I just signed a contract with St. Augustine’s Press to publish my new book, which has the tentative title Meek or Macho: Why Men Are Alienated from Christianity. It develops the themes of my first book, The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity, but with a different focus.
In the new book, I treat in greater depth some of the themes of the previous book. I trace the idea that the Christian must be feminine in its development by Schleiermacher and Barth, as well as von Balthasar.
But I also look at different causes for the lack of men.
The clergy cooperated in the social control of young males (who definitely need controlling) by forbidding sports, dancing, and even fireworks, thereby alienating young men.
Men were also suspicious of the relationship of both Catholic and Protestant clergy to women. Confession and pastoral counseling led to abuses, which were exaggerated and trumpeted by anti-clericals.
Anticlericalism was largely a male phenomenon. It attacked Christianity, especially Catholicism, as perverse and effeminate. This attack led to the immorality trials of clergy under Hitler and the murder of thousands of priests in the Spanish Civil war.
As women move into fields previously reserved to men, they are adopting masculine attitudes, and following men out of the church.
Much of the research in the book appears in English for the first time.
Much more to follow.