feature article w. bradford wilcox
religion and the domestication of men
Should we worry that evangelical Protestantism turns men into abusive and insensitive patriarchs in the home? Not exactly.
A
wife should “submit herself graciously” to her husband’s leadership, and a husband should “provide
for, protect, and lead his family.” So proclaimed the
Southern Baptist Convention—the nation’s largest evangelical Protestant denomination—in 1998. Statements like this,
and religious support for gender traditionalism and antifeminist public policies more generally, indicate how conservative religious institutions have helped to stall the gender revolution of the last half century. The crucial role that Phyllis
Schlafly’s Eagle Forum played in defeating the ERA in the
1970s is but one example.
Beneath the politics, we know less about how religious
institutions influence individual men. Journalists, academics,
and feminists have been skeptical—to say the least—about
the influence of religion on American family men.
Journalists Steve and Cokie Roberts responded to the 1998
Southern Baptist statement, for instance, by writing that
such thinking “can clearly lead to abuse, both physical and
emotional.” Similarly, sociologists Julia McQuillan and Myra
Marx Ferree have argued that evangelical Protestantism is an
influential force “pushing men toward authoritarian and
stereotypical forms of masculinity and attempting to renew
patriarchal relations.”
Academics, journalists, and feminists raise an important
question: Are religious institutions, especially conservative
ones such as evangelical Protestantism or Mormonism, a
force for patriarchy?
Critics have yet to examine how religious institutions,
particularly conservative ones, have also become deeply
concerned about the family revolution of the last half century. Increases in divorce, nonmarital childbearing, and premarital sex in the society at large and in their own ranks
have disturbed many conservative churches, organizations,
and leaders. Partly as a consequence of this revolution, and
partly because feminism has raised women’s expectations of
men in the society at large and within conservative churches, conservative religious institutions have turned their focus
on men with the aim of encouraging them to devote more
time, attention, and emotional energy to their families. They
hope to strengthen families that seem increasingly vulnerable to fragmentation.
Does religion domesticate men in ways that make them
more engaged and attentive husbands and fathers? To
answer this question, I focus not only on white, middle-class
families, but also on the urban poor, who have borne the
brunt of our nation’s retreat from marriage.
In my research, I have relied on quantitative data—primarily the National Survey of Families and Households and
the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study—and on
qualitative interviews with over 150 clergy, churchgoing,
and secular men and women living in cities across the country to determine how religion is associated with men’s
approach to family life.
a force for patriarchy?
So how do religious institutions affect men who are married with children? In my book, Soft Patriarchs and New
Men: How Christianity Shapes Fathers and Husbands, I find
some evidence that religion is a force for patriarchy.
When it comes to work and family life, evangelical
Protestantism (theologically conservative churches such as
the Southern Baptist Church, Assemblies of God, the
Presbyterian Church of America, and nondenominational
evangelical churches) fosters gender inequality. Evangelical
Protestant family men are more likely to endorse traditional
gender attitudes than other men. For instance, I found that
58 percent of churchgoing, evangelical men who are married
with children believe it is “much better for everyone if the
man earns the main living and the woman takes care of the
home and family,” compared to only 44 percent of churchgoing, mainline Protestant men and 37 percent of unaffiliated men. (Mainline Protestantism encompasses churches such
as the Episcopal Church, Presbyterian Church (USA), the
Lutheran Church (ELCA), and the United Methodist Church.)
These attitudes, reinforced by church-based activities
and social networks, matter. Evangelical Protestant husbands do an hour less housework per week than other
American husbands; not surprisingly, the division of household labor is less equal in evangelical homes than in other
American homes. Sociologists Jennifer Glass and Jerry
Jacobs have shown that women raised in evangelical
Contexts, Vol. 5, Issue 4, pp. 42-46, ISSN 1536-5042, electronic ISSN 1537-6052. © 2006 by the American Sociological Association. All rights reserved.
Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press's Rights and Permissions
website, at www.ucpress.edu/journals/rights.htm.
42 contexts fall 2006
cially—evangelical Protestant churches and ministries have
generally taken the lead in the religious world in calling on
men to put their families first. Drawing also on a therapeutic emphasis that entered evangelical Protestantism in the
1970s, evangelical elites urge men to be emotionally and
practically engaged with their wives and children.
