Most women have it. More men are trying to get it.
Yet not all the Promise Keepers or Iron Johns or any other men's movements can
seem to put a dent in a fact of life: Women are more religious than men.
Women attend worship services more often, participate more in churches, mosques
and synagogues and are more likely to say religion is important in their lives.
And not only in the United States. Research recently published in the Journal
for the Scientific Study of Religion and the American Journal of Sociology
shows that women are more religious than men throughout the world.
All of which makes University of Washington sociologist Rodney Stark, who
compiled the international research, wonder why. His answer: It is apparently
biological. Men are hard-wired to riskier behavior, and less likely to embrace
the religious concepts of delayed self-gratification.
The old assumptions that gender differences were more a matter of nurture than
nature -- that the culture gave women responsibility for faith and family --
just don't measure up over the last generations, he says.
With more women entering the workplace and more men embracing nontraditional
roles, there was an assumption there would be a leveling off of religious
differences. But the differences are unchanged.
Even direct efforts such as Promise Keepers, which have recruited millions to
stadium events and Christian men's groups in churches, have failed to balance
the scales of religious participation.
"The biological difference sure does stand there and look you in the
eye," Stark said.
Not all scholars buy this argument.
Michael Kimmel, author of "Manhood in America: A Cultural History,"
said the gender differences have less to do with genetics than with how
religion is perceived in different cultures. In the United States, for example,
religious teachings to turn the other cheek and be nice do not fit with some
models of male behavior, said Kimmel, a sociologist at the State University of
New York at Stony Brook.
"Real men don't rely on a crutch. Real men are men of action. Real men
fight," Kimmel said in describing some popular ideas of masculinity.
"Basically, church life is seen as sissifying."
There is not a lot of evidence on gender differences in ancient worship, but
what is available indicates women have always been more likely to search for
the divine. Early Greek and Roman writers portrayed women as particularly
susceptible to new religious movements, Stark says.
Rosemary Skinner Keller, dean and professor of church history at Union
Theological Seminary in New York, said the gender difference was a part of
early American life. In Colonial days, the role of women, supported by some
biblical passages, was to be in the home, with the responsibilities of caring
for children and providing for their religious education.
The movement from an agricultural to an industrial society, with more men
working outside the family farm, and the fundamentalist movement of the early
20th century further reinforced the perceived division of responsibilities
among men and women, some scholars say.
Research over the last 50 years consistently shows women consider themselves
more religious than men. Stark's article in the recent Journal for the
Scientific Study of Religion looks at data from 49 nations from Australia to
Switzerland in World Values Surveys. In every country, a higher percentage of
women than men said they consider themselves religious. The same pattern
persisted in research in seven non-Christian nations.
For many years, researchers operated under the assumption that women are
culturally programmed to be more religious than men. But Stark, co-author with
Roger Finke of "Acts of Faith: Explaining the Human Side of
Religion," says the evidence fails to support those theories.
In an article in the latest American Journal of Sociology, Stark and Alan S.
Miller of Hokkaido University in Japan point out studies have consistently
shown that there is no relationship between religiousness and child-rearing and
that women who work outside the home are just as religious as women who work in
the home. Both are far more religious than men.
"In the U.S., if it's socialization, it sure ought to have declined,"
Stark said of the gender differences.
Stark and Miller say there is mounting evidence that physiological reasons may
explain some of the differences. Religion, they say, involves risk, and men
have been programmed to be aggressive, and not as willing to postpone immediate
gratification for eternal goals. Some studies show testosterone levels are
strongly related to impulsive, risky behavior.
In practice, Stark and Miller say, this means some men may be less likely to be
deterred by the consequences of hell or other punishments involved in religious
proscriptions against certain behaviors. Also, some men may be less likely to
make religious commitments in the hope of gaining eternal rewards.
"People who are willing to risk the secular costs of seeking immediate
gratification also are prone to risk the religious costs of misbehavior.
Whatever it is that makes some men risk-takers also makes them
irreligious," Stark writes in the Journal for the Scientific Study of
Religion.
David Gray Hackett, associate professor of religion at the University of
Florida, says Stark is a respected sociologist whose work needs to be taken
seriously. But he disagrees that there have been fundamental changes in
American culture.
Traditional sex roles are still around, he said.
"The '50s mind-set of the family persists, even if we are not living it
now," he said. "It loiters around at some deeper level of our
existence."
Keller said there is "much to be said" for Stark's argument.
"It is biological, that's part of it. But it's also a strong, strong
cultural acclimatization," she said.
She said changes in American society breaking down gender barriers will make a
difference in evening up religious participation.
"As younger men and women and families share more, both at home and in the
workplace and in church life, that will happen," she said.