November 28, 2004
NOT A MISTAKE ISLAM MAKES
The Truth About Men & Church (Robbie Low, Touchstone, November, 2003)
In 1994 the Swiss carried out an extra survey that the researchers for our masters in Europe (I write from England) were happy to record. The question was asked to determine whether a person’s religion carried through to the next generation, and if so, why, or if not, why not. The result is dynamite. There is one critical factor. It is overwhelming, and it is this: It is the religious practice of the father of the family that, above all, determines the future attendance at or absence from church of the children.If both father and mother attend regularly, 33 percent of their children will end up as regular churchgoers, and 41 percent will end up attending irregularly. Only a quarter of their children will end up not practicing at all. If the father is irregular and mother regular, only 3 percent of the children will subsequently become regulars themselves, while a further 59 percent will become irregulars. Thirty-eight percent will be lost.
If the father is non-practicing and mother regular, only 2 percent of children will become regular worshippers, and 37 percent will attend irregularly. Over 60 percent of their children will be lost completely to the church.
Let us look at the figures the other way round. What happens if the father is regular but the mother irregular or non-practicing? Extraordinarily, the percentage of children becoming regular goes up from 33 percent to 38 percent with the irregular mother and to 44 percent with the non-practicing, as if loyalty to father’s commitment grows in proportion to mother’s laxity, indifference, or hostility.
Before mothers despair, there is some consolation for faithful moms. Where the mother is less regular than the father but attends occasionally, her presence ensures that only a quarter of her children will never attend at all.
Even when the father is an irregular attender there are some extraordinary effects. An irregular father and a non-practicing mother will yield 25 percent of their children as regular attenders in their future life and a further 23 percent as irregulars. This is twelve times the yield where the roles are reversed.
Where neither parent practices, to nobody’s very great surprise, only 4 percent of children will become regular attenders and 15 percent irregulars. Eighty percent will be lost to the faith.
While mother’s regularity, on its own, has scarcely any long-term effect on children’s regularity (except the marginally negative one it has in some circumstances), it does help prevent children from drifting away entirely. Faithful mothers produce irregular attenders. Non-practicing mothers change the irregulars into non-attenders. But mothers have even their beneficial influence only in complementarity with the practice of the father.
In short, if a father does not go to church, no matter how faithful his wife’s devotions, only one child in 50 will become a regular worshipper. If a father does go regularly, regardless of the practice of the mother, between two-thirds and three-quarters of their children will become churchgoers (regular and irregular). If a father goes but irregularly to church, regardless of his wife’s devotion, between a half and two-thirds of their offspring will find themselves coming to church regularly or occasionally.
A non-practicing mother with a regular father will see a minimum of two-thirds of her children ending up at church. In contrast, a non-practicing father with a regular mother will see two-thirds of his children never darken the church door. If his wife is similarly negligent that figure rises to 80 percent!
The results are shocking, but they should not be surprising. They are about as politically incorrect as it is possible to be; but they simply confirm what psychologists, criminologists, educationalists, and traditional Christians know. You cannot buck the biology of the created order. Father’s influence, from the determination of a child’s sex by the implantation of his seed to the funerary rites surrounding his passing, is out of all proportion to his allotted, and severely diminished role, in Western liberal society.
Modern barbarism really picked up when men began to see going to church as something they did to please their wives.
This highlights the real purpose of Eph 5:21-6:4. The father/husband is to be the role model of godliness for the rest of the family. He is commanded to love them "just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her" (5:25). That is, he is to love them sacrifically, not placing his own interests above theirs (yes that includes golf.)
The father is to be the role model of both godly leadership and submission, first to God and then to the needs of his family.
Feminists and secularists take one verse out of context, 5:22 "Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord." They jump on it while ignoring the verse immediately before it, "Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ", and the following v. 25.
The context is a chain of mutual submission of children <-> mother <-> father <-> Christ <-> God. The father is the role model for the family. When the father abrogates his responsibilities, the whole chain unravels.
Peter: I don't get your tag line. Does it matter why fathers go to church, so long as they go? Isn't that the history of civilization; that barbarism died as women dragged men kicking and screaming into church?
Posted by: David Cohen at November 28, 2004 9:43 AMDavid:
It's not civilizing just to have the guys clean-up once a week, stop cussing at dinner and work- in the occasional French bon mot. That's just barbarism in a suit. It creates societies chock full of low-hanging fruit for the next guy who can throw a good Nuremburg rally.
I suspect this pattern has something to do with the fact that male involvement in a church is in itself indicative of a living denomination. The pews of moribund churches are occupied mainly by women. At least, that's what this heathen has observed in her forays to friends' and relatives' houses of worship.
I have to question the author's logic, though. Children's respecting and following their fathers' beliefs and rejecting their mothers' isn't a very good example of the contemporary lack of respect for the paternal role. On the face of it it seems more like a typical instance of male activity having more prestige than female.
Posted by: Moira Breen at November 28, 2004 2:25 PMMoira:
"On the face of it it seems more like a typical instance of male activity having more prestige than female."
Very insightful, and could well explain many things beyond religious.
