What makes the East more male-friendly than the West?

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In America, at least, just about every Western church has a lot more women than men. The CC isn’t as heavily skewed as some, but it’s pushing 60-40 and it’s more unbalanced than most. The only real exceptions to this rule are Eastern churches, and whether they are mostly immigrants or mostly converts, they always seem to have a few more men thwn women- somewhere in the 52-48 kind of range.

How does this happen and why? Particularly when looking at churches that have so much in common with their emphasis on male leadership, why is it that Eastern churches draw a higher percentage of men and Western churches consistently yield disproportionately low numbers in the Y-chromosomed category?

I’m fairly certain that the Coptic Orthodox and other African/Oriental churches have trends more similar to the East, but a focus on the East would probably be more appropriate for this sub-forum.
 
Sixpence said:
In America, at least, just about every Western church has a lot more women than men. The CC isn’t as heavily skewed as some, but it’s pushing 60-40 and it’s more unbalanced than most. The only real exceptions to this rule are Eastern churches, and whether they are mostly immigrants or mostly converts, they always seem to have a few more men thwn women- somewhere in the 52-48 kind of range.

How does this happen and why? Particularly when looking at churches that have so much in common with their emphasis on male leadership, why is it that Eastern churches draw a higher percentage of men and Western churches consistently yield disproportionately low numbers in the Y-chromosomed category?

I’m fairly certain that the Coptic Orthodox and other African/Oriental churches have trends more similar to the East, but a focus on the East would probably be more appropriate for this sub-forum.
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The East isn’t more “male friendly” than the West. It’s a great deal smaller, it’s largely limited to various ethnicites where going to church is likely considered more important and it attracts a certain type of person – much like EF Masses who also value going to church be they male or female.

The East is far more feminine than the West in a liturgical sense so I suspect if anything, it might be viewed as less male friendly than the West.
 
In my experience converts tend to either be couples, or males, with relatively few single females converting. That may be part of the reason.

Demographicwise, I think I know what you mean, differences in representation between the genders seems less than at other Western liturgical services I’ve attended, although evangelicals seem a bit more balanced as well.

I’m not sure what Caspar means by saying we have a more “feminine” service. I can’t think of anything particularly feminine about it. Certainly we don’t do such masculine things as grilling burgers and drinking beer during the liturgy, but last I checked no one does.
 
Caspar said:
The East is far more feminine than the West in a liturgical sense so I suspect if anything, it might be viewed as less male friendly than the West.
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What do you mean by this? :confused:

OP: Eastern and Oriental Churches come from generally more conservative societies that have not been as affected as deeply by feminism and post-modernist thinking regarding gender roles as have the societies and churches of the West. As such, there are defined roles for both men and women in the church, and this fact is not generally seen as a bad thing or something to be challenged as they sometimes are in the West, as these are reinforced in the wider culture of their traditional homelands. So, because the West has changed quite a lot in this regard in its recent history, whereas the West also has these traditional values in some corners (e.g., Latino and African-American cultures), there is a sense that the church and traditional Christian moralities are old-fashioned or overbearing or just plain wrong and an imposition relative to the “freedom” enjoyed in wider secular society.

On a liturgical level, there is something to be said for the fact that as the majority of Eastern and Oriental churches do not use melody-producing instruments, placing a primary value instead on vocal chant. Because of this, vocal projection is valued, and hence arrangements tend to be better fitting for male voices, as they generally carry better. For comparison purposes, here is Psalm 150 in Anglican usage, and here is the same in Coptic usage. And in the Coptic church, at least, the men do the readings.

There is also the physicality of the worship, again largely lost in the West, which is attractive to men. You probably know all the hits: lots of prostrations, lots of crossing yourself, etc.

There are lots of reasons why men might feel more at home in the East. While I can’t say I felt particularly unwelcome as a man in the Roman Catholic Church, it is true that our RCIA class was run by a pair of women, (thankfully) with occasional visits by our relatively traditional priest, and I do remember a rather softer, more sentimental emphasis in the RC, at least relative to what I’ve since experienced with the Copts. I guess the Egyptian culture is more macho than the Anglo-American? I don’t know.
 
Nine_Two said:
I’m not sure what Caspar means by saying we have a more “feminine” service. I can’t think of anything particularly feminine about it.** Certainly we don’t do such masculine things as grilling burgers and drinking beer during the liturgy**, but last I checked no one does.
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:sleep::compcoff::rotfl:
 
Thank you for your responses! When I said “male-friendly,” that was shorthand for “displays more of a tendency to attract and retain a certain type of parishoner, that type of person being a man.” It’s fortunate that some of you have pointed out how culture at large is just as much a part of it as any given church, although I would continue to be interested in knowing how and why cultures diverged on issues such as feminism because it’s entirely possible that Christians at any given place and time might be somehow wrapped up in the causes of such changes rather than strictly passive observers. And like others, I am wondering what is meant by the East being far more feminine than the West in a liturgcal sense. This appears to run counter to conventional thought and observation on the matter, but of course there’s nothing wrong with unconventional- although it does imply a greater necessity for explanation.

Oh, one more question for Nine_Two. I think I’ve observed the same thing, but why is it that single women are less likely to convert in general? And a question for dzheremi- why is physicality more attractive to men? In my experience, hand-motions done with songs tend to be more conducive to female participation, as are styles of worship that involve raised hands or other overt physical signs of emotion. What is it about Eastern physicality that makes it more of a masculine-type thing to do? I understand how the vocal aspect of the singing is more geared toward low voices that carry better, but a male affinity to physicality in worship is not something that I grasp quite as readily.
 
This is an interesting question.

In general, women tend to be more faithful churchgoers and that goes for Protestant Churches as well.
 
