Why are educated women leaving church?
One of the oldest features of Christianity is its appeal among women. Women swelled the ranks of the Early Church as it reflected how Jesus had treated them. He talked to women in public, defended them against accusers, and appeared to them first after His resurrection. All this at a time when women were widely treated as inferior to men.
Today, however, women in America seem to be abandoning Christian observance more quickly than men. Political scientist Ryan Burge, co-author of The Great De-Churching, recently shared survey data showing that college-educated men are now more likely to attend church weekly than college-educated women. In 2008, 36% of women with at least a four-year degree attended church weekly, compared with 34% of men with a degree. By 2023, just 27% of college-educated women attended church weekly, compared with 32% of men. Even among those who attended only some college, men led in church attendance. Only among those with a high school diploma or less are women still more likely than men to attend services.
Obviously, church attendance has declined significantly for both sexes. However, the drop among educated women is disproportionately high, and it coincides with the leftward lurch in how women identify, politically. Earlier this year, polling data from Gallup showed that the percentage of men ages 18 to 29 who identify as Republican had risen by double digits in the last decade. Over the same period, the share of young women — particularly white women — who identify themselves as politically progressive has skyrocketed.
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According to an American Enterprise Institute survey last year, 46% of white Gen Z women identify as liberal, compared with just 28% of men. By comparison, Gen X and Baby Boomer men and women identified as liberal at roughly equal rates. In other words, the gender gap in political beliefs has widened in the last few years.
It’s possible there’s something about higher education itself that is radicalizing women politically and driving them away from the Church. Also, the decline of marriage has historically correlated with women adopting more progressive beliefs. Pew Research reported last year that the share of 40-year-olds who have never been married is at a historic high, and childbearing, partly as a result, is near a record low.
Marriage and family are the most basic of all the “mediating institutions” in society that form individuals and buffer them from the state. With these institutions in decline, it’s inevitable that people, especially women, would look increasingly to the government for provision, protection, and influence.
The family is also the main means through which religious belief is passed to future generations. Years ago, Mary Eberstadt argued in How the West Really Lost God that the relationship between faith and family is so tight it’s difficult to determine which way the causal arrow points.
Also, the rise of social media may play a role in women’s exodus from church and toward progressivism. Women spend more time on social media than men, regardless of age. A particular kind of social and political orthodoxy is ruthlessly enforced by mob rule on social media platforms. Not only do influencers seek to shape the beliefs of their followers, they often promote alternative forms of spirituality and views of “the good life.”
Whatever the causes are, leaving the Church and becoming more progressive has not served women well. A 2023 survey by the Centers for Disease Control found that almost 60% of teenage girls reported feeling consistently sad or hopeless, and half of those seriously contemplated suicide. This represented a 20% increase in mental health problems among teen girls within a decade. Over the same period, teen boys saw a comparatively small but still alarming 8% increase in mental health issues.
It seems unlikely, then, that the peace so many young women are looking for will be found on TikTok or in left-wing politics. The “God-shaped hole” in every human heart becomes only more, not less, pronounced by rejecting organized religion. This means, at least in part, that any outreach to educated young women must include an appeal to tradition, to marriage, and to life beyond social media, as well as countering their counterfeits. It should also, as always, include appealing to our Savior, whose high view and treatment of women have brought so many to see His Church as a place of countercultural hope.
Originally published at BreakPoint.
John Stonestreet serves as president of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. He’s a sought-after author and speaker on areas of faith and culture, theology, worldview, education and apologetics.
Shane Morris is a senior writer at the Colson Center, where he has been the resident Calvinist and millennial, home-school grad since 2010, and an intern under Chuck Colson. He writes BreakPoint commentaries and columns. Shane has also written for The Federalist, The Christian Post, and Summit Ministries, and he blogs regularly for Patheos Evangelical as Troubler of Israel.
