For the first time ever, fewer US women than men claim to be religious or believe in a higher power in an age cohort (Gen Z)

[essentialsaltes]

Americans are becoming less religious. None more than this group​

[anecdote hook] Mojica Rodríguez saw how essential women were in keeping the pews filled and the church running. Ultimately, dismayed by the subservient role of women and the [Latin American fundamentalist] church's harsh restrictions on girls, she would leave her faith – and her husband – in her late 20s.

... her experience reflects a growing and, for churches, a potentially worrisome trend of young women eschewing religion. Their pace of departure has overtaken men, recent studies show, reversing patterns of previous generations.

"For as long as we’ve been conducting surveys on religion, men have exhibited consistently lower levels of religious commitment than women – across cultures, class divisions, any way you cut it," said Daniel A. Cox, director of the Survey Center on American Life, whose data helped spotlight the trend. "That’s what made this so notable."

A forthcoming study from Barna Group and Impact 360 Institute reaffirms the pattern, Barna CEO David Kinnaman said. According to the report, Generation Z women, especially those aged 18 to 24, are less likely than young men to identify with a faith or to believe in a higher power.

According to the Pew Center, the shift is occurring primarily among Protestants, 60% of whom identify as evangelical.

"Women do the majority of the work that keeps the church going," said former evangelical Sheila Wray Gregoire, who’s studied Christian marriage in the U.S. and Canada for 17 years. "They’re the ones responsible for getting children out of bed and going to church. They’re the ones staffing the Sunday school, making sure potlucks happen or that people are supported when they have an illness or are having a baby. The church is not going to survive without women."

One statistic showed the vast difference between young women and their elders: While the share of religiously unaffiliated men was 11 points greater among Gen Z than Baby Boomers (34% to 23%), young women were nearly three times as likely than Baby Boomer women to identify as such (39% to 14%).

How will churches respond to the crisis?​

The Rev. David Gushee, author of “After Evangelicalism: The Path to a New Christianity” and a professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia, said that while some evangelical leaders are trying to respond constructively, “others are tripling down on toxic masculinity. It’s very sad, really.”

“For generations, people would say young adults will leave, but when they get married and get their babies baptized, they’ll come back,” [Bolsinger, an associate professor of leadership formation at Fuller Seminary in Pasadena, California] said. “No longer. You have to have something to offer people … If we are losing the people who have historically been the most loyal, that’s a four-alarm fire.”

 

[AlexB23]

Americans are becoming less religious. None more than this group​

[anecdote hook] Mojica Rodríguez saw how essential women were in keeping the pews filled and the church running. Ultimately, dismayed by the subservient role of women and the [Latin American fundamentalist] church's harsh restrictions on girls, she would leave her faith – and her husband – in her late 20s.

... her experience reflects a growing and, for churches, a potentially worrisome trend of young women eschewing religion. Their pace of departure has overtaken men, recent studies show, reversing patterns of previous generations.

"For as long as we’ve been conducting surveys on religion, men have exhibited consistently lower levels of religious commitment than women – across cultures, class divisions, any way you cut it," said Daniel A. Cox, director of the Survey Center on American Life, whose data helped spotlight the trend. "That’s what made this so notable."

A forthcoming study from Barna Group and Impact 360 Institute reaffirms the pattern, Barna CEO David Kinnaman said. According to the report, Generation Z women, especially those aged 18 to 24, are less likely than young men to identify with a faith or to believe in a higher power.

According to the Pew Center, the shift is occurring primarily among Protestants, 60% of whom identify as evangelical.

"Women do the majority of the work that keeps the church going," said former evangelical Sheila Wray Gregoire, who’s studied Christian marriage in the U.S. and Canada for 17 years. "They’re the ones responsible for getting children out of bed and going to church. They’re the ones staffing the Sunday school, making sure potlucks happen or that people are supported when they have an illness or are having a baby. The church is not going to survive without women."

