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Quick to Listen

The Church Doesn't Get Men. Can It Learn from Non-Christians Who Do?

Quick to Listen

Christianity Today

Religion, Christianity, Religion & Spirituality

4.3622 Ratings

🗓️ 22 August 2018

⏱️ 57 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Check out this headlines from the past decade: “Why Don’t Most Men Go to Church?” Christian Century, October 2011 “Why Men Still Hate Going to Church” CT Pastors, Summer 2012 “7 Actions to Engage Men in Your Church” Pastors.com, March 2014 “Why Do Men Hate Church and What Can Be Done About It?” The Tennessean, Jan 2015 Mending Men’s Ministry, Christianity Today, June 2018 And then there’s a newsletter, The Masculinist, which reflects on a monthly basis on the factors driving men men from church. Aaron Renn, The Masculinist’s author and creator, said the idea for his project came both from the knowledge that church attendance skewed female and the realization a number of non-Christian writers, authors, and cultural commentators were grabbing this group’s attention. “What is it that all of these people are reaching men with essentially a secular self-help message and the [church’s message] isn’t working?” said Renn. “...When I became a Christian I maybe naively took everything in. I felt like the teachings that I was getting about how to be a man and how to interact with women and things of that nature frankly were just not working.” His unhappiness with his church’s teachings led Renn to ask a lot of questions and ultimately “reformulate” himself as a man. Renn joined associate digital media producer Morgan Lee and editor in chief Mark Galli to discuss why how churches can still be unwelcoming to men despite the fact that men still hold most church pastoral positions, whether this reality of fewer men at church is true when factored by class, race, or education level, and how Christian piety became gendered. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

This episode is brought to you in part by The Apologetics Guy Show, the podcast that helps you find clear answers to tough questions about Christianity.

0:11.0

Learn to explain your faith with courage and compassion.

0:14.5

Join Moody Bible Institute professor Dr. Mikhail del Rosario at Apologeticsky.com.

0:27.9

Music Michael Del Rosario at Apologeticsguy.com. You're listening to Quick to Listen.

0:29.9

Each week we go beyond hashtags and hot takes discuss a major cultural event.

0:34.4

I'm Morgan Lee, Associate Digital Media Producer here at Christianity today, and I'm

0:38.8

with our editor-in-chief, Mark Alley, once again. Hey, how are you doing? I'm all right, Mark. How are you?

0:44.6

I'm in panic mode. It's August 21st or 22nd or August...

0:50.4

Or days away from your birthday? Well, there's that, but also it's the end of summer, which

0:54.1

means all the summer projects I had planned to get done, have to get done in the next nine days or 10 days.

1:00.0

I know, and that's probably how you don't want to spend your summer, too.

1:02.2

You want to probably go fishing instead.

1:04.0

Exactly.

1:04.3

Yep.

1:04.7

All right.

1:05.0

Who is joining us today?

1:06.3

Joining us today is Aaron Wren. He's a writer on urban policy in a number of quite well-known outlets,

1:13.7

but more importantly for this podcast, he is the publisher of The Masculinist. It's a newsletter

1:18.8

that I've just discovered, and we'll talk about some of the content of that, but it's one of the more

1:24.4

interesting and insightful newsletters I've read on this business of men

1:29.1

and church. So welcome, Aaron. Thank you for having me on. I appreciate the kind of words about

1:33.8

the masculinists, too. Aaron, just a little background. How did you decide to start this newsletter?

...

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