For the vast majority of modern history, women have outnumbered men when it comes to who shows up most often at church. In fact, many scholars have come to see it as something of a universal truth. However, the latest research for Gen Z men and women shows that pattern has started to change.

As Ruth Graham describes, “For the first time in modern American history, young men are now more religious than their female peers. They attend services more often and are more likely to identify as religious.” And this trend appears to be unique to Gen Z, since men are more likely than women to be religiously unaffiliated in every other generation. Now the question experts are asking is, “Why?”

Part of the explanation is that women are simply leaving the church faster than men. A poll from earlier this year found that Gen Z men are only 11 percent less likely to be religiously affiliated than those in the Baby Boomer generation. However, the gap between women in those generations is nearly two-and-a-half times as large. Consequently, it appears that the issue has at least as much to do with more women leaving the church as it does with more men deciding to stay.

At the same time, Gen Z’s religious affiliation still represents a shift in the right direction from the millennials above them, who are the least religiously affiliated generation alive today.

So what has caused this shift and, more importantly, what can it teach us about sharing the gospel with both men and women in those younger generations?

#ChurchToo’s continued impact

As Graham points out, religious affiliation is one of many ways in which men and women are on different trajectories among young people today. For example, Gen Z women are:

• More educated than Gen Z men
• Earn a higher income in prominent cities like New York and Washington
• Less likely to say they want to become parents, by a margin of 12 percentage points
• More likely to report feeling like they are treated unequally in most churches

And that last part is particularly important in explaining the gender gap in religious affiliation.

Many Gen Z women came of age during the #MeToo movement—and its religiously based cousin #ChurchToo. As such, some of their most formative years were spent hearing about the abuse and scandals perpetrated against women, far too often by leaders in the church. It is understandable that many would find it difficult to separate that kind of abuse from the faith of the abusers, even if drawing such a correlation overlooks the basic realities of who Jesus is and what the gospel is truly about.

Conversely, Gen Z men grew up among the same influences, though they often experienced those events differently.

Derek Rishmawy, who leads a ministry at the University of California, Irvine, points out that for some of the young men with whom he works, Christianity is seen as “one institution that isn’t initially and formally skeptical of them as a class.” He goes on to add that “We’re telling them, ‘you are meant to live a meaningful life’” at a time when that is not always the primary message they receive from the world around them.

As a result, many have come to see the church as a place where they can find community when that is not necessarily as available in the other areas of their lives.

But what is true for Gen Z men should be true for all people. To that end, let’s examine some steps we can take as both individual Christians and members of the body of Christ to help make it so.

How to reach Gen Z

While Gen Z men and women may be heading in opposite directions when it comes to religious affiliation, one thing on which they agree is that their mental health is not in a good place. Forty-six percent of them listed mental health as the greatest concern for themselves and for their community. Relatedly, addiction checked in as their second biggest issue at 31 percent.

Considering that the church represents a source of mental health problems for a relatively large portion of Gen Z women, it makes sense that they might be more hesitant to attend and more willing to look outside of the Christian faith for answers. While God’s truth does not change with our experiences, our experiences often provide the lens through which we understand the Lord. As a result, one of the best ways we can reach out to young people regardless of gender is to make our communities of faith a place where they can feel welcome and safe.

Such efforts don’t mean always tailoring our services or beliefs to fit what they want. After all, the gospel needs to remain the gospel, and authenticity is one of the most important values Gen Z is looking for in both people and organizations. Yet there are still things we can do to make them feel wanted, and that’s a great place to start.

If your church has a large Gen Z population or is located in a younger part of your city or town, do you have a plan for reaching out to them? Are there life groups or Sunday School classes where they can feel at home? What ministries exist in your area that are aimed at reaching out to Gen Z and can your church partner with them?

Beyond that, are there avenues for young people to get plugged into your church’s leadership or chances to serve that show you value what they bring to the table? Such efforts are especially important when it comes to reaching out to the young women who often feel as though they are less valued at church than in the other areas of their lives.

One of the reasons Jesus gained such a diverse and devoted following throughout his ministry is that his words and actions demonstrated how much he loved and valued the people who crossed his path. They felt accepted by him, even while he challenged their thoughts and confronted their sins.

As his ambassadors to the world around us, we need to do the same.

Will you?

Friday News to Know:

• Putin gives Russian criminals the option to enlist in the army to avoid prosecution
• Dockworkers’ union suspends strike until January as negotiations continue
• Michael Jordan could bring unprecedented change after suing NASCAR
• Israel continues strike against Hezbollah in Beirut, Lebanon
• On this day in 1957: Soviet Union launches Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite

*Denison Forum does not necessarily endorse the views expressed in these stories.

Quote of the day

“We are either in the process of resisting God’s truth or in the process of being shaped and molded by his truth.” —Charles Stanley

Denison Forum

A reflection on mortality and morality

Last night’s vice presidential debate between Tim Walz and J. D. Vance had no decisive winner, according to a poll conducted just after the event. Unsurprisingly, Democrats overwhelmingly sided with Walz, while Republicans overwhelmingly picked Vance as the winner.

