Men and Church: Identity & Community

This Great Idea is inspired by a spate of recent news articles and broadcasts – coinciding with the publishing of a book on the very topic – wondering, ‘What does it mean to be a man? And where do men find community?’

It’s more like a toolkit or primer into a discussion on the topic of masculinity than a Great Idea, per se.

But here we go:

Monday morning (05.12.25), MSNBC interviewed New York Times journalist Ruth Graham for her work on a series of articles written last September. The interview’s subheading read, ‘Gen Z Men Are More Likely to Attend Religious Services than Millennials, Study Finds‘.

This had ‘red herring’ written all over it.

Indeed: young men are finding their ‘masculinity’ affirmed in conservative, evangelical church settings and are returning in numbers – or at least not leaving in the same numbers as their predecessor generation, according to the September NYT articles, [With Gen Z, Men Are Now More Religious than Women, 09.25.24; and The Possible Meanings of a Masculine Religious Revival, 09.27.25; both are paywall protected)  and the May 10 Axios article, Young Men Are Leading a Religious Resurgence, by Erica Pandey that prompted MSNBC’s coverage. In both Axios and NYT, numbers also show that women are leaving the church in greater numbers than men are returning.

I have an image of spiders, fleeing from the basilisk in Harry Potter: where toxic masculinity is glorified, making men feel affirmed, comfortable, and in community, women are fleeing out of disgust, fear, and self-preservation.

How might mainline denominations reclaim healthy masculinity?

For starter, Matthew Fox, et. al., have been writing and speaking about this for years. Here are a few options from him:

The blog posts, especially, are easy on-ramps to the discussion.

You can find Bible study resources from a Masculinist/Male Lens in our Adult Bible Study lib guide.

For intergenerational participants, reading stories from The Book of Belonging would not go amiss! (Members can borrow a copy from our library!)

For a deeper and broader exploration into gender identity, you might invite adults to read, No One Taught Me How to Be a Man: What a Trans Man’s Experience Reveals about Masculinity (Broadleaf, 2025), ‘an exploration of manhood and what it takes to be a good man in a world of toxic masculinity’. Author Shannon Kearns uses his experience as a trans man to ‘”see” gender in ways cis men cannot, making masculinity visible. Without arguing that masculinity should be done away with, or that there is no real difference between men and women, [Kearns] bravely points toward a form of manhood built for the well-being of the world, and for people of all genders’.

You might pair this adult read with, Man Up! (written by Washington D.C. teen reading tutors) for a simple Tween/Teen read – engage older readers/minds by wondering about the writing of it from the teenager’s perspective) or  Ultraviolet (you may want to prepare for some explicit coming-of-age/sexuality details, but the themes and content are highly pertinent to the broader conversation).

Children can join the Man Up! discussions and/or read, When God Made Light (encouraging children of all genders to be fully and brilliantly themselves) 0r Songs for Our Sons (‘encourages boys to shape a world so much gentler and brighter than before’).

Hallelu! Wouldn’t that be lovely!

Thanks to all the men who interrogate their masculinity and leave the toxic parts behind.

This could be a great discussion leading up to Father’s Day!!