Ruth Gledhill, the intrepid and often vapid religion correspondent on The Times of London has put together this article claiming that men find church ‘too girly’. The ridiculous thing about the article and the organization that is trying to do something about the ‘girliness’ of religion is that they focus entirely on the superficial level. Apparently church is ‘girly’ because there are flowers and candles and statues of the Virgin Mary and the priest wears a ‘dress’ like a girl and they sing songs about loving Jesus.

They suggest that decorating churches with knights and swords and military flags would be better. I suppose they would also like to bring back hymns like ‘Fight the Good Fight’ and ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’. “Give us a dose of the old muscular Christianity, what ho vicar!” Or what about that daft scheme in one diocese in England where the Humphrey Blytherington bishop decided to give all the men who came to church a pint of beer.

I would agree totally that the Anglican Church has become feminized, but surely they’re missing the elephant in the room. The Anglican Church has become feminized because it has been taken over by females and homosexuals. The ordination of women has distorted the sexual standards of the Anglican church so that it is dominated, on the one hand, by masculinized women, and on the other hand, by feminized men. No wonder healthy men run a mile. They come into church and it’s not that it is feminine, but that it is some sort of creepy transgendered place.

In comparison, I don’t sense that the Catholic Church is feminized that much at all. We’ve suffered somewhat, with the rest of society, through the sentimentalization of all things, and that has made some of our liturgies and music rather touchy feely and feminized. However, one of the things my Anglican mother in law said when she came to our church was, “Gosh! I can’t believe the number of young families including fathers and young men who come to church here!”

PS: My opinions here (as usual) are just opinionated blather. Leon Podles has written the book on the subject. The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity is available for free as a pdf file if you’re interested go here.