“REAL” blokes don’t like going to church because they don’t want to “sing love songs to a man”, because the “vicar wears a dress”, because they feel like “mongrels on parade at Crufts” and because they want to be waited on by women rather than queue for coffee after the service.
These are a few of the distinctly non-PC views garnered in a survey done by a dotty Bath-based outfit called Christian Vision for Men, which has discovered that the churches have lost nearly half of its males aged under 30 because it has become “too girly”.
Priests in frocks, especially deliciously camp characters like the Most Rev Mark Shirilau of California, are a turn-off for "real" men
The charity declares in its mission statement:
We are catalysts for an emerging band of brothers across the UK who want to see the nation won for Jesus. We are the back up team for a passionate, energetic bunch of Jesus’ followers who are focussed (sic) on introducing men in the UK to Jesus and then getting them gripped and excited by their faith and equipped to live the adventure.
The charity, according to The Times, admits some of its ideas for getting masculine tushes back on pews might not be seen as politically correct.
These include redesigning the interiors of church buildings to make men feel more at home. Instead of the usual flowers and statues of the Virgin Mary, they ask:
How would it go down to decorate with swords, or pictures of knights, or flaming torches?
Great shades of the Crusades, or what?
There’s worse from CVM:
Maybe it’s not ‘politically correct’, but men quite like the attention of women! They also like to be waited on – so long as they are not made to feel guilty. Instead of having to queue for coffee, why not ask some of the women to go round with trays of coffee and biscuits or chocky bars? Coupled with a charming smile, many men would find that very attractive!
What? No topless vicarines and a scattering of lap-dancers?
Then there are the those excruciating hymns, or modern worship songs. Quite apart from the sheer embarrassment of having to sing out loud when the tune might go too high or be in an unfamiliar key, CVBM advises clergy just to look at the words.
“Jesus, I am so in love with you,” or “Beautiful one I love, beautiful one I adore”, for example, are just too – er - poofy! Many men wouldn’t sing that to their wives, let alone another man, the charity advises, and adds:
The image of church is ‘women and children’ – action songs or kid’s plays just emphasise this. The decoration is often very feminine – flowers, embroidered banners. The vicar often wears a dress… It can be embarrassing to be next to someone in uninhibited delight of worship, or in tears.
Then there’s the issue of men not wanting to want to feel brainwashed by reciting words that they don’t believe:
The language can be off-putting, even the word ‘love’ has undertones of the love of a man for his woman – they’d rather ‘admire’ or ‘respect’ another man. Think how they will respond if called to be Jesus’s lover, or to be ‘intimate’ with him. Don’t play into Satan’s hands by using language that he has corrupted.
Among the changes recommended by CVM, a member of the Evangelical Alliance, is to use the World Cup to boost falling congregations. The charity wants vicars to erect big screens above the pulpit during this summer’s World Cup in South Africa, and even serve beer during games.
Carl Beech, General Director of the CVM and Baptist Minister, said:
The World Cup is when pretty much every bloke in the country bonds over a common goal. Why can that not be done in a church? The decline has been steady for a while but has accelerated over recent years.
The problem has become male culture versus church culture. Too many sermons talk about Jesus’ love, compassion and grace which are great but not male concepts. Men want to know about his great decision making and leadership. That is what they recognise. Churches are very pastorally driven whereas blokes are looking for decisions not discussions. The breakdown in most churches is now 70 per cent women to 30 per cent men.
The Bishop of Lewes Wallace Benn admitted there was a problem.
The relatively small number of men in our congregations is one of the pressing issues facing the church today. Within our Christian concern for all ages, both sexes and every ethnic group, we need to address reaching men with the good news of the Gospel as a key concern.
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
January 31st, 2010 at 10:32 am
Long ago the real men ran around naked killing lions with their bare hands. Not a church in sight. Everyone was fed, and confident with themnselves. Than came jesus……
January 31st, 2010 at 10:40 am
“You may be wondering what I am doing dressed up as a bishop.”
