the "Eat, Pray, Love" mentality in the past 5 years. Meanwhile there remains zero support anywhere in the culture for men doing the equivalent. It's hard not to notice this, or to take anyone seriously who comments on divorce while failing to observe it.
That women often initiate divorce for frivolous reasons is something we are in agreement on; the question is how often they do--and the corollary to it is how often men initiate divorce for good reasons. This is very relevant to what we should be telling young men about marriage.
If the percentage of frivolous female-initiated divorces and reasonable male-initiated divorces is high (which it might be) then the emphasis should be "young man, be cautious about who you marry;" if the percentages for both are low (which they might be), then the emphasis should be "young man, be a good man."
(As a side note, I attempted to hunt around for stats on this; while there have been surveys done on reasons for divorce, no one seems to have broken down the data by sex.)
"Be cautious about who you'll marry" is excellent advice, and it's entirely Biblical ("An excellent wife is her husband's crown, but she who brings shame is like rottenness in his bones.") Though it's also to some degree zero-sum and not very scalable. So I think the church as a whole should be thinking more about how to make more people marriageable, which is positive-sum.
The average marriageability of both sexes has decreased for a lot of reasons. This is partly why fewer people are getting married. On average, young people of both sexes are fatter, worse-groomed, and have worse social skills and resilience/coping skills ("mental health", as the kids say). There are also marriageability-reducing factors specific to each sex. And one factor specific to the female sex is that a prestigious message is being promulgated that frivolous divorce is acceptable for women.
This, above all, is why countercultural institutions like the church need to rebut that message specifically.
There are surely also men who think frivolous divorce is acceptable. Just as there are men who think it's OK to lie, cheat, and steal their way through life. The difference is that those notions are NOT receiving the support of prestige culture. So while the church still needs to rebut those ideas and instill virtue, it's not the same as a fight that needs to be waged against prestige culture.
Also, it's HARD to fight the prestige culture. And young men are a much easier target than young women. So it's easier to just fight the easier fights and call it a day.
Aaron, I'm glad you brought this up because it's the biggest conversation happening in the sociology of the church, and I think Douthat's comments were very interesting. I'm a regular Ryan Burge reader so I've been watching some of this data for a while, but this is now the first time that people in real life have brought this topic up with me, on multiple occasions.
Of the original NYT article, I'll only observe that it seemed unusually balanced, in terms of not going out of its way to portray male-leaning churches as seething dens of "Christian Nationalist" radicalism. Meanwhile the "ex-vangelical" woman they highlighted is stereotypical to the point of satire. You would think that the NYT might look for a more sympathetic representative of the position with which it obviously sympathizes, but perhaps its readership finds her relatable.
We are told: "Ms. Clark has occasionally attended a more progressive Baptist church. But she is realizing that churchgoing is simply no longer a priority for her." Douthat has to acknowledge the possibility that maybe women will plug into leftist churches. But it just doesn't seem like something that has a real chance of happening, does it? The leftist church offers a hangout one may choose to drop in on from time to time. But not a place someone is going to bother tithing to and actively trying to sustain.
Douthat offers a possible path for the church to bring the sexes back together. Maybe someday, but it feels to me like all institutions, including the institution of marriage, and even of basic relatability between the sexes, are going to continue breaking down for a long time to come.
You offer some interesting and potentially encouraging thoughts. Yes, if more Gen Z men (hopefully) begin joining the church, some preachers might need to be more careful in their scriptural exegesis. But is that not a good thing? Although it might be anomalous, my experience in orthodox Reformed churches has been that they tend to take a more masculine approach than suggested in much recent thought. Granted, some bow to modernity allowing women to read Scripture in worship. And while that contravenes 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 and 1 Timothy 2:11, on the whole, I think that the Reformed—perhaps due to their high view of Scripture—might be better accepted by these younger men than some of the other traditions in view.
Separately, I very much enjoyed your presentation and panel observations in Deerfield this past week.
Off-topic: great interview between Kryptos and Jeremy Carl about Jews and Christians, but, to the point of an earlier post here, Jeremy converted not to Catholicism (which would be the common coastal elite intellectual move), but to Presbyterianism.
https://www.seekingthehiddenthing.com/p/22-the-christian-ghetto-jeremy-carl
Yes, seeing some signs of this in my local church. I'm very hopeful for Gen Z, if we can just keep them from self-destructing over the next few years.
A minor quibble: That 70% of divorces are initiated by women doesn't really tell us much, because divorce can be initiated because the initiator is a terrible person, or because their spouse is a terrible person. Until you know what percentage of the divorces initiated by women are because their husbands are terrible, and what percentage of the divorces initiated by men are because their wives are terrible, you have no idea what the risk for young men is.
It's interesting that you didn't respond with some studies or facts around the causes of divorce, but merely try to explain it away by suggesting women might have reasons.
This is the kind of thing younger men are simply not going to accept, for a few reasons.
First, even if you can somehow explain it away, hiding one of the most critical statistics about marriage and divorce just looks bad on its face.
