Why Are So Many Single Women Leaving the Church? by K. Gaddini
I have been blogging about this topic, and ones pertaining to it, for several years now. It’s no mystery to me why women have been leaving the church in droves the last ten or more years.
(If you’d like to see just a few of my posts explaining why the Christian faith, or more specifically, churches, are a huge turn-off to single women, please see some of the links to my other blog posts below in this post, under the “Related Posts” heading.)
However, most Christians only obsess over smaller numbers of MEN leaving church; they don’t seem to either notice or to care that single women have been dropping out as well.
One of the few things this article highlights is that the “equally yoked” rule is a waste of time for women of faith who’d like to be married.
If you are a Christian woman, and you’d like to marry, it is vital you give up a hope or strict rule of marrying only a Christian man – otherwise, you are more than likely to remain single.
Secondly, and obviously, too many churches have made marriage and parenthood into idols and benchmarks of adulthood, so that any woman who doesn’t marry or have kids is ignored or viewed and treated like a child. That needs to change. Single women should be valued and recognized in their singleness.
I can also see how gender complementarianism (traditional gender roles) are also keeping these Christian women from getting married: they have internalized the idea that being anything other than the Christian gender complementarian woman (i.e., a passive doormat) hinders them from getting a husband, and worse yet, some of the men they’ve met in church actually do feel that way.
Christians need to toss out the regressive stereotypes (which are snuck into Christian teaching under heretical gender complementarian teachings) if they are truly concerned about declining marriage rates and would like to actually help marriage-minded single women to get married.
Not all women naturally fit into the gender complementarian ideal, which means they may not get married, if everyone insists all women must be gender comp to merit marriage. (The Bible does not hold up women being passive or being gender complementarian to merit a husband; it is church members who promote this false view.)
(Link): Why Are So Many Single Women Leaving the Church? by K. Gaddini
Excerpts:
…. It turns out that in both countries, single Christian women are leaving churches at increasingly high rates. In the UK, one study showed that single women are the most likely group to leave Christianity.
In the US, the numbers tell a similar story.
Of course, there is a distinction between leaving church and leaving Christianity, and these studies do not make the difference clear.
Regardless, leaving – whether it be your congregation or your faith — is a difficult decision. Women stand to lose their friends, their sense of identity, their community and, in some cases, even their family. And yet, many are doing it anyway.
What or who is driving them out?
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