(Rene Artois: “Allo! Allo!”)
January 31st, 2010 at 11:21 am
The ‘too girly’ argument doesn’t stack up: Examine any religion and you’ll find the hierarchy is mainly men; the fact that women are the majority congregation is because the women are elderly and have out-lived their partners.
The religions never give up trying different gimmicks to suck in more victims to indoctrinate; the decline in church attendance is due to the followers dying off and because many have grown up out of superstition.
January 31st, 2010 at 12:19 pm
PRAISE JESUS!!
At last, Manly Men wanting to put some Manliness back into Worship!
I thank Jesus that our own Manly Pastors only ever wear Trousers.
Only last week our very Manly Pastor Flint turned up for his Sermon wearing his favorite Construction Worker Outfit right before going into Town to Evangelize in the Gay District.
He looked so handsome with his hard Helmet.
That’s dedication for you.
YES! Get this Femininity out of Church NOW!
Feminine behavior is for Women. A Womans place is to go fetch her Husband a Beer and to be silent in Church.
Let us not forget that Women are merely Baby Ovens for The Lord.
God Bless.
January 31st, 2010 at 12:20 pm
love, compassion and grace … are … not male concepts.
FFS
January 31st, 2010 at 12:44 pm
..”Too many sermons talk about Jesus’ love, compassion and grace which are great but not male concepts. Men want to know about his great decision making and leadership”..
Doesn’t say much for the masculinity of the founder then. And the less said about his decision-making and leadership the better, considering how it all turned out for him – poor bastard!
I doubt if promoting religious laddism is going to be the magic bullet, but it’d be fun to watch.
January 31st, 2010 at 1:00 pm
Forgive my schadenfreude, but watching this scrambling is so much fun.
January 31st, 2010 at 1:14 pm
Why the (sic) on focussed? It’s an acceptable alternative to the word spelled with a single ‘s’ … after all, the New Yorker magazine spells it that way, but that may be elitist.
January 31st, 2010 at 1:14 pm
You’re not taking pleasure in their misfortune, Jen; just their stupidity.
)
January 31st, 2010 at 1:21 pm
That shepherd’s crook is useless. Just ask any real shepherd.
January 31st, 2010 at 1:49 pm
I mitre known it: I’ve got the wrong Rene!
Do you all remember Renee and Renato? Just have a look!!
http://www.virginmedia.com/ima.....15;300.jpg
(PS There is a long association between Bishops and Crooks)
January 31st, 2010 at 2:18 pm
“Men want to know about his great decision making and leadership.”
They’d better not read John 6:38 then!
“I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of he who sent me”.
January 31st, 2010 at 2:28 pm
What is seemingly beyond the CVM’S ability to notice is that the main reasons, I think, that people are not going to church is nothing to do with masculinity. Advances in communications has allowed this generation the best opportunity to see the world beyond their church.
We now live an age where, thanks to science NOT religion, most questions are easily answered and we no longer have to listen to some arsehole spouting his perceived knowledge.
The organised religions hate websites like this, where we can express our contempt for religion and the idiots that follow it. Better still is that people who may have doubts can come to the site and question their beliefs.
January 31st, 2010 at 2:44 pm
What do you expect, with no Y chromosome?
January 31st, 2010 at 2:51 pm
I found myself smiling as I read what they said.
I note that according to The Times report there is a questionnaire on their web site asking why people leave the church.
I think I will head off to find it now, to post the quote (by anon AFAIK) as below:-
“I stopped believing in Christianity for reasons that can be summed up by the following quote from the internet, author unknown to me
‘The belief that a cosmic Jewish Zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree…’ ”
ETA Dammit, can’t find where to post it
David B
January 31st, 2010 at 3:16 pm
Don’t you just hate it when xians try to be trendy? It just makes my toes curl.