For instance, one popular book among evangelicals, If
Only He Knew: What No Woman Can Resist, by therapist
Gary Smalley, chides husbands for their insensitivity toward
their wives. He lists 122 ways in which husbands are insufficiently attuned emotionally to their wives—from “not inviting her out on special romantic dates from time to time” to
“being easily distracted when she is trying to talk”—and
exhorts men to comfort, to listen, to praise, and to communicate with their wives. Likewise, popular Christian pastor
Charles Swindoll urges men to model God’s love to their
children in the following way: “Your boy must be very aware
that you love him.... When is the last time you took him in
your arms and held him close so no one else could hear, and
whispered to him how happy you are to have him as your
son?”
Protestant families are more likely to focus on motherhood
than work: they marry earlier, bear children earlier, and work
less than other women in the United States. So it is true that
evangelical Protestantism—but not mainline Protestantism,
Reform Judaism, and Roman Catholicism—appears to steer
men (and women) toward gender inequality.
Evangelical Protestantism also steers fathers in a patriarchal direction when it comes to discipline. Drawing in part
on their belief in original sin and on biblical passages that
seem to promote a strict approach to discipline—“He who
spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is careful
to discipline him” (Proverbs 13:24)—evangelical Protestant
leaders, such as Focus on the Family President James
Dobson, stress the divine authority of parents and the need
for parents to take a firm hand with their children. As
Dobson writes, “If a little child is taught to disrespect the
authority of his parents, systematically from the tender years
of childhood—to mock their leadership, to ‘sass’ them and
disobey their instructions, to exercise extreme self-will from
the earliest moments of awareness—then it is most unlikely
that this same child will turn his face up to God, about 20
years later, and say humbly, ‘Here I am Lord; send me!’”
Many evangelical fathers take these views to heart. They
are more likely to value obedience in their children. They are
also more likely to spank their children when they do not get
that obedience. Specifically, evangelical fathers are significantly more likely to use corporal punishment on their children than Catholic, Jewish, and unaffiliated fathers. In
important respects, evangelical Protestantism appears to be
a force for patriarchal authority and gender relations.
But this is not the whole story about religion and men in
the United States. Because they are worried about the social
and religious consequences of divorce and nonmarital childbearing, and because they view the vocations of marriage
and parenthood in a transcendent light, churches and family ministries have devoted countless radio broadcasts,
books, and sermons to the task of encouraging Americans
to make their marriages and children a top priority.
Conservative religious groups, such as Promise Keepers
and the Southern Baptist Convention, have been particularly attentive to the family failures of men. Recognizing that
men are often the weak link in families—because they fail
to focus emotionally and practically on their wives and children, and because they are often absent, physically or finan-
W. Bradford Wilcox is currently writing a book on religion, sex, and
marriage among African Americans and Latinos in urban America.
photo by Helen M. Stummer
turning the hearts of men toward their families
Mainline Protestant, Catholic, and Reform Jewish congregations also encourage men to invest in their families,
although they do it more in the context of encouraging both
men and women to honor the Golden Rule by treating their
spouses and especially their children with care and consideration. As sociologist Penny Edgell reports in her new book,
Religion and Family in a Changing Society, moderate-to-liberal congregations in these traditions criticize lives centered
around careers or materialism and stress the importance of
putting family life first.
This emphasis on family seems to be bearing fruit. I
fall 2006 contexts 43
rent research on religion and marriage in America’s cities
found that men who are religious—especially evangelical
suggests that religious institutions play an important and
fathers and husbands—are more involved and affectionate
understudied role in keeping marriage alive in poor and
with their children and wives than are unaffiliated family
especially working-class urban communities—including
men. As fathers, religious men spend more time in one-onAfrican-American communities—where marriage is often
one activities like reading to their children, hug and praise
comparatively fragile. They do so in part by supplying
their kids more often, and keep tabs on the children more
churchgoing women with churchgoing men who are
than unaffiliated fathers do. For instance, churchgoing
responsible, faithful, and employed.
fathers spend 2.9 hours per week with their children in
Marriage persists in American cities partly because the
youth activities such as soccer, Boy Scouts, and religious
three largest urban religious tradiyouth groups, and churchgoing
tions—Black Protestantism, Roman
evangelical fathers spend 3.2 hours
Men who are religious—
Catholicism,
and
evangelical
per week on these activities, comespecially evangelical
Protestantism—depict marriage as a
pared to 1.6 hours for unaffiliated
sacred institution that is the best
fathers.
fathers and husbands—are
context in which to have sex, raise
As husbands, religious men are
more involved and affecchildren, and enjoy divine favor for
more affectionate and understandtionate with their children
an intimate relationship. As Wallace
ing with their wives, and they
Charles Smith, pastor of Shiloh
spend more time socializing with
and wives than are unaffiliBaptist in Washington, D.C., has
them, compared to husbands who
ated family men.
