Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, the most nominated film in Oscar history, is the biggest example of Hollywood’s new take on faith: Feminine spirituality is good; masculine Christianity is bad.
Sinners follows Sammie Moore (Miles Caton), a talented blues musician who disobeys his preacher father to join his twin cousins Stack and Smoke (both played by Michael B. Jordan), who open a juke joint for the black community in their Mississippi hometown. But when vampires attack, they need the help of Smoke’s Hoodoo-practicing wife Annie (Wunmi Mosaku) to have any hope of survival.
Sammie is caught between two “toxic” alternatives of masculine leadership. His father’s religion oppresses his musical ambition and sexual desires. But his skeptical, rationalistic cousins are powerless to defeat the vampire threat until they listen to their magic matriarch.
Christians are used to Hollywood pushing atheism, but Sinners’ spiritual vision is quietly growing. Increasingly, movie heroes are spiritual or magical women who battle masculine-coded oppressive religion or rationalism. Whenever there’s a “god” character, such as in Avatar or Barbie, it’s a divinely feminine figure. In Greta Gerwig’s upcoming Narnia film, Aslan is reportedly voiced by Meryl Streep.
This shouldn’t be surprising. Hollywood has long been committed to secular liberalism. As the demographics of secular liberalism change, Hollywood follows. Historically, men have been atheists, and married moms have been the most committed churchgoers. But since the Obama years, single women have voted reliably left, which has created tensions for them with Christianity’s less progressive doctrines. So, with fewer Americans getting married, and nearly every religious demographic except the religious right shrinking, single women are caught between a religious right and a non-religious left. The result is single women leaving church en masse, making Gen Z perhaps the first recorded American generation where churchgoing men outnumber women.
Because men and women are different, this gender flip changes both secularism and Christianity. Women are cross-culturally more spiritual than men. They’re more likely to be religious, and when they’re not religious, still more likely to believe in a higher power and supernatural phenomena like ghosts, astrology, and psychic powers. They’re more likely to trust their gut, more wired for empathy, and more committed to social harmony and equality as primary values. Men are more wired to favor analytical reason over intuition, truth over harmony, rules over empathy, and hierarchies of greatness (determined through competition) over equality.
When men leave church, they become materialists who discover or invent games of status. When they turn to faith, they emphasize doctrines, rituals, and hierarchies. When women go to church, they emphasize a “personal relationship with Jesus” and invest in community. When they leave, they keep that personal relationship and transfer community to politics. As secularism becomes more female-dominant and Christianity more male-dominant, secularism becomes more “spiritual but not religious,” and Christianity becomes more “religious but not spiritual.” Hence, very different male public intellectuals such as Jordan Peterson and Ryan Burge are both telling people to go to church (religion) even if they don’t believe (spirituality). Meanwhile, exvangelicals such as Jen Hatmaker leave the church (religion) but claim to still love Jesus (spirituality).
The result is a society increasingly divided between a single, female, spiritual-but-not-religious left, and a married, male, religious right. It’s no wonder atheists and agnostics prefer female leadership, while the religious right prefers male leadership; these genders are the most likely to share their beliefs.
These changes are shaping the faith-based film industry, too. Faith-based films traditionally targeted moms with family-friendly dramas. But increasingly films and shows like Nefarious, House of David, The Pendragon Cycle, and the upcoming Young Washington are about men waging war to establish godly masculine authority.
Christians will rightly see both extremes as disordered in different ways. People need to be both spiritual and religious, and balance traditionally masculine and feminine virtues. So how do Christians fight back against both these errors?
One big answer: Keep doing what’s working. Christians might be tempted to cater to single women’s preferences to lure them back. But that hasn’t worked for mainline churches. Churchgoing conservative Christians are keeping men and women balanced by fostering a robust marriage and family culture. This binds men and women together so they don’t drift toward hyperfemininity or hypermasculinity (perhaps one undiscussed reason why most polarization today is driven by the left).
Christianity becoming heavily male is also a positive. It prevents the well-documented phenomenon of “male flight” from female-majority spaces, while women still flock to male-majority spaces. (Think of Marvel and Star Wars‘ popularity before and after their attempted pivots to female audiences.) We should lean into making Christ beautiful to men and discipling them into Christ followers and attractive marriage partners. An increase in married women means fewer women abandon church. Higher church attendance among men means fewer abusive and unfaithful men. Greater paternal religiosity means fewer children leave the faith.
The end of Sinners features Sammie at the end of his life. He’s gotten to play his music and found fame. But he’s also alone and ready to die. Spirituality outside of Christ may feel good, but ends in death. And the future belongs to the living.
