Sunday mornings in America see thousands flock to church and Sunday school. As the preacher reviews his sermon’s notes, congregation members fill pews, mothers settle children, friends greet each other and choir members fan themselves with programs.
But a closer look reveals something so common that it’s almost not startling anymore: Most adults in the sanctuary are women.
Studies show that in America today churches are filled with far more women than men. And while there are exceptions, the Golden Triangle is not one of them.
Fairview Baptist Church, one of the largest churches in the Columbus area, has more than 900 female members and only 787 male members, according to Kelly Ward, the church’s secretary. First Baptist Church has 545 female members to 490 male members, according to Amy Perkins, the church’s secretary. St. Paul’s Episcopal Church has 166 female members and 137 male members, according to Becky Brett, parish administrator.
The gap is even wider at the Columbus Seventh-Day Adventist Church, where female members outnumber male members 42 to 22, according to Pastor Jon Holland.
These numbers are consistent with statistics from Pew Research Center, which reported that 47 percent of Evangelical church members in America are male and 53 percent female, while 46 percent of Mainline church members are male and 54 percent female.
The gender gap is higher in historically black churches and Jehovah’s Witness churches, where women make up 60 percent of members. In fact, all Christian denominations, have more female than male members, according to Pew Research Center.
This doesn’t hold true for other religions nationally.
Men make up slightly more than half of Jews, Muslims and Buddhists in America, and 61 percent of Hindus are men. Pew Research Center reports that Christianity is the only major religion in the country that boasts more female members than male. Meanwhile, more men than women are unaffiliated with any religion at all.
‘Religious ideas…appeal more to women’
Studies of religious participation throughout the world have consistently found women are more religious than men, according to Kim Whitehead, a religious studies professor at Mississippi University for Women.
Whitehead added that if men outnumber women in Islamic and Jewish congregations, the numbers are probably skewed because mosque and synagogue attendance are not required and sometimes not even allowed for women in some of the more traditional congregations.
The national numbers don’t always match the reality in the Golden Triangle. While nationally men make up 54 percent of Muslims, men far more heavily outnumber women at the Islamic Center for Mississippi in Starkville. Approximately 100 men are involved at Islamic center, according to the center’s secretary Youssef Hammi. Meanwhile, 40 to 50 women attend.
The numbers skew the other way at Temple B’nai Israel in Columbus, which is roughly 60 percent women, according to the synagogue’s president Paul Lasky. However, Student Rabbi Seth Oppenheimer estimates that the congregation is close to half and half in terms of gender during a typical service.
“I think largely in today’s society, for whatever reason, religion and religious ideas…seem to appeal more to women,” Oppenheimer said. “We’re seeing more female involvement, and I’m not quite sure why that is.”
“There is this move toward more experiential approaches to religion,” he added. “I don’t know if that’s part of it or not.”
Other reasons
Oppenheimer is not the first to suggest that experiential ways of connecting to religion could be the reason women outnumber men in congregations. In 2002, George H. Gallup Jr., analyzing consistent Gallup polls that showed women are more religious than men, suggested that women connect to religion empirically, basing their faith on their own experiences, rather than connecting to it rationally, which men are more likely to do.
Holland, who says that a typical service at Seventh-Day Adventist Church is made up of 70 percent women, had a different idea for why women may outnumber men so heavily, at least in Christian denominations.
“Personally I believe the world has…had an influence on the men stereotypically,” Holland said.
He pointed out that because of stereotypes prevalent in our society, men try to appear more independent and able to handle anything without help, which could make them less open to religion.
It could be that women are more socialized to value relationships and community more than men are, according to Whitehead. In societies where women have limited access to education, religion is often the only way they can participate in public life, and they may find comfort or even an avenue for social change from religion.
“Of course, the irony is that in most religions, and certainly in all of the largest world religions, women have had very little institutional power,” Whitehead wrote in an email to The Dispatch. “Until recently, leadership roles have been almost exclusively reserved for men.”
“Thankfully, however, in many parts of the world, that is changing, and religious communities are increasingly treating women as equals to men in leadership,” she added. “This means that they now can express their religious devotion in even more ways and in centrally important ways.”
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