Since 1991, the percentage of women attending church during a typical week has decreased by 11 percentage points to 44 percent, the Barna Group reported Monday (Aug. 1).
Sunday school and volunteering among women also has diminished. Two decades ago, half of all women read the Bible in a typical week — other than at religious events. Now 40 percent do.
The survey also found a marked stepping away from congregations: a 17 percentage increase in the number of women who have become “unchurched.” “For years, many church leaders have understood that ‘as go women, so goes the American church,'” wrote Barna Group founder George Barna, on his website. “Looking at the trends over the past 20 years, and especially those related to the beliefs and behavior of women, you might conclude that things are not going well for conventional Christian churches.”
I hope that women are finally catching on to the sad truth that the Fundamentalists only see us as baby-incubators who should give birth, breastfeed and shut up.
I strongly believe that women will be a lot happier if, instead of the Sunday service where they will be told how inferior they are to men, they’ll just get extra sleep, read a book, take a long bath, sunbathe, or blog about how hateful organized religions have always been towards women.
Let’s hope this wonderful trend continues!
This is really interesting. I wonder whether the increase in women involved in Pagan religious activities/groups/practices has paralleled the decrease in Christianity-related involvement. Modern day Paganism is certainly more woman friendly, and there are a lot more women than men involved in it.
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I think that Paganism would be a great alternative for people who want to escape from the clutches of official Christianity.
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Perhaps the future really will be as described in science fiction novel Earth, in which there are guy religions and girl religions.
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I tend to think so, too, but I wonder whether the two trends are actually causally related or merely accidentally juxtaposed.
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Why is anyone surprised at this news frankly? Women are turning away from religion as they are slowly seeing the light. The surprise is how long it took for this to happen.
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I agree!! Honestly, I just started to lose faith (pun intended) that it would ever happen.
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“. . .the sad truth that the Fundamentalists only see us as baby-incubators who should give birth, breastfeed and shut up.”
Gross generalizations are often wrong.
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Ahwomyn to this! :^)
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The wo- prefix in English is equivalent to the -a (as in isha) suffix in Hebrew, making ours one of few (if not the only) language in which the irony (or whatever it is) is not lost in translation.
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Agree wholeheartedly! I’m not sure I can think of ANY examples in which organized religion did something good for women. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, though.
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