January 31st, 2010 at 3:20 pm
Barrie: thanks for reminding us about Renee and Renato. This vid took me right back in time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wX2bjYmUM5U
January 31st, 2010 at 4:38 pm
This is like that Pastor Steve Anderson who insists Jesus wore trousers because the Bible tells men not to dress as women. So obviously Jesus wouldn’t have worn robes which are basically dresses.
He’s always banging on with this updated version of muscular Christianity, complete with homophobia and mysogyny.
Perhaps it is also something to do wth how women are achieving more equality and self-determination in the West. Whereas before, even if a man was basically a wage-slave, he was still master in his home, ruling his wife and children as God rules.
Now that patriarchy is less entrenched, men are turning to the churches to bolster their self-worth with the illusion that they have the ear of “the Creator of the Universe” just as women once did.
Reminds me of this. I Kick Ass For The Lord!
January 31st, 2010 at 5:06 pm
That’s the problem with Baptists though, you can never tell when they’re joking.
Mind you, at least they don’t try the classic Catholic one – ‘See that cracker, that’s your Dad, that is!’
January 31st, 2010 at 5:23 pm
Sorry, but I will not go as far as saying that anyone who follows a religion is an idiot. Let’s not generalize. I do not consider Bishop Spong an idiot and neither do I consider myself an idiot for believing in something while rejecting all this organized religious crap and all that go with it.. Sure, I changed my mind about Mother Theresa after reading some comments here and then looking up facts about her on the Net and I have learned something but I still would not call her evil. Disillusioned maybe? Evil to me would be the likes of Idi Amin, Bokassa, Kim2-Sung, Mugabe, etc. The beauty of a site like this is to share ideas – not to ridicule everyone who does not think like we do because we then fall in the same trap as the likes of these smug arrogant SOB’s like Haggard, Pat Robertson, etc. who believe they have the monopoly on truth and that anyone else who thinks differently from them is an idiot. . No one does. On a lighter note, I’m glad they are not thinking of putting out a stamp of Falwell because I would then have to lick his backside before mailing a letter. Have a nice day.
January 31st, 2010 at 5:33 pm
I know a guy who started to go to church to get laid so perhaps that’s the kind of thing they need to explore.
I know quite a few of the type of guy they are talking about and I’m confident that nothing short of free sex on demand and unlimited supplies of lager as well as sport on the big screen would really cut it.
January 31st, 2010 at 6:09 pm
I stopped going to church when I was a kid because it was quite frankly fucking boring and I felt I had better things to do on a sunday like watching cartoons or going out on my bike along to the park.
And now that I’m an atheist I definetly don’t want to waste my sundays sittong on my arse hearing about how I’m going to go to hell when I could be relaxing after attending a crazy heavy metal gig the night before or sittong on a comfy chair playing violent computer games:P
January 31st, 2010 at 6:34 pm
memo to Robert Stovold: If you are going to use biblical quotations, at least get them right. “of he who sent me” is substandard English, using the nominative case pronoun “he” as the object of a preposition. While bible translators made mistakes, many intentional, they did NOT make gramatical errors. I searched every Protestant and Catholic bible in my library, and every one of them said “of him who sent me.” Misquoting is a standard godworshipper tactic. Nontheists should avoid doing so.
January 31st, 2010 at 8:19 pm
@Urmensch: no one has ever surpassed Donald Pleasence as the evil preacher in Will Penny! He ironically went on to play the Devil in The Greatest Story Ever Told, as Charlton Heston points out in the following trailer!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6t1JZkve9WU
“An eye for an eye: a tooth for a tooth” – it was one of my late dad’s catchphrases!!
January 31st, 2010 at 8:33 pm
Urmensch: I hadn’t read that about Steve Anderson before, although I know he is another who is praying for the death of Barack Obama! However, in looking for the source of your information I came across this page which does refer to it (june 26, 2009), and which will provide everyone with hours of illuminating reading:
http://www.claudemariottini.co.....Pants.html
I can’t believe that American Christians seriously think that the ancient Jews wore pants!!
