The Church’s Gender Gap Problem

The Church’s Gender Gap Problem

When I was growing up, it wasn’t uncommon to hear women bemoan their husbands’ absence from church. I remember scanning the pews of St. Peter’s in Plattsburgh, New York, a French Catholic town in the North Country. Most of the men were either elderly or sleeping. This was not just my imagination. Today men born between 1960 and 1980 attend weekly church at rates between 20 and 25 percent, with women of the same age running two to four points ahe…