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at November 28, 2004 8:06 PMDavid:
Sorry, I was referring to the modern, smiling kind, the sort Waugh was talking about as the "age of Hooper". It's an interesting point you make, and certainly rings true about the settling of the frontier and colonies. Going back further, though, I have a hard time believing the splendid edifaces of Judaism and Christianity were built largely on efforts to placate nagging wives.
Moira:
I'm not entirely sure of your point. He is making the argument that there is a natural paternal influence here. I don't know how far I would go with him, but what does prestige have to do with it anymore that with the fact that sick toddlers almost universally prefer their mothers? I've never met a man who went to church for prestigious reasons anymore than I've met a mother who stayed up all night with a sick child for the glory of it.
Posted by: Peter B at November 28, 2004 8:43 PMJim: If, as conservatives, we believe in the unchanging nature of human beings -- that human nature has no history -- then the difference between barbarism and civilization can only be the forms of civilization.
Peter: I would make some crack about the power of nagging wives, but I daren't. It would be misunderstood.
Posted by: David Cohen at November 28, 2004 8:55 PMGideon:
It's not just feminists and secularists who take Ephesians 5:22 out of context; it's also a favorite activity of religionists.
If Christians were any good at PR, they'd be emphasizing the rest of Eph.
Posted by: Michael Herdegen at November 29, 2004 8:03 AMPeter -
That a man doesn't go to church for the purposes of prestige doesn't speak to the truth of the observation that what men do has higher prestige than what women do. For example, as a profession becomes feminized, it loses status. If religiosity is perceived as feminine ("a secondary sexual characteristic of the human female" as some European or other once said), as it has been in European society for the last century or so, it's no longer cool - children, like everyone else, will find it less attractive. The prevailing secular view is that religion is for the irrational, silly, gullible (feminine) people who need an emotional crutch - not something for strong, rational (masculine) people. Who wants to be caught dead hanging with the former?
I don't share this parochial and simple-minded view of religiosity, but I certainly think children absorb it. I'm also not adamant that this explains the data - just a preliminary speculation. A child whose father goes to church is likely to see an active church with large numbers of male congregants. He will therefore tend to take it seriously. If children never see anything but middle-aged and old women in the pews, they will bail at the first opportunity.
Posted by: Moira Breen at November 29, 2004 9:17 AMMoira:
Your assessment could say loads about Russian Orthodox congregations, and the state of Russian Society.
None of it, unfortunately, good.
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at November 29, 2004 5:28 PMMoira:
I'm not sure I buy your comment on the prestige of professions, or maybe I just don't think it is all that important beside questions of child-rearing. But let's say there is something to your general point. Which way do you want to go? Alan Bloom pointed out in the eighties that the feminist project was far more radical than earlier examples in that it wasn't interested in just reining in or sublimating male aggression or masculinity--it wanted to root it out completely. That project doesn't seem to be working out too well unless meterosexuals and high divorce rates are your idea of progess. Do you rail against the unfairness or build relations around it?
Posted by: Peter B at November 30, 2004 8:46 AMJeff - expand? What's the sex ratio of church attendance in Russia? (In the U.S. orthodox churches seem to have a healthy level of male participation - at least from my limited observation.)
Peter - I think you're confusing what I intended as a neutral observation with what you take to be some ideological position of mine. If you think I'm trying to make some feminist point, you're missing my point. Whatever you or I think about the importance of child-rearing, it is either true or untrue that, in general, what men do has higher prestige than what women do. I happen to think that, for good or ill, this is a universal human truth, confirmed by any dispassionate perusal of the anthropological literature or day-to-day observation. I don't see the connection between my observation and your apparent inference that I support some jihad against masculinity, or, at least, that I'm cranky about traditional sex roles. (Guess my profession.) To get back to the original point, I do think the role of fathers in Western society is denigrated, and I also think this is a very bad thing. But I wouldn't argue that this is evidenced by children following their fathers' lead in matters spiritual.
Posted by: Moira Breen at November 30, 2004 12:18 PMMoira:
No, I didn't think that because you were very careful not to reveal any advocacy position. (I looked hard for one). Similarly, I didn't intend the post to be a whine about fathers being shut out--on the contrary, it was meant to be a kick. Things like going to church or caring for sick kids are duties and the question of whether one sex will be "better" or more influential obviously leads to the question of whether that should be resisted or celebrated.
Most today, I think, would either say resisted or navigated warily. Even the most conservative women I know wouldn't go very far in pining away for the "good old days" traditional family life, yet they see and feel what it was based upon when their own kids arrive. The seriously religious might be more enthusiatic, not because they are any less educated or worldly, but because they operate within a structure of mutually understood duties that guards against exploitation--or is supposed to.
So I return to my question. If the article has some truth to it, should we be trying to harangue dads to get more serious about faith or uring kids to respect Mom's views more?
Posted by: Peter B at November 30, 2004 5:20 PMMoira:
I have read from many independent sources, substantiated by superficial observations from a brief visit 12 years ago, that virtually all churchgoers in Russia today are women.
Peter:
"...should we be trying to harangue dads to get more serious about faith or uring kids to respect Mom's views more?"
I bet you would be swimming against the tide of human nature on both counts.
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at November 30, 2004 8:43 PM