“And in a window sat a certain young man named Eutychus, who was sinking in a deep sleep. He was overcome by sleep; and as Paul continued speaking, he fell down from the third story and was taken up dead” (Acts 20:9)
A new book has found its way into book stores in the land: Why Men Hate Going to Church, by David Murrow. The author claims to have discovered that more women than men attend services, apparently enjoy worship, and gain satisfaction from prayer. Really! How interesting! Or, as the kids would say, “Duh!”
He goes on to insist that men are bored with church worship. They are made for action, not for contemplation. “They put on a suit and tie and show up. It’s something they don’t talk about.” He further explains, “They’re made to act like women. They won’t read self-help books [though what that has to do with boredom in church is not clear]. Every man is looking for adventure.” The unstated premise is that they won’t find it by sitting with their families and listening to homilies that they don’t enjoy.
For the Orthodox Christian this is stale news. For many of the Slav churches in previous generations, the men would deliver their families to the Divine Liturgy and go with their friends into the parish hall, across the street, or wherever their cronies chose to congregate. Some find it the time to explore the Sunday newspapers in their automobiles while waiting for their spouses to join them.
From the 1920’s the Russian Orthodox churches had been infiltrated with Communist sympathizers in many of our parishes. They were not necessarily active agents, but party sympathizers and even those who had been taken in by the rhetoric of socialism. They were instructed not to maintain a high profile, but to hang in the background of the parish and be available to take ownership of the parish away from the authority of the hierarchy. And to harass the priests.
Mr. Murrow makes an obvious statement—many men prefer activity to passivity. They respond to any task involving them in some way. I had encouraged the parish council when we had been a neophyte mission to reach out to the new faces and solicit their help. We had been in a city hall initially, and we had to vacate the premises by noon. It meant setting up the altar, the table of preparation, tetrapod, icon screen and candle holders, then putting them away after the Divine Liturgy and Church School program. Men like doing that. Then the time comes when that is no longer necessary. Are we to search for make-work tasks just to keep the males in the parish involved?
Other communities experimented with modifying their services, making them shorter, homilies spiced with anecdotes, even polka masses, dancing nuns, and other innovations. Those diversions soon grow stale. What’s to be done for an encore? One hundred yards from one of our largest parishes a modern spiritual community is garnering hundreds of attendees each Sunday by offering a literal fellowship, where coffee and donuts replace traditional elements of communion, and conversations about God preempt prayer to the Lord. America is a land of opportunity for experimenting with all expressions of communication—among human beings and even with God.
In sum, it is a reversal of sexism to patronize males. Some are like the author of the above book, easily bored and self-indulgent. The Orthodox Church encourages all persons to find the way to salvation not by reducing worship to a common denominator, but rather by struggling with ways to open closed minds to the treasures of God that are revealed to those willing to transcend the limits of selfhood, repent, and discover Christ.