A Cornell sociologist argues that women's greater participation in many American churches reflects social expectations and what faith offers them, rather than a universal biological difference between women and men.
Landon Schnabel develops that argument in his new book, “Is Faith Feminine? What Americans Really Think About Gender and Religion,” published by Oxford University Press, and discussed the findings in a Cornell Chronicle interview.
Schnabel, an associate professor of sociology in the College of Arts and Sciences, began thinking about the issue while working as a Christian minister. Men commonly held positions of authority, while women made up much of the congregation and participated more in church activities.
His book separates personal faith from organized religious institutions and examines differences across traditions. It draws on gender theory, social psychology, national surveys with additional samples of Jewish, Muslim and secular Americans, and international data.
Personal faith and religious institutions draw different responses
People in Schnabel's surveys who described religion as feminine tended to point to comfort, care and personal faith. Those who described it as masculine more often referred to institutions and patriarchal authority.
The responses also depended on familiarity. People tended to judge their own faith through believers they knew, while describing other religions through their institutions, Schnabel said.
For example, Muslim respondents commonly described Islam as gentle and comforting, while a mostly Christian general-public sample described it as assertive and dominant. Christianity's emphasis on humility, gentleness and compassion also overlaps with traits American culture labels feminine, he said.
Schnabel argues that religion can offer women comfort, strength, community and hope even when men control institutional leadership. Respondents also described different social expectations for men and women who leave religion.
Asked whether being nonreligious was more acceptable for men or women, nearly nine in 10 survey respondents selected men, he said. He reported that a statistical model accounting for religion's additional comfort to women and culturally feminine personality traits reversed the gender gap, with men appearing more religious.
That is a result of his statistical analysis, not evidence that every woman or man experiences religion the same way.
Looking beyond Christianity changes the picture
Schnabel said earlier research often treated women's greater religiosity as universal while concentrating on Christian populations. Some studies excluded countries that did not fit that pattern.
He cited the World Values Survey's 2017-2022 coverage of 66 countries and territories, including 18 Muslim-majority societies. On a combined measure of prayer, attendance and religion's importance, Christian women generally appeared more religious than Christian men, while Muslim men often appeared more religious than Muslim women, particularly in Muslim-majority countries.
Religious rules help shape those results: Muslim men are required to attend Friday prayers, while women's attendance is generally optional, he said.
His American surveys similarly found Christians were the group in which women consistently rated themselves more religious than men. Schnabel argues that variation across settings challenges explanations that treat the difference as an innate trait that should appear consistently everywhere.
The Chronicle interview describes the survey findings but does not provide the national samples' sizes, field dates or margins of error. The reported differences should be read as Schnabel's account of the book's research, rather than estimates of religious participation in any particular Finger Lakes community.
Efforts to recruit men can reshape churches
Churches have long tried to attract more men. Schnabel traced that history from 19th-century revivals and “Muscular Christianity,” which helped shape the YMCA, through Billy Sunday, Billy Graham, the religious right and the Promise Keepers movement.
More recent efforts include cowboy, biker and fight churches, as well as military imagery. As a minister, Schnabel organized basketball nights and backpacking trips but found that adding activities did not address the underlying reasons people participated.
He argues that militant rhetoric and nationalist themes have not necessarily increased men's attendance, prayer or religious reading. In his interpretation, they have instead contributed to political sorting, attracting some people while pushing progressives and younger people, particularly young women, away from institutions.
Schnabel also connects his argument to a longer history of women founding religious movements that later came under male institutional control, including the Seventh-day Adventist tradition in which he grew up.
Spirituality may persist outside institutions
Schnabel said General Social Survey trends show more Americans reporting no religion and fewer attending weekly or identifying as very religious, while belief in an afterlife has remained steady and more people describe themselves as very spiritual.
He interprets that combination as faith moving away from institutions, rather than simply disappearing.
He also pointed to recent Pew Research Center and Public Religion Research Institute surveys suggesting the gender gap among young adults is narrowing largely because young women are leaving religion, rather than because young men are becoming more religious.
If those patterns continue, Schnabel argues, congregations could become more balanced numerically through the loss of women, while organized religion becomes more masculine in tone.
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