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| Evans, Colo.
Bekah Harmon felt isolated after having her first child. It was difficult to spend days home alone in a small northern Colorado town, navigating little sleep and caring for a newborn.
When her second child arrived, it was a completely different experience. What changed? Her church.
Ms. Harmon says she searched a long time for one that was the right fit with her faith and had a vibrant group of women her age. She found it at Christ Community Church in nearby Greeley, where her family attends Sunday services and she participates in a weekly moms group during the school year.
For the first time, more young women – not young men – are leaving churches. But traditional religious practice still appeals to some. In this installment of our occasional series on women of faith, one Colorado Christian explains why she remains grounded in her church community.
When her second son was born this past spring, she was supported by more than 30 other mothers of young children.
“This group … built community so fast and it’s what I’ve been looking for, honestly, my whole life,” she says. “It was so hard not having that” after having her first baby.
During the summer, she hosted the moms for breakfast at her home, and many of them meet daily at parks or their homes with their kids. This time around, she says, she has had people to go out with. “I’ll hold their baby and they’ll hold mine, and it’s weirdly less work.”
That network and sense of belonging, paired with spiritual enrichment, often draws young people such as Ms. Harmon to church. Religious attendance in the United States has stabilized after dropping for decades, a study released in February from the Pew Research Center shows. At the same time, the church-attendance gender gap among young Americans has disappeared. While young men remain congregants, young women are leaving churches at higher rates than before. Many say they are driven to leave over denominational rules with which they disagree – such as bans against ordaining women and teachings about gender and sexual orientation.
Ms. Harmon is one of those who continues to engage. The Monitor is speaking with women of various backgrounds to understand more about their beliefs and decisions. What about their religion’s teachings keeps them in place? For some, like Ms. Harmon, fellowship is an anchor.
“Evangelical churches, in particular, have really focused on offering programming and building that tight sense of community among their members,” especially women, says Kristin Kobes Du Mez, a professor at Calvin University, whose research focuses on the intersection of religion, gender, and politics. “It really is designed to function as a total social world.”
Even so, most scholars and studies don’t find indications that newer generations are growing churches. “Young people do have an interest in spirituality. I don’t know that that means they’re joining a Christian institution,” says Sarah Stankorb, who is writing a book on why women leave church.
While young people are “increasingly open to faith,” a study from the Barna Group found, within that group “women are now the most likely to disengage from church, prayer and belief.”
In the United States, women have been more religious than men for decades. Across all age groups, significantly more women than men report praying daily, more women than men attend weekly services, and more say that religion is “very important.” Women have long been the backbone of American churches, leading and filling committees and completing much of the logistical and charitable work.
Though young women are leaving church at high rates, faith remains essential to many who stay, including those who resonate with the promises of marriage, raising children, and building community. It’s a way of life modeled by influencers with large online followings, including Christian commentator and author Allie Beth Stuckey, who often speaks about turning to the Bible for guidance on putting family first as a working mother.
When Ms. Harmon prays, she does so like she’s talking to her best friend. She turns to God for everything from small things – “I really want my baby to sleep tonight” – to big things, like where to buy a house or how many children to have.
A friend gave her a box that says “Give it to God” on the cover, and she writes her prayer items on sticky notes to place inside. The list ranges from praying for friends who are trying to conceive or who are looking for a job, to her own highs and lows with postpartum anxiety and depression.
Ms. Harmon’s current church, about an hour north of Denver, is about half young married couples. Her moms’ group is about 30 to 35 women. There’s no substitute for church in person, she says, pointing to the Bible chapter in Hebrews that encourages Christians to be in community.
“Doing life with other people is so rich,” she says. “I see why He calls us to that.”
Talking about scripture out loud helps her understand it better, she says, and she learns from her peers’ faith. In parenting, she finds spiritual support from friends, and a window into the stages just around the corner for her boys. She, like many of her friends, plans to homeschool her children. She says she has concerns about school shootings, and about Colorado state law governing how teachers address gender.
In her own study, Ms. Harmon often finds useful insight from Faith Womack, a seminary graduate and pastor’s wife. Ms. Womack’s videos on YouTube, branded “Bible Nerd Ministries,” include deep dives into the Bible, and guides on prayer journaling and examining links between faith and cultural trends.
Ms. Harmon and her husband met on a dating app for Christians, now known as Upward. At the time, the platform was new and didn’t have many users. In fact, her now-husband was the only man on the app in Colorado, the state where they both lived, and he was only 20 minutes away. Within a year, they were married. They now have two boys under age 2.
Marrying someone who shared her faith was a priority to Ms. Harmon, who “personally accepted Jesus Christ” when she was 19. She was raised in the more reserved Baptist tradition, while her husband was raised Charismatic, which tends to be a more interactive style of worship, and includes the belief in spiritual gifts like speaking in tongues and prophecy. Their church now, associated with the Evangelical Free Church of America, is “perfectly in the middle” of those traditions, she says.
They’re raising their family on his software engineer’s salary and it’s difficult; their closet doubles as his office. But their home in Evans is in a new subdivision, surrounded by fields and oil derricks. She teaches art on weekends, and turns to God for guidance on finances like she does with anything else. She is confident they’ll be cared for. “He gives more to those who steward what they have well.”
Ms. Harmon thinks of her “relationship with Christ” in a dynamic, living way. It shapes the structure of her days: how she prays, what media she watches and listens to, and how she parents. In the evenings, she says liturgies for her children. A whiteboard on her living room wall displays a Bible quote she changes daily. One day in late September, it displays a passage from the Old Testament book of Psalms (141:3): “Set a guard, oh Lord, over my mouth; keep watch over the door of my lips.”
Lately, she’s praying about her second child, now 7 months old, who has had some health challenges. After she had her first son, she felt consumed by fear for his safety. It was her aunts, whom she describes as “women of God,” who helped her.
Her faith is the thing that grounds her. “I love that it’s constant,” she says. In a world that’s constantly changing, “it’s the only thing that is fully trustworthy.”
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