January 31st, 2010 at 8:43 pm
I couldn’t edit my previous comment, as it has been marked as spam! The reference to Pastor Steve Anderson comes on 26th June, 2009, but the whole thread is worth reading. I simply can’t believe that modern American Christians think that the ancient Hebrews wore pants, just because of what they think the Apostle Paul taught!!
For more gibberish from Anderson look here:
http://crooksandliars.com/node/30652
January 31st, 2010 at 8:57 pm
There’s a video of the great man here. I can’t believe what I’m hearing!
http://www.formerfundys.com/?tag=pants
Apparently, that garment that Jesus is wearing in Revelation, the one that goes down to his feet, is just “a pair of pants”, because THEY go right down to your feet – hahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!!!
February 1st, 2010 at 1:19 am
@ Normand,
said:
“The beauty of a site like this is to share ideas – not to ridicule everyone who does not think like we do because we then fall in the same trap as the likes of these smug arrogant SOB’s like Haggard, Pat Robertson, etc. who believe they have the monopoly on truth and that anyone else who thinks differently from them is an idiot.”
Finally a like minded freethinker. Even though we know that organized religion is ridiculous bullshit, and their leaders fought for centuries to label science as herasy, and today labor to plug the dike holding back reason, logic, and freethought so they can keep their counterproductive positions in society, still, freethinkers don’t always arrive at the same place when they find their balance. Hargrove obviously doesn’t understand what I mean when I say that there are freethinkers among the secular humanists and agnostics. A hard line on deviations from hardline atheism only fractures our movement like it has fractured religion. There are many points of view that still lead us to an earth free of organized religion.
NeoWolfe
February 1st, 2010 at 1:29 am
Some years ago when our men were straying because God was too wussy the response was nonsense like Promise Keepers, which taught them to be Manly Men of God (and keep those uppity wimmenfolk in line). Then there were similar movements to train women to be proper Women of God (which means deferring to their men, spawning like rabbits and never having independent thoughts). Ugh.
Apparently some US believers are now eschewing regular churches and opting instead for “home church”. They feel the regular churches have become “too commercial” (if you’ve ever seen a US Megachurch with the giant video screens and professional bands, as well as mini-malls in the foyer, you’ll understand). Strangely enough all that nonsense was a response to the notion that church was “too boring”. How long before “traditional” churches revamp–again–to lure people back in?
February 1st, 2010 at 1:38 am
addendum: Richard Dawkins and Bill Maher. Point, in the absence of evidence assumption becomes religion not science.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tRpbkpNpgw
NeoWolfe
February 1st, 2010 at 1:41 pm
barriejohn,
Thank you so very much for that formerfundys link.
February 1st, 2010 at 5:17 pm
It’s a good’un, Ivan! When visiting blogs it’s always worth checking to see whether they have a list of similar blogs down the right or left-hand side of the page, as this one does, and working your way through them. The big drawback is that THOSE blogs will also have links to other blogs, and so on ad infinitum, so it can become a bit time-consuming!!
February 1st, 2010 at 8:37 pm
barriejohn,
Anderson is as thick as two short planks. His Biblical exegesis would be hilarious but for the disturbing viciousness of it.
February 1st, 2010 at 9:27 pm
Urmensch: The funniest thing about that video (and you’ve got to see the funny side of it, really) is that when he states that some misguided Christian has made this outrageous claim that Jesus is wearing a DRESS in the book of Revelation, a disembodied voice from the assembled morons pipes up “Wicked!”. It really is beyond belief!!
February 6th, 2010 at 11:10 am
If they welcomed homosexuals they wouldn#t have this problem
February 22nd, 2010 at 7:29 am
All CVM wish to see are churches that are great for women, kids and men. With most churches having a ratio of 70:30 women to men there is clearly an issue to be resolved. For a balanced comment see our blog and website which has quotes in context and will come across as rather less inflamatory…
March 9th, 2010 at 8:10 pm
But gangstas do though:
http://thehappychurch.wordpres.....ooking-at/
Enjoy!