Sixpence said:
And a question for dzheremi- why is physicality more attractive to men? In my experience, hand-motions done with songs tend to be more conducive to female participation, as are styles of worship that involve raised hands or other overt physical signs of emotion. What is it about Eastern physicality that makes it more of a masculine-type thing to do? I understand how the vocal aspect of the singing is more geared toward low voices that carry better, but a male affinity to physicality in worship is not something that I grasp quite as readily.
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Well, I don’t think it’s necessarily more attractive to men (having never been a woman, I really don’t know how attractive it is to them), but it is attractive to men. Not to overgeneralize, but I think there is a certain sense in which physicality in worship goes along with the idea of getting one’s hands dirty and/or physically exerting oneself towards some goal that is at least more stereotypically a male trait (in the same way that you don’t see as many female weight lifters, football players, construction workers, etc. as male ones). This is not to say that women can’t or don’t prostrate themselves, but I have noticed at least in the Coptic church that it more common for men to do so (Coptic women here generally deeply bow instead, usually while remaining seated; I’m not sure, but I think this might be a clothing/modesty issue for women in their dresses rather than a strict cultural prohibition, as I remember seeing back home at the OCA that the Ethiopian women, in their long, full-body covering one piece shawls, prostrated quite a lot).
 
Sixpence said:
Oh, one more question for Nine_Two. I think I’ve observed the same thing, but why is it that single women are less likely to convert in general?
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Speaking for the single men (and some men who dragged their wives/girlfriends over with them), it tends to be the sort of individual who has a strong interest in history, who has spent time researching the early church, and has come to an intellectual decision to take a look at the Church in the first place. This also tends to apply to Protestants more than Catholics, as the Catholics do have that long history and ancient roots that Protestants lack.
The few single women I know who have converted have tended to have a similar interest in history.
 
dzheremi said:
What do you mean by this? :confused:

OP: Eastern and Oriental Churches come from generally more conservative societies that have not been as affected as deeply by feminism and post-modernist thinking regarding gender roles as have the societies and churches of the West. As such, there are defined roles for both men and women in the church, and this fact is not generally seen as a bad thing or something to be challenged as they sometimes are in the West, as these are reinforced in the wider culture of their traditional homelands. So, because the West has changed quite a lot in this regard in its recent history,

Well said
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S’pradznikom! Christ is Ascended!

You might find this article by Khouria Frederika Mathewes-Green “Men and Church” interesting, or not. 🙂 I’ve seen it’s validity criticized by Orthodox and non Orthodox and it’s old (2007) but still has some interesting comments.
 
I was wondering how long this thread would go on before someone would post that article, 5Loaves. I’m not particularly impressed by it, though there a few things that rang a bell with me when I first read it (when it was about a year old, and I was still RC). It is a bit too cheesy for me, e.g., the stuff about King Arthur and gallantry and whatever; sorry, I don’t like Renaissance Fair role-playing with my Orthodoxy. 😃
 
I think it’s more about culture than the church, the culture of the modern west has more or less made women the ones who practice those kinds of cultural things – not just even religion, but dances (in most cases, women push the men to learn ballroom, and watch dancing with the stars), literature (men are more likely to play games, women read books). More women like to study literature in the West, while males go toward engineering and sciences and business. It’s a culture thing I think, most people think tradition is “soft” and for women, and making the future is for the men. I guess it’s a different history.
 
Interesting answers, but all of this heavily presumes that the OP’s observations are a fact, rather than the product of his limited experience.

I have not discerned any difference in male-female ratios in either Western or Eastern churches, and furthermore it is not a phenomenon that their respective hierarchies have noted (to my knowledge), so I apologise if I may seem rather sceptical about this actually being an issue at all. This is a topic that I simply cannot relate to.

Could it simply be due to the fact that I come from a different country and live in a different society? No, of course not. What I see in my church must be true for the rest of the world, of course.

That being said, I have to say that some of the answers here sound far too strange, but I suppose that’s why the social sciences are such a difficult subject to pin down.
 
Sixpence said:
In America, at least, just about every Western church has a lot more women than men. The CC isn’t as heavily skewed as some, but it’s pushing 60-40 and it’s more unbalanced than most. The only real exceptions to this rule are Eastern churches, and whether they are mostly immigrants or mostly converts, they always seem to have a few more men thwn women- somewhere in the 52-48 kind of range.

How does this happen and why? Particularly when looking at churches that have so much in common with their emphasis on male leadership, why is it that Eastern churches draw a higher percentage of men and Western churches consistently yield disproportionately low numbers in the Y-chromosomed category?

I’m fairly certain that the Coptic Orthodox and other African/Oriental churches have trends more similar to the East, but a focus on the East would probably be more appropriate for this sub-forum.
Click to expand...
This topic is discussed here:

amazon.com/The-Church-Impotent-Feminization-Christianity/dp/1890626198

Here:

frederica.com/writings/men-and-church.html

Here:

mises.org/misesreview_detail.aspx?control=125

And elsewhere.
 
mick321 said:
This topic is discussed here:

amazon.com/The-Church-Impotent-Feminization-Christianity/dp/1890626198

Here:

frederica.com/writings/men-and-church.html

Here:

mises.org/misesreview_detail.aspx?control=125

And elsewhere.
Click to expand...
Excellent! I very much enjoy what I have seen so far from these links and will continue looking through them. They helps raise a couple of new questions too, but I’m beginning to see that the merging of history with philosophy and anthropology is not the sort of thing that regularly yields hard and fast answers. An increase in relevant information is great, though, as is the ability to ask better, more detailed questions. Even if I find that it’s better to keep them to myself, I still enjoy them.
 
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