written, “God’s revelation clearly
are not regular churchgoers. I also
points to male-female monogafound—contrary to the expectamous relationships as the gift by God to humankind for the
tions of critics—that churchgoing, evangelical married men
purposes of procreation and nurturing. Even for people of
have the lowest rates of reported domestic violence of any
African descent, this concept of monogamy must be at the
major religious or secular group in the United States. (On
heart of even the extended family structure.”
the other hand, evangelical married men who do not attend
In my ethnographic research in the Bronx and Harlem, I
church regularly have the highest rates of domestic viohave found that many pastors and priests touch on the joys
lence.) Not surprisingly, wives of religious men report higher
and challenges of married life, encouraging spouses to be
levels of marital happiness than wives of men who are not
kind and forgiving to one another; more conservative clergy
religious.
also encourage their members to avoid nonmarital sex and,
Religious family men—especially more conservative ones—
combine elements of the new and the old in their approach to
if they are cohabiting, to consider marriage. Married church
family life. They are more likely to have unequal marriages and
members—especially married men—are usually given
to take a strict approach to discipline; but they are also more
prominent roles as deacons, ushers, and Bible-study leaders.
emotionally and practically engaged than the average secular
Marriage is depicted as the ideal in these churches, even
or nominally religious family man. In a word, their approach to
when many, sometimes most, of the congregants are
family life can be described as neotraditional.
unmarried.
But churches do more than idealize marriage. They also
encourage their members—male and female—to live
faith and marriage in the city
“decent” lives. Decent or righteous living is exalted from the
pulpit as divinely ordained, and it is reinforced by fellow
In their recent book, Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor
believers who model decent behavior and sanction memWomen Put Motherhood Before Marriage (and in their
bers who betray the church’s code of decency. At a miniContexts article, Spring 2005), Kathy Edin and Maria Kefalas
mum, decency encompasses hard work, sexual fidelity, the
argue that one important reason that poor women in urban
Golden Rule, avoiding drug use and excessive drinking, and
America put motherhood before marriage is that they do
responsible parenting.
not have ready access to a pool of “decent,” marriageable
For instance, earlier this year at the Abyssinian Church in
men. They claim that most of the men whom these women
Harlem, Rev. Calvin Butts III delivered a sermon entitled,
encounter are unemployed or underemployed in the legal
“The Recovery of Righteousness”: “So, Beloved, I am sugeconomy, are in and out of jail, are unfaithful, are violent, or
gesting to you that there is no greater need before us today
cannot leave drugs and alcohol alone.
than the recovery of plain old-fashioned righteousness. ...
It is certainly true that many young urban men do not
who among us would...eschew drunkenness, idleness, and
seem to be promising candidates for marriage. But my cur-
44 contexts fall 2006
riage rates between African Americans and whites in urban
America would be even larger than it already is.
Let me be clear: religion is no magic bullet for strengthening family life in urban America. Slightly more than onethird of urban mothers attend church regularly, compared to
about one-fifth of urban fathers. Most urban adults—especially men—are not exposed to the family message and
focus and the code of decency found in churches. Even couples who attend church regularly experience nonmarital
pregnancies, infidelity, and the larger forces of poverty, discrimination, and unemployment that can throw their relationships and lives into a downward spiral. Thus, academics,
religious leaders, and especially policymakers should not
view religious institutions as a panacea for nonmarital childbearing, family instability, and relationship problems in
urban America.
religion in men’s lives
The United States has witnessed two distinct but related revolutions in the last half-century: a gender revolution
marked by increased equality in the opportunities,
rewards, and responsibilities that men and women face,
and a family revolution marked by the weakening of marriage as the central institution for organizing sex, childbearing, childrearing, and adult life more generally. The
gender revolution has not completely triumphed, in part
photo by Helen M. Stummer
immorality? Who would dare to stand in the face of the
onslaught of the culture of sin that has enveloped our
nation and say, ‘I refuse to succumb. I will not yield to the
temptation. I will stand like a tree planted by the water. I will
not move’?”
By lifting up the ideal of marriage, and especially by
encouraging their members to live decent lives, urban
churches encourage marriage and help their members to
have higher-quality relationships. The effects of church
attendance are particularly strong among urban men. Using
data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study,
demographer Nicholas Wolfinger and I found that urban
couples are 40 percent more likely to bear a child in wedlock
if the mother attends church on a regular basis (several
times a month or more) and 95 percent more likely if the
father also regularly attends church. The man’s attendance
is also a better predictor than the woman’s of whether
urban parents will marry after a nonmarital birth.
