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Recently, an article from Christianity Today went viral with some jaw-dropping news. For the first time in history, there is a generation that bucked the trend of women dominating the church:

What’s the big trend that got bucked? Gen Z men are more likely to be affiliated with the church than Gen Z women. This breaks with a trend that has been around for over 100 years. 

While actual church attendance continues to be dominated by women, male religious activity and affiliation have spiked. It’s a matter of time before pews are filled with penis-havers.

As someone who’s dealt with spiritual abuse, I am not surprised this has happened. It was truly bound to happen. The fact that people didn’t expect this to happen is what’s more shocking to me, especially when you consider the following issues. 

Ossiana Tepfenhart is a reader-supported publication. I can’t keep this up unless I get more paid subscribers. Annual subscriptions are on sale for $30 until Oct 6. You know what to do.

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Revelations about church-based sex abuse reached a fever pitch in the past 20 years.

Let’s be honest. The trope of the pervert Catholic priest has been a running gag after the floodgates opened about child sex abuse in the Catholic church. It was a massive scandal during the early 2000s. 

Of course, we eventually learned it was not just Catholic priests. News headlines started to flood with tales of Evangelical cult leaders (Warren Jeffs, for one) who abused children under the guise of priest-ordained marriage. 

Hundreds of cases are starting to flood newspaper headlines — and those are the ones we actually hear about. Evangelical Christian groups still have a deep culture of silence that prevents victims from speaking out. After all, shunning is a common punishment in those groups. 

The sex abuse alone means that female parishioners are at a higher risk of life-altering problems (pregnancy) if they’re exposed. For many female victims of church abuse, that alone is reason enough to stop their faith. 

However, it’s not just the abuse…

A contributing factor for Gen Z women leaving the church is how church leaders treat victims.

I remember being in a group chat with a bunch of people victimized by Evangelical preachers. One mentioned that her preacher assaulted her. She told her sister, who told everyone at church. 

The solution the preacher had? He told the fucktards at his church that “God forgives,” and that it’d be very good for her to stand up in front of the church and apologize for “leading him astray.”

This is a theme that I keep seeing online. Men (and older church women) keep chastising girls for existing in clothing, claiming they are “acting as temptresses making men sin.”

Uh, guys? Gen Z ain’t dumb. They know it’s not about the clothing. One human being cannot control another’s actions. Nothing those girls could have done would have prevented predators from being pervs.

Prior generations have warned Gen Z women about victim-blaming and slut-shaming as forms of abuse. Gen Z is a generation that is more educated about abuse and assault than past generations. 

In other words, Gen Z women aren’t taking the church’s victim-blaming bullshit. While purity culture can affect men, its biggest victim has always been women. Church promotes purity culture.

You can’t expect a group to continue to keep women while they trash them, tell them they’re never enough, and blame them for existing.

Women are also not happy with being told they’re not worthy of the priesthood.

Did you ever notice how many Christian sects bar women from priesthood positions or keep them in subordinate church positions? I noticed. 

It’s no shock to me that being a nun is the highest rank a Catholic woman can have. Women have always been kept at an arm’s length in the church, despite being the majority of attendees.

Heck, a while back, I believe there was a Baptist sect that openly decided women weren’t worth keeping as preachers. Several lifelong devotees were ejected after the decision.