I recently read David Murrow’s book, Why Men Hate Going to Church (2004, Thomas Nelson, Inc.). Despite the book’s numerous faults, Murrow has made one of the most important observations of this decade about church practices.
Let’s get the negative out of the way first, and then get to substance. Murrow’s publisher should have brought in an editor, such as Terry Hull, to grind off some of the unpolished portions of what could have been a crystalline gemstone. Murrow is prone to unsupported overstatement (“The typical American man has only one friend, his wife.†At 120). Murrow makes inconsistent statements that are never reconciled.
He accuses churches of being anti-intellectual by discouraging questions and orderly debate. He then accuses churches of being dominated by book readers and Bible thumpers with whom “real men†cannot be comfortable because of their lack of education and their disdain of books. Which is it, is the church insulting our intelligence or overwhelming us with information that is over our heads? Personally, I am one church-going male who wouldn’t mind hearing more content from the pulpit that sounds like it has been informed by some academic study and is aiming above the 5th-grade intelligence level.
Murrow lurches between describing Christian men as immature, spiritually and emotionally, versus simply being bored, regardless of the level of their spiritual maturity, by the feminized church. Murrow wanders through pop psychology and brain chemistry, clearly lacking any qualification or study to support such meanderings. Then, worse, lacking any consultation, interviews or collaboration with the experts, he draws all sorts of inconsistent conclusions in an attempt to explain gender differences. Then he contradicts it all by claiming the reason church attendance by women is declining is because they are adopting male attributes as they become acclimated, or assimilated, in formerly male-dominated business environments.
Despite all these problems, Murrow is right that many churches have abandoned the Biblically described role as an assembly of believers and have become service companies with marketing departments rather than evangelistic programs. Murrow describes many churches as “sickly sweet,†feminine to the point of patronization, and attempting to communicate the Gospel using bedroom language and Top 40 love songs. Churches that do this make men uncomfortable, or bore them silly. Murrow is absolutely right.
Murrow claims the popular syndicated Christian radio network KLOVE has developed a model listener called “Kathy.†He claims “Kathy†is a soccer mom with a mini-van and 2.5 kids. He claims KLOVE is intentionally formatted to attract and hold Kathy as a listener, and that KLOVE staff meetings sometimes actually refer to her by name. As a result, KLOVE literally presents a “Top 40†Christian love song format, Murrow claims, that many church music programs then try to emulate, further alienating men.
Murrow does not go so far as to claim that the retirement of Petra was caused by the Manilowization of Christian music, but he does claim Christian men prefer “old time rock.†Murrow believes KLOVE and similar stations are influencing Christian worship by focusing on “Christian love songs†that reach women but put off men.
KLOVE’s website certainly reflects Murrow’s assertion. On June 10, 2006, at www.klove.com, the home page had several pictures of women, similar to what one might find on any woman’s magazine, and the only males were a prayer circle of soldiers at the bottom of the page that could be seen only by scrolling down a few screens. No rebuttal of Murrow’s assertion is offered on the website, and that is not surprising, given KLOVE’s “positive and encouraging†marketing spin. (KLOVE does post its financial statement and allows its finances to be reviewed by an outside organization, so it has my respect for that.)
Murrow did not mention Christian book publishers and dealers, but he could have. The Christian pulp fiction romance novel is in full bloom. While I’m not personally critical of or even interested in that trend, it is interesting that the genre has come to dominate the advertising and display space, and seems to further prove Murrow’s thesis.
The result, according to Murrow, is a spirituality about as challenging as fingerpainting and about as interesting as a bologna sandwich. The church, Murrow asserts, has become focused on “relationships,†provides only a tiny percentage of its budget to missions, and has abandoned the growing numbers of martyrs sacrificed for Christ around the globe. Even if he is wrong about the cause, Murrow is exactly right in his indictments. Far too many churches would have no defense to these charges.
Indeed, in too many churches, racism is not dead, and is now being expressed in hatred for immigrants, especially those not fluent in the King’s English. Meanwhile, those same churches often have no ministry even in their own operational areas to the black community, the Hispanic community or any Asian community. These churches do not Se Habla Espanol. The legal community has done a better job of learning Spanish than nearly all churches in all denominations — just look at the lawyer advertising in any telephone book in any city for the proof.
Having diagnosed the problem, Murrow, again brilliantly, suggests some of solutions. He thinks the church has gone silent, and thus, soft, on Satan. The result is there is no enemy to fight, so no need for Christian soldiers. There is no playing for keeps on any spiritual battlefield and the only threat is disease and old age, resulting in prayer and share times devoted to medical issues and loss of loved ones brought by a line of women dutifully traipsing up to the open microphone. Prayer is seldom if ever used for spiritual conquest. Murrow concludes that there is no need for lifeboats, no need for search-and-rescue missions, no need for Christian soldiers, and thus no need for men.
Murrow thinks part of the problem is that the male relationship, such as between Paul and Timothy, has been abandoned by most churches. There is no spiritual fatherhood and there is no mentoring (aka discipleship). After all, why prepare men for battles and wars that will never be fought? The closest most churches come to needing men is lawn care, parking lot control, and occasional construction projects — oh, and writing checks.
Murrow does not add another solution that seems obvious to me. Men should stop writing checks to churches that do these things, or should at least split their tithes and offerings. If more men wrote checks to KLOVE, maybe KLOVE would have to add “Frank†to their model listener category. It might be too late to bring back Petra, but who knows?
Checks could also be diverted, in whole or in part, away from these no longer glorified churches and paid to local Christian benevolence ministries, especially those that Se Habla Espanol and are not afraid of black people. Maybe Christian men can still teach their churches not to be afraid of the people who live a few miles away, as well as to care about the Christians imprisoned and executed in other parts of the world. Maybe churches might be forced to hire the lawn care done because their men are too busy ministering to the helpless, rescuing the captives from fortresses of sin, and building ladders and bridges so the lost can climb out of Hell before its too late.