The debate was widely watched for at least three reasons. One was that one in five Americans said they did not know the candidates before the debate. Another was the obvious desire of viewers to learn more about the two parties and their visions for the future.

And another was the fact that when the presidential inauguration takes place in 110 days, one of these two men will be a heartbeat away from the Oval Office.

Of the forty-five people who have served as president of the United States, eight died in office. The vice presidents who succeeded them were a varied lot: Andrew Johnson was impeached, avoiding conviction by a single vote, while Theodore Roosevelt became one of our most admired presidents and Harry Truman helped end World War II.

Consequently, what happened last night could shape our national future and invites us to consider two imperatives.

Beware the illusion of immortality

If you were seeking a unifying theme for the day’s news, human mortality and finitude would be high on your list. For example:

• Iran launched a missile attack on Israel yesterday, threatening to escalate the conflict in the Middle East. (For more, see my Daily Article Special Edition.)
• A suspected terror shooting yesterday in the central Israel town of Jaffa murdered seven people and wounded dozens more.
• The flood damage from Hurricane Helene is apocalyptic, according to meteorologists.
• Another major hurricane could strike America later this week.
• An outbreak of the deadly Marburg virus (for which there are no vaccines) is raising concern over the possibility of international spread.
• A wave of hoax shooting threats is jolting schools across the country.
• The dockworker strike at US seaports could wreak havoc on global supply chains and the economy.
• A teen suicide crisis is continuing in America.

Nonetheless, we avoid the subject of mortality wherever possible.

We can do so in part because medical advances have pushed death further into the future than ever before. New oncological treatments, for example, have enabled President Carter to live nine years with brain cancer that otherwise would have quickly proven fatal.

In addition, with advances in hospitals and hospice care, few of us actually witness death these days. And video games, movies, and television shows make death more fictional and less real.

But there’s a spiritual factor at work here as well. Satan’s first lie to Adam and Eve is one he repeats to us every day: “You will not surely die” (Genesis 3:4). He wants the unsaved to die unsaved and the saved to ignore the fact of their mortality lest they live each day ready for judgment and eternity.

And he uses the illusion of immortality for his nefarious purposes.

Beware the peril of prosperity

Our spiritual enemy employs a second, closely related strategy as well: the peril of prosperity.

Both vice presidential debate candidates did their best last night to convince us that their party would lead Americans to greater flourishing. But we should beware a biblical pattern here.

As the people of Israel prepared to claim their Promised Land, God made this prediction: “When I have brought them into the land flowing with milk and honey, which I swore to give to their fathers, and they have eaten and are full and grown fat, they will turn to other gods and serve them, and despise me and break my covenant” (Deuteronomy 31:20). As a result, Moses warned them: “In the days to come evil will befall you, because you will do what is evil in the sight of the Lᴏʀᴅ, provoking him to anger through the work of your hands” (v. 29).

It was after King David led Israel to peace and prosperity (2 Samuel 10) that he fell into his disastrous sin with Bathsheba (2 Samuel 11). The Lord grieved over Israel: “The more they increased, the more they sinned against me” (Hosea 4:7).

By contrast, the psalmist testified: “It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes” (Psalm 119:71). Now he can say, “The law of your mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver pieces” (v. 72).

Wars, crimes, natural disasters, and diseases remind us daily that “we are dust” (Psalm 103:14). One way God redeems them is by using them to turn our hearts from temporal prosperity to eternal realities.

Charles Spurgeon was right: “Time is short. Eternity is long. It is only reasonable that this short life be lived in the light of eternity.”

A resolution that changed history

To experience God’s best today, it is vital that we admit our mortality and choose biblical morality. To this end, as a teenager, Jonathan Edwards resolved:

“Never to do anything which I would be afraid to do if it were the last hour of my life.”

He later became America’s greatest theologian and the leading preacher of the First Great Awakening.

What if you and I made the same resolution today?

Wednesday news to know:

• Hurricane Helene death toll rises as rescuers scramble to reach flooded towns
• US job openings rise to 8 million as labor market remains sturdy
• Democrats sue to block Georgia ballot hand count rule
• Judge blocks Georgia law banning abortion after six weeks of pregnancy
• On this day in 1967: Thurgood Marshall sworn in as first Black Supreme Court justice

*Denison Forum does not necessarily endorse the views expressed in these stories.

Quote for the day:

“On Christ, and what he has done, my soul hangs for time and eternity. And if your soul hangs there, it will be saved as surely as mine will be.” —Charles Spurgeon

Denison Forum

“Our war is with Hezbollah, not the people of Lebanon”

Israeli special forces are engaged in “limited and targeted raids” in southern Lebanon this morning, according to an IDF spokesman. Their purpose is reportedly not to occupy the country but to allow Israelis living in northern Israel to return to their homes.

Israel has been criticized for attacking “civilian” buildings in its latest conflict with Hezbollah, but this is because the terrorists have hidden their weapons and missile launching positions within civilian villages. In fact, the corrupt warlord Hassan Nasrallah and other senior Hezbollah leaders were gathered in a bunker more than sixty feet beneath a working-class neighborhood in southern Beirut when Israel’s air force struck the bunker with a series of timed, chained explosions to penetrate it.