Wolfinger and I also found that couples with children in
urban America report higher levels of marital happiness and
supportive behavior (affection, compromise, and encouragement) from their partners when the father, but not necessarily the mother, regularly attends church. In other words,
his church attendance seems to matter for the quality of
both men’s and women’s marriages in urban America. We
also find that male church attendance improves the quality
of relationships among unmarried couples.
Why is his attendance so important? Because decent
men are in relatively short supply in many urban communities, especially among African Americans, churches play a
crucial role in enabling urban women to locate good men
and in encouraging men to remain or become decent.
(Many of the urban, churchgoing men I spoke with have
overcome previous problems with the law, substance abuse,
or sexual promiscuity.) Although these men are by no means
perfect, they are regularly encouraged by their pastors and
fellow congregants to avoid the siren calls of the street, to
give God glory through righteous living, and to treat their
wives and children with love and respect. Besides being
more supportive than other husbands, churchgoing, urban
fathers are also more likely to be employed full-time and to
be clean and sober. As a result, urban women are more likely to marry, and be happy in their marriages, if they find a
decent, churchgoing husband.
Religion also plays an important role in reducing the
wide gap between white and black marriage rates. My
research suggests that church attendance is as important in
promoting marriage among African Americans as it is
among other racial and ethnic groups in the United States.
Indeed, were it not for higher-than-average levels of church
attendance among African Americans, the racial gap in mar-
because men have not taken up an equal share of housework and childcare. My research and that of others suggests another reason: religious institutions—particularly
more conservative ones like the Southern Baptist
Convention—often lend ideological and practical support
to traditional gender attitudes and family behaviors; thus,
feminist, academic, and journalistic critics are rightly con-
fall 2006 contexts 45
cerned about how some religious institutions reinforce
gender inequality.
But critics miss how religious institutions—especially
more conservative ones—also encourage men to put their
families first. Most of the institutions that men encounter
in their daily lives—work, popular culture, and sports, for
instance—do not push men to invest in family life. But
religious institutions—especially traditional ones worried
about the well-being of the family in the modern world—
do encourage men to focus on their families. They provide men with messages, rituals, and activities that help
them to see their roles as husbands and fathers as meaningful and important, and to improve their performance
of these roles.
Churchgoing family men in the United States are more
involved and affectionate fathers and husbands, compared to their peers who are secular or just nominally religious. Their wives report greater marital happiness, and
are therefore less likely to divorce them. At least in urban
America, these men also appear more likely to engage in
“decent” behavior—for example, holding regular jobs
and avoiding drug and alcohol abuse—than their less religious peers.
This neotraditional approach to family life, combining
a progressive insistence on men’s active engagement in
family life with a traditional insistence on some degree of
gender complementarity in family life, has not received
much scholarly attention. But if we seek to understand
family pluralism and family change in the United States in
all of its complexity, we must keep these neotraditional
men and their families in our sociological imagination.
recommended resources
John P. Bartkowski. Remaking the Godly Marriage: Gender
Negotiation in Evangelical Families (Rutgers University Press,
2001). Evangelical Protestant couples draw selectively on
both essentialist and feminist gender ideals in negotiating
married life.
Penny Edgell. Religion and Family in a Changing Society
(Princeton University Press, 2005). Men, more than women,
attend church to socialize their children, and are thus more
likely than women to be attracted to churches that cater to traditional families.
Sally Gallagher. Evangelical Identity and Gendered Family Life
(Rutgers University Press, 2003). The conventional critique of
evangelical Protestant gender politics does not capture the
ambiguities and heterogeneity of gender beliefs and behaviors
in this subculture.
Jennifer Glass and Jerry Jacobs. “Childhood Religious
Conservatism and Adult Attainment among Black and
White Women.” Social Forces 84 (2005): 555-579.
Evangelical Protestantism puts many women on a trajectory
toward early motherhood and marriage and away from fulltime employment.
W. Bradford Wilcox. Soft Patriarchs, New Men: How
Christianity Shapes Fathers and Husbands (University of
Chicago Press, 2004). The impact of religion on mainline and
evangelical Protestant family men.
Fine Distinctions
Date: Fri, 23 Dec 2005
From: Columbia University Registrar
To: Regular Faculty
Subject: Apology
I am terribly sorry for the typo in my previous e-mail.
It should have been “Dear Course Instructor” not
“Dead.” Please accept my apology.
Assistant Registrar
Faculty and Academic Services
46 contexts fall 2006
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Purchase answer to see full
attachment