Church life in America has been majority-female for some time. According to Pew Research, women make up 57 percent of those who attend religious services weekly. Faithful women have long been the beating heart of many congregations. But this sex imbalance seems set to reverse. Today, women are disaffiliating from churches at a higher rate than men. In Generation Z, more women than men now identify as religiously unaffiliated, and Gen-Z men are more likely to attend church than Gen-Z women—developments recorded by the New York Times, among other publications. But there may be more to this story. Many Gen-Z men appear to be gravitating specifically to churches that are traditional in liturgy and conservative in doctrine, and that exert a “masculine” appeal. They are taking a pass on mainline and progressive evangelical churches that echo the broader culture’s suspicion of masculinity.
The New York Post recently published a story about young men who are converting to “‘masculine’ Orthodox Christianity in droves.” Ancient liturgy and doctrine, along with ascetical practices such as fasting and confession, are not barriers for these male converts. Orthodoxy’s countercultural ethos is an attraction for young men who seek stability, transcendence, and spiritual challenge. Fr. Dwight Longenecker, pastor of Our Lady of the Rosary in Greenville, South Carolina, reports a similar trend in Catholicism. His parish is bursting with young male converts. They are not coming for a “beige” suburban Catholicism. They are drawn to “traditional Catholic parishes” and “dynamic orthodoxy.” According to Longenecker, the Catholic Church provides such a “reliable voice of authority” and a foundation on which these young men may build their futures.
What type of Christian faith can endure in our fast-changing world and be passed on to the next generation? Joseph-Anthony Kress, O.P., a chaplain at the University of Virginia, observes an orientation to the future as one factor in the attraction of so many young men to the Catholic ministry he leads. Over coffee recently, Kress described the surge of interest among young men during the last seven years. Bible studies are booming at fraternity houses. Aspiring finance bros are busy not just plotting their career paths, but considering the place of the Catholic faith in the lives they intend to lead—lives that are to include marriage and the rearing of children in the faith. The rise of Stoicism among young men, fueled by discussions in the online “manosphere,” inspired a recent Dominican-led retreat. Kress notes that many of these young men are shaped first by online figures who promote a specific model of masculinity. Though some of this formation is valuable, much of it requires refining, especially when it comes to integrating the virtue of prudence—something sorely lacking in online spaces. But these young male college students seem eager to receive fatherly direction, spiritual counsel, and dogmatic instruction. At Easter, many of these young men will be received into the Catholic Church. Between 2021 and 2025, more than 60 percent of the students entering the Church through the UVA chaplaincy have been men.
Young men’s search for spiritual stability is playing out in pockets of the Anglican world as well. Fr. Benji Davis, rector of Christ Church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, has witnessed a steady increase in younger men seeking a spirituality that has substance. Davis tells me that men in his parish in their twenties and early thirties are eager to live by a rule of life based on the Book of Common Prayer, embrace sacramental confession, and learn from the great tradition of the faith. Davis instructs single men who hope to marry in the importance of cultivating virtue and growing in holiness as a requisite for courtship and a foundation for marriage. Many Gen-Z men, drawn to traditional Anglican parishes like Davis’s, are disenchanted with the (as they see it) rootless evangelical churches they are leaving. They are seeking traditional liturgy and orthodox doctrine on issues such as sexual ethics and women’s ordination.
Joe Colletti, an Anglican layman, promotes traditional Anglicanism on the popular “Young Anglican” YouTube channel and the Anglican Renaissance website. He has a growing audience, mostly of men in their twenties. Colletti was one of the young men he is now trying to reach. A secular atheist until his conversion in college, he now sees liturgy, doctrinal orthodoxy, penitential rigor, and a regular rule of prayer as bulwarks of a purposeful life. He observes: “Young men, especially, are hungry for traditional, liturgical, beautiful Christianity, and the goal of my channel is to show them that they can find that in Anglicanism.” Colletti’s target audience is restless young men who are extremely online and are hearing from a variety of influencers and gurus who address their masculine angst with practical advice, moral guidance, and a vision for a better life.
Aaron Renn has documented the neo-pagan account of masculinity offered by some of these influencers, such as Ryan Landry and Bronze Age Pervert. Andrew Tate has gained an enormous following by selling a performative masculinity based on sexual prowess and wealth accumulation. Despite these false prophets, a growing number of Gen-Z men are discovering a vision of Christianity in which their masculinity is not a problem to be solved but a gift they can offer to God. When they move offline to find parishes, they want the “real thing.” Given the choice, they will opt for the parish they suspect is more traditional and zealous. They desire full-bodied orthodoxy, robust liturgy, and a faith that challenges them. They are skeptical of theological innovations, worship fads, and churches that try to be cool.
Because women have predominated in most churches for some time, it’s understandable that ministry, worship, and even the clergy have become in some respects feminized. Therapeutic sermons, sentimental music, and “tame” clergy—a term coined by the late Paul Mankowski, S.J., to describe priests who prioritize affirmation over challenge—reflect a stereotype of women’s ministry preferences and an assumption that women are the primary demographic on which success or failure depends. Even the term “pastoral,” though its etymology invokes the (presumptively male) shepherd, has come to connote the empathetic caregiver, an archetypally feminine model of service. But the biblical images for priestly leadership, as theologian Alastair Roberts has argued, are coded masculine. The same shepherd who is gentle toward his flock must also be ready to rebuke his sheep, drive away wolves, defend the faith and the faithful, and lay down his life. Such a conception of pastoral ministry may not fit contemporary expectations of the empathetic caregiver, but it does accord with the classical theological virtue of charity: the willing and pursuit of the good of others. Now that many men are ready to consider church for the first time or make a return, clergy should consider how their own conceptions of ministry might need to change. Am I the sort of pastor a young man might follow into a life-and-death spiritual battle?
The departure of many young women from the church is lamentable. The church should be a place where men and women thrive together, not a staging ground for the battle of the sexes. But might a return of men, who are being catechized and formed in a catholic and orthodox faith, prompt a future return of women? The answer to toxic masculinity is not vapid egalitarianism in the style pioneered by liberal Protestants and mimicked by progressive evangelicals. Nor is it the gnostic androgyny of our sexually confused culture. The answer is bold, sacrificial, and Christ-like masculinity. Christ faces evil and lays down his life for his bride. The priest, acting in the person of Christ the head, must be a masculine icon for his parish, an assertive yet tender spiritual father. A re-churching of men has the potential to correct men’s worst impulses while redeeming men through the power of Christ crucified. This redemption may yet occasion the return of men and women to a renewed church, one in which the sexes will flourish together.