One statistic showed the vast difference between young women and their elders: While the share of religiously unaffiliated men was 11 points greater among Gen Z than Baby Boomers (34% to 23%), young women were nearly three times as likely than Baby Boomer women to identify as such (39% to 14%).

How will churches respond to the crisis?​

The Rev. David Gushee, author of “After Evangelicalism: The Path to a New Christianity” and a professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia, said that while some evangelical leaders are trying to respond constructively, “others are tripling down on toxic masculinity. It’s very sad, really.”

“For generations, people would say young adults will leave, but when they get married and get their babies baptized, they’ll come back,” [Bolsinger, an associate professor of leadership formation at Fuller Seminary in Pasadena, California] said. “No longer. You have to have something to offer people … If we are losing the people who have historically been the most loyal, that’s a four-alarm fire.”

This is sad. As a moderate Christian man, I have to say, the reason why the faith has been on decline is not because of science, nor because of society. The reason why Christian religion is falling is because of fundamentalists who shove a cherry picked version, twisted Bible down everyone's throat or fearmonger. My coworker told me that she no longer goes to church, or follow Christianity, cos her grandmother kidnapped her when she was little, in the motive to force her to go to church. That is sickening, and I pray for my coworker, that she heals from the scars of religious abuse.

In summary, fundamentalists are Christian's worst enemy.

Opinion piece on how fundamentalists Christians are ruining the faith:

Sussman: Christians have become their own worst enemy in America

As a Christian, Mike Sussman says he believes some who claim to follow Christ have become their own worst enemy.

www.newarkadvocate.com

Christian perspective:

How U.S. Evangelicals Became Their Own Worst Enemy – Part 1

U.S. evangelicals gained a reputation for being guilt-mongers, finger-pointers, even haters. While that reputation may not be wholly deserved, an examination of church history unveils why this reputation is at least partly true.

goodfaithmedia.org

 

[RileyG]

That’s very interesting.

 

[essentialsaltes]

That’s very interesting.

It's really quite shocking (and yes, interesting). Just to get a sense how unusual this is, a Pew article from a few years back looked at male/female religious belief worldwide.

The Gender Gap in Religion Around the World​

Women are generally more religious than men, particularly among Christians​

In 61 of the 192 countries, women are at least 2 percentage points more likely than men to have an affiliation. In the remaining countries, women and men display roughly equal levels of religious affiliation because in many cases nearly all people of both genders identify with some religious group. There are no countries in which men are more religiously affiliated than women by 2 percentage points or more.5

(OK, the result in the OP is only about Gen Z, rather than the entire population, but still it's quite remarkable.)

In some commentary on this:

Researchers have floated numerous theories for how culture and social norms might create a religious gender gap. Some argue that, for women who didn’t traditionally work outside the home, the church offered the kind of social and psychological benefits that jobs offered to men, such as a personal identity and a social community.

[If women are now finding there are not social and psychological benefits... that could explain the new results]

Not having a job could also mean that women had more time for religious activities, or that women had less exposure than men did to the secularizing forces that have gradually come to predominate in public life.

[But this would imply that when work equality was reached, women would be the same as men, not somehow becoming even less religious than men.]

Finally, the difference could also be due to the character of Christianity, as a religion that exalts the meek and the oppressed, David Voas, a sociologist who studies religion, tells Pew. Since women have traditionally been relegated to roles of lesser power and influence, the religious philosophy of Christianity may speak to them in particular.

[If American Christianity is changing to become more 'masculine', more interested in 'winning' than succoring the meek and oppressed... again this could be a viable explanation of the current trend.]

I think related to that last point, politics also has to be considered. The pro-life stance of much of American Christianity was theoretical for decades. Now that Christian conservatives have 'caught the bus' and had Roe overturned, younger women in particular face things their elders never did (and their very much older cohorts are not affected by the recent changes).

 

[FireDragon76]

Alot of what passes for Christianity in the US is considered patriarchal, authoritarian, and in some cases even openly misogynistic, and doesn't speak to the material circumstances of alot of young people. So I am not surprised.