Is Buffy Responsible For Slaying Women's Church Attendance?

Date posted: 22 August 2008

Today’s modern woman sees more relevance in TV icons who promote female empowerment such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, than in church and traditional religion, according to new research to be published in the Church Times this week.

Dr Kristin Aune, a sociologist at the University of Derby, says the church (all Christian denominations) must act to halt the steep decline in female attendance at services across the country.

She says: “In short, women are abandoning the church.”

While all eyes focus on women’s ordination as priests and now as bishops, Dr Aune argues the church should be looking to act and do more to reach out to women.

One alarming statistic uncovered by the research, using the English Church Census, has revealed that the church (all Christian denominations) has been losing at least 50,000 women worshippers each and every year since 1989 (a total of over a million).

Her research, in a new book called Women and Religion in the West, with co-authors Sonya Sharma and Giselle Vincett, features in this week’s Church Times.

Dr Aune, based within the University’s Faculty of Education, Health and Sciences, said: “Because of its focus on female empowerment, young women are attracted by Wicca, popularised by the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

“Young women tend to express egalitarian values and dislike the traditionalism and hierarchies they imagine are integral to the church.

“Women’s ordination, as priests and now bishops, has dominated debate and headlines – but while looking at women in the pulpit we have taken our eyes off the pews, where a shift with more consequences for the church’s survival is underway.”

Dr Aune cites a number of reasons why women are not going to church:

• Fertility levels – women have fewer children and are not having enough children to replace the older generation lost from the church.
• Feminist values – feminist values began influencing women in the 1960s and 1970s. Feminism challenged traditional Christian views about women’s roles and raised women’s aspirations.
• Paid employment – At the beginning of the 1900s, a third of women were in paid work, now two thirds are in the labour market. Juggling employment with childcare and housework causes time pressures and attending church is one activity to suffer.
• Family diversity – compared to wider society, churches include fewer non-traditional families. Family forms which are growing such as singleness, lone-parent families and cohabitation are under-provided for and even discouraged by churches.
• Sexuality – The church’s silence about sexuality is driving women to leave, feeling that the church requires them to deny or be silent about sexual desire and activity.

She suggests that church communities could carry out audits of their congregation to find out the profile of those attending church, to identify where numbers are being lost.

She also suggests the church considers looking at introducing activities which could fit around the lifestyle of the modern woman – such as Saturday morning breakfast clubs – which could attract people back to the church.

She said: “Gone are the days when the mother was at home during the day and had time to visit the church’s coffee mornings and mother and toddler groups.

“With the pressures women face, churches must adapt to make themselves more accessible. One such church in London launched a Saturday breakfast club and it proved a success with women who were out at work during the week.”

The crucial message from Dr Aune is that churches must act – or face more women leaving the church. And she explained that figures from the English Church Census showed that among the teenage age group (15-19) – male attendance had outstripped women’s for the first time.

And since 1998, according to the statistics, women have been leaving church at about twice the rate of men.

Dr Aune concluded: “This might be just a blip, but when for centuries in every age group, women have outnumbered men at church, this indicates that something must be done if the church wants to keep itself relevant – especially to the next generation of women.”

Women and Religion in the West: Challenging Secularization – edited by Kristin Aune and her two colleagues at Edinburgh University and the University of British Columbia – is published by Ashgate.

-ends-

For more information about this news release, contact Deputy Head of Press and PR Simon Redfern on 01332 591942 or 07748 920038.