Second, pastors are actually communicating the opposite of reality. Feminist academic Valerie Hobbs analyzed the sermon language of a sample of conservative evangelical pastors on divorce and found that they describe it as a male initiated activity - the exact opposite of reality.
Third, I have never once heard a pastor say that a man was justified in divorcing his wife because of something she did.
You don't even need the internet to see that the reality of the marriage and divorce landscape in America is not what you would be given to understand in the church. Just read the Adele interviews in Vogue about her entirely selfish reasons for divorcing her husband (and causing what she herself admits is a lot of pain to her child). There's an entire genre of pieces by women in a similar vein these days.
I would certainly say that the online influencers are cynical, often anti-women, and other things. But at least they admit certain realities about the world that most men would consider very relevant.
I don't disagree with any of your reasons, nor would I suggest that the American church isn't really bad at actually understanding what is going on with the overall marriage landscape; I just don't want the American church to fall off the other side of Luther's horse on the issue.
This is right on.
The notion that the 70% stat could be misleading was at least halfway plausible before "Eat, Pray, Love" (the movie came out in 2010). The prestige culture has only been accelerating its support for the "Eat, Pray, Love" mentality in the past 5 years. Meanwhile there remains zero support anywhere in the culture for men doing the equivalent. It's hard not to notice this, or to take anyone seriously who comments on divorce while failing to observe it.
That women often initiate divorce for frivolous reasons is something we are in agreement on; the question is how often they do--and the corollary to it is how often men initiate divorce for good reasons. This is very relevant to what we should be telling young men about marriage.
If the percentage of frivolous female-initiated divorces and reasonable male-initiated divorces is high (which it might be) then the emphasis should be "young man, be cautious about who you marry;" if the percentages for both are low (which they might be), then the emphasis should be "young man, be a good man."
(As a side note, I attempted to hunt around for stats on this; while there have been surveys done on reasons for divorce, no one seems to have broken down the data by sex.)
"Be cautious about who you'll marry" is excellent advice, and it's entirely Biblical ("An excellent wife is her husband's crown, but she who brings shame is like rottenness in his bones.") Though it's also to some degree zero-sum and not very scalable. So I think the church as a whole should be thinking more about how to make more people marriageable, which is positive-sum.
The average marriageability of both sexes has decreased for a lot of reasons. This is partly why fewer people are getting married. On average, young people of both sexes are fatter, worse-groomed, and have worse social skills and resilience/coping skills ("mental health", as the kids say). There are also marriageability-reducing factors specific to each sex. And one factor specific to the female sex is that a prestigious message is being promulgated that frivolous divorce is acceptable for women.
This, above all, is why countercultural institutions like the church need to rebut that message specifically.
There are surely also men who think frivolous divorce is acceptable. Just as there are men who think it's OK to lie, cheat, and steal their way through life. The difference is that those notions are NOT receiving the support of prestige culture. So while the church still needs to rebut those ideas and instill virtue, it's not the same as a fight that needs to be waged against prestige culture.
Also, it's HARD to fight the prestige culture. And young men are a much easier target than young women. So it's easier to just fight the easier fights and call it a day.
Aaron, I'm glad you brought this up because it's the biggest conversation happening in the sociology of the church, and I think Douthat's comments were very interesting. I'm a regular Ryan Burge reader so I've been watching some of this data for a while, but this is now the first time that people in real life have brought this topic up with me, on multiple occasions.
Of the original NYT article, I'll only observe that it seemed unusually balanced, in terms of not going out of its way to portray male-leaning churches as seething dens of "Christian Nationalist" radicalism. Meanwhile the "ex-vangelical" woman they highlighted is stereotypical to the point of satire. You would think that the NYT might look for a more sympathetic representative of the position with which it obviously sympathizes, but perhaps its readership finds her relatable.
We are told: "Ms. Clark has occasionally attended a more progressive Baptist church. But she is realizing that churchgoing is simply no longer a priority for her." Douthat has to acknowledge the possibility that maybe women will plug into leftist churches. But it just doesn't seem like something that has a real chance of happening, does it? The leftist church offers a hangout one may choose to drop in on from time to time. But not a place someone is going to bother tithing to and actively trying to sustain.
Douthat offers a possible path for the church to bring the sexes back together. Maybe someday, but it feels to me like all institutions, including the institution of marriage, and even of basic relatability between the sexes, are going to continue breaking down for a long time to come.
You offer some interesting and potentially encouraging thoughts. Yes, if more Gen Z men (hopefully) begin joining the church, some preachers might need to be more careful in their scriptural exegesis. But is that not a good thing? Although it might be anomalous, my experience in orthodox Reformed churches has been that they tend to take a more masculine approach than suggested in much recent thought. Granted, some bow to modernity allowing women to read Scripture in worship. And while that contravenes 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 and 1 Timothy 2:11, on the whole, I think that the Reformed—perhaps due to their high view of Scripture—might be better accepted by these younger men than some of the other traditions in view.
Separately, I very much enjoyed your presentation and panel observations in Deerfield this past week.