AnalysisTyler Hummel | November 6, 2025
Having spent some time earlier this year meeting potential romantic partners through the popular Christian dating app Upward, I’ve been consistently confused by the state of Christianity among my generation.
The Millennial and Zoomer profiles around my age, which I read daily, almost all identify the same way: Non-confessional, evangelical, Pentecostal or “other,” usually meaning undecided or unwilling to attach themselves to a label.
Occasionally, I would stumble upon a Presbyterian, Anglican or Episcopalian profile 100 to 300 miles away from me, and I would find some local Catholic and Lutheran accounts. However, denominational Christianity has seemingly all but evaporated among my generation. It appears seeker-sensitive megachurch evangelicalism has all but totally won its battle against Mainline Protestantism, to the point where almost all young Christians are either Roman Catholic or aggressively non-denominational.
“Despite the overall patriarchal tendencies of the church, mainstream Christianity always has been driven by women.”
I can’t speak for male profiles, but this is somewhat surprising among female profiles. Despite the overall patriarchal tendencies of the church, mainstream Christianity always has been driven by women. Its first major converts during the Roman Empire were women, particularly widows and the enslaved. Women play a vital role in church life, handling the vital background and volunteer work that makes it possible for churches to function. And anecdotally, I’ve heard more stories of spiritually disinterested men returning to Christian life to get married to a beautiful woman than the other way around.
Women always have served as the backbone of Christianity, often doing more to volunteer and live out the life of the church than their male counterparts, despite being ineligible for pastoral offices in many conservative traditions. For them to largely abandon the traditional centers of American Christianity seemed to speak to some mass underlying change in the heart of the faith.
It seems Christianity, among the younger generations, has taken on a new meaning with different contexts for men and women.
American Enterprise Institute recently reported a radical shift happening among Generation Z: Among those who have left the religion in which they were raised, 54% were women and 46% were men. With women becoming more highly educated, less family oriented, and more openly pro-choice, young women are finding themselves more misaligned with those churches’ Christian values than in previous generations, where men were more likely to roam and leave the church.
“For most young women who leave, it’s not about any one issue.”
The study reports: “For most young women who leave, it’s not about any one issue. Most Americans who leave their formative faith say there was no single reason or catalyzing event that pushed them out. Rather, it was a steady accumulation of negative experiences and dissonant teachings that made it difficult or impossible to stay.”
This change has come part and parcel with the radicalization of young men in our culture, with many prominent pastors struggling with how to deal with surging white nationalism, antisemitism, and Andrew Tate fascination boiling quietly amongst their congregations. Young men are also reportedly flocking to Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox parishes, seeking a more traditional and vitalistic form of Christianity (although these statistics are questionable when these denominations are provably shrinking).
This leads me to a fascinating question: What do we do with these data points? Obviously, not all women are abandoning Christianity. However, the ones who are staying are forging ahead in curious directions. What new status quo are we moving toward? Who will be forging the future of our faith?
“What new status quo are we moving toward? Who will be forging the future of our faith?”
Certainly, religion is complicated in the American context from the female perspective. American Christians tend to identify strongly with Republican politics, which would put them at odds with this generation of young women.
Similarly, repeated allegations of abuse scandals within various denominations and large megachurches are contributing to a culture of distrust in both conservative and progressive denominations.
On the left side of the aisle, this is resulting in calls for greater scrutiny and accountability within denominations like the Southern Baptist Convention and the Anglican Church in North America. Progressive Christians continue to push harder for institutional integrity and accountability within larger denominations.
Ryan Burge
On the right side of the aisle, this is resulting in great dissociation from hierarchical denominations in favor of congregationalist churches with more direct accountability. As the social scientist Ryan Burge has argued, this growing institutional distrust is fueling the decline of Mainline Protestantism in favor of evangelicalism.
“Nondenominationalism is predicated on the collapse of institutional trust,” Burge said. “Americans, for myriad reasons, do not trust major institutions. Banks, unions, big business, media and government are all viewed with deep skepticism. Nameless and faceless CEOs and bureaucrats are wasting your money and taking your freedom. In religion, there’s a simple solution to this: Kill the denominations. Voila! No more unaccountable head office that wastes your money on projects to spruce up the national headquarters. In a nondenominational church, all the people who decide where the money goes are sitting right next to you in the pew. That’s a whole lot more accountability.”
From a vitality perspective, evangelicalism seems to be taking the lead. Catholics and evangelicals hold a disproportionate voice in American politics and faith. Similarly, Pentecostalism and the greater charismatic movement are among the fastest-growing religions on earth and likely will eclipse the Global Anglican Communion as the third-largest group in Christianity by 2050.
However, this path is arguably dangerous. While I never would condemn the entire movement, charismatic theology often leads folks down the path toward the prosperity gospel or Unitarianism and can create cults of personality or extreme theologies at odds with historic Christian teachings, with little accountability to stop them.
Similarly, megachurches have had their own reckoning in the past half-decade with numerous prominent abuse scandals and heartbreaking falls from grace. It seems another celebrity pastor is outed every few months for something horrific.
Despite these “unprecedented” statistical changes, women very much remain in their historic place as the drivers of Christianity. Given that religious women have larger families and skew more conservative than atheist women, they are driving evangelicalism’s vitality and swaying the direction of their churches. They are, however, also following the trends of Protestant Christianity as it continues its transition from confessional to non-confessional and moderate to radical.
“Women very much remain in their historic place as the drivers of Christianity.”
Sadly, it also appears young women are slowly abandoning that position and allowing young men to drive the church into new and concerning directions. It’s amazing how many intelligent conservative women I know who have told me the same story of having to defend their very right to study the Scriptures and serve in Bible study leadership positions, against men who think women don’t have anything meaningful to say about faith.
By its nature, American religion is highly sociological. Ethnicity, culture and personal consciousness are the driving forces of the American church, so much so that the Roman Catholic Church named a heresy after us in 1899 for being too free-thinking and independent. It is notable that the Great Awakenings were generally low-church affairs, driven by Baptists and Methodists, and were disconnected from the state churches, seeking greater religious freedom.
However, our low-trust society is driving us apart. This growing evangelical direction away from institutional accountability and hierarchy is contributing to a potential disaster. It’s an understandable one in light of our decentralized, anti-establishment modern America, but it’s an institution that’s hobbled and will struggle to create long-term unity or cultural change.
The fact that men are leading a new direction in the church is fascinating and concerning, particularly at a moment when young men are vulnerable to the perspectives of extreme influencers. It will be important to watch whether men or women carry the American church into the future, because the direction it goes will set the tone for decades to come.
That men are leading in recent waves of revivals is good in the sense that they’re seeking Christ, but it signifies the collapse of the center of Christian life in equal measure. The motherly wife who upholds the family’s spiritual education and dresses up the kids in their Sunday best is being replaced by a vision of wannabe domineering fathers. At best, it’s creating tension between the desires of conservative/Catholic men and liberal/evangelical women in an already tense dating market that will further drive a wedge between the sexes. At its worst, this new status will facilitate new waves of abuse, trauma, lack of accountability and mass apostasy.
“I’m not sure what church life looks like with a decreasing presence of women,” Christianity Today editor Russell Moore told The New York Times. “We need both spiritual mothers and spiritual fathers.”
Tyler Hummel
Tyler Hummel is a Wisconsin-based freelance critic and journalist, a member of the Music City Film Critics Association, a regular film and literature contributor at Geeks Under Grace, and was the 2021 College Fix Fellow at Main Street Nashville.
(123rf.com)
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