{"id":1015,"date":"2005-07-27T13:31:30","date_gmt":"2005-07-27T21:31:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/2005\/07\/27\/christian-iron-john\/"},"modified":"2026-01-21T16:24:46","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T00:24:46","slug":"christian-iron-john","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/2005\/07\/27\/christian-iron-john\/","title":{"rendered":"Christian Iron John"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>According to the article linked below, on any given Sunday women outnumber men 61% to 49% at Christian services.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Murrow, a 1983 Baylor University graduate and author of &#8220;Why Men Hate Going to Church,&#8221; contends that the modern church is too chatty, too touchy-feely and full of hokey rituals that don&#8217;t affirm a guy&#8217;s manhood. In short, the faith founded by one man 2,000 years ago needs a testosterone shot.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.theledger.com\/apps\/pbcs.dll\/article?AID=\/20050723\/NEWS\/507230312\/1021\">Modern Churches Don&#8217;t Suit the Macho Man<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>However, the article also mentions a 1910 YMCA survey found that two-thirds of church attendants were female. So I&#8217;d say this problem is more deeply rooted; 1910 isn&#8217;t ancient history, but neither does it qualify as modern to my thinking.<\/p>\n<p>As one who belonged to a charismatic, evangelical church for several years, I do concede one point to Murrow. He says, &#8220;Praise and worship services are 20-30 minutes of love songs to Jesus Christ in words no man would say to another.&#8221; Services are, and while some of the songs are lovely, they may not suit all personalities. However, Murrow also says church services have become &#8220;a time and place for mush, emotion and sentimentality.&#8221; This has not been the case in all denominations (Roman Catholic comes to mind, as do other churches with more formal, ritualized services). The atmosphere Murrow bemoans is a key trait of the evangelical charismatic style, which aims to heighten a person&#8217;s awareness of his unsaved condition by making him aware of his wretchedness and sinfulness, and by then appealing to fear (of damnation) and hope (of salvation) by calling him to &#8220;be born again.&#8221; It is a highly emotional style that has been a component of evangelicalism for many, many decades. Perhaps less focus on emotional manipulation and more education on what it means to follow Jesus is in order?  <\/p>\n<p>Interesting article.<\/p>\n<p>[via <a href=\"http:\/\/www.haxton.org\/weblog\/index.html\">MacRaven<\/a>]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>According to the article linked below, on any given Sunday women outnumber men 61% to 49% at Christian services. Murrow, a 1983 Baylor University graduate and author of &#8220;Why Men Hate Going to Church,&#8221; contends that the modern church is too chatty, too touchy-feely and full of hokey rituals that don&#8217;t affirm a guy&#8217;s manhood. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humanities","category-social-science"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1015"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1015\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12543,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1015\/revisions\/12543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}