According to the IDF spokesman, Hezbollah had been planning “to invade Israel, attack Israeli communities, and massacre innocent men, women, and children.” By contrast, he stated, “I want to make it clear: our war is with Hezbollah, not with the people of Lebanon. We do not want to harm Lebanese civilians, and we’re taking measures to prevent that.”

Israel has repeatedly warned civilians before staging strikes, using text messages and voice recordings to urge them to leave dangerous areas. It even warned an Iranian plane not to land in Beirut lest it be attacked.

When America stood behind Israel

Unlike Hezbollah and Hamas, who are pledged to the genocidal destruction of the State of Israel and the Jewish people, Israel’s war aim is to enable Lebanon to seize a post-Hezbollah future for its people while restoring stability to the region. In fact, in the wake of Nasrallah’s death, Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister said yesterday that his government is ready to fully implement a UN resolution that would end Hezbollah’s armed presence near the Israeli border and replace them with the Lebanese army in the area.

Nonetheless, in a speech to the UN last week, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan compared Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler. Anti-Israel incidents of assault, vandalism, harassment, protests, and divestment resolutions on US college campuses escalated 477 percent across the year following Hamas’s October 7 invasion.

There was a day when the United States stood unequivocally behind the Jewish nation and her people in the face of their enemies. For example, when the United Nations tried in 1975 to condemn Zionism (the belief that the Jewish people need and deserve a homeland) as “a form of racism and racial discrimination,” US Ambassador to the UN Daniel Patrick Moynihan denounced “this infamous act” as a “political lie of a variety well-known to the twentieth century, and scarcely exceeded in all that annal of untruth and outrage.”

That was then—this is now.

Here’s the good news: Condemnations on college campuses and behind UN lecterns are less threatening to Israel since they are coming from outside the country. My Israeli friends tell me the nation is united in its resolve to defeat the terrorists who threaten their lives and their future. After leading more than thirty pilgrimages to the Holy Land, I can tell you that her people, while enormously diverse on a wide range of religious and political issues, are passionately committed to the State of Israel.

By contrast, the “untruth and outrage” condemning America are coming from within our nation and imperil our very future.

Is America “among the greatest countries of the world”?

In 1980, the self-described Marxist socialist Howard Zinn wrote A People’s History of the United States: 1492 to Present. His book has sold more than three million copies; scholars claim that “no introductory work of American history has had more influence over the past forty years.”

In Zinn’s telling, a nation’s history is comprised of “the fierce conflicts of interest . . . between conquerors and conquered, masters and slaves, capitalists and workers, dominators and dominated in race and sex.” He applies such Marxist thinking to American history with devastating consequences.

He and the critical theory proponents who have popularized this ideology condemn the United States as a racist project built by white supremacists to advance themselves by oppressing others. Unsurprisingly, a cacophony of liberal scholars have been calling in recent years for the US Constitution to be abolished in response.

Such attacks on the moral foundations of our nation are having their effect. In 1998, 70 percent of Americans considered patriotism to be very important; today it’s 38 percent. The younger you are, the less likely you are to believe that the US is “among the greatest countries of the world.”

King David asked:

“If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?” (Psalm 11:3).

What, indeed?

“Be worthy of the gospel of Christ”

As Israel seeks to secure peace for itself in the face of virulent terrorist opposition, I am praying for “the peace of Jerusalem” (Psalm 122:6) to be extended to Lebanon and her people. I am praying for an end to Hezbollah’s bloody reign that has victimized so many Lebanese, Americans, Israelis, and Syrians over four decades. And for the same with regard to Hamas and other jihadist groups that threaten the Middle East and beyond.

I am similarly praying for a new regime in Iran, one that would serve the interests of its long-suffering people. And for a new stability in the Middle East that unites Jews and Arabs in building secure homelands for Israelis and Palestinians.

I am also praying for a renewal of American purpose and mission, one aligned with our founding proclamation that all people—from preborn children to racial minorities to the elderly and infirm—are endowed by our Creator with “unalienable” rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I am praying for a return to the consensual religious morality that George Washington and other founders considered so “indispensable” to political prosperity.

And I am praying for Christians to be submitted to the sanctifying Spirit of God so fully that we can be among the “righteous” to whom David referred (cf. Ephesians 5:18). Paul exhorted his readers to “let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ” (Philippians 1:27). America has never needed America’s Christians to live such lives more urgently than today.

Will you join me?

Tuesday news to know:

• Jimmy Carter turns 100: Long legacy of giving celebrated with new homes, benefit concert
• Death toll triples in Asheville area after Hurricane Helene guts North Carolina: “There were bodies in the trees”
• Dikembe Mutombo, a towering NBA presence, dies at 58
• Pete Rose, Major League Baseball’s all-time hit king, has died at 83
• On this day in 1988: Mikhail Gorbachev becomes head of Soviet Union

Quote for the day:

“To the distinguished character of Patriot, it should be our highest glory to add the more distinguished character of Christian” (George Washington).

Denison Forum