A growing body of data is pointing to a new and very real relational standoff: young men are becoming more religious and more conservative, while young women are not. And that divide is turning modern dating into a deadlock.
For decades, religion researchers agreed on one thing: Women are the backbone of American faith. They filled the Bible studies, prayer groups and Sunday school rosters. But according to political scientist Ryan Burge, that story is starting to unravel.
“Folks who study religion have always assumed that women exhibit higher levels of religious devotion and attachment,” Burge wrote. “But … that narrative is a whole lot muddier when we look at millennials and Generation Z.”
According to Burge’s analysis, young men are now more likely to attend church weekly than young women. Among men born around 2000, weekly attendance is at 25% — a few points higher than their female peers. And while the number of never-attending women has flatlined around 33%, that number is actually declining among men.
So yes, the guys are showing up. But who are they hoping to sit next to?
Not the women their churches were built around.
As men’s church attendance is growing, Gen Z women are moving left — politically, spiritually and socially. According to multiple studies, nearly half of Gen Z women identify as liberal, compared to just 28% of Gen Z men. And when it comes to religion, a growing number are distancing themselves from the institutional church, citing patriarchy, power dynamics and purity culture fatigue.
So you’ve got religiously revived young men looking for traditional Christian relationships — and politically and spiritually untethered young women who are increasingly uninterested. You don’t need a seminary degree to see the math isn’t mathing.
This ideological gap is bleeding into dating culture. A recent study found that only 34% of Gen Z women are actively looking for a relationship. For men, it’s 54%. But if the pool is full of people who fundamentally disagree about God, gender roles and what it means to be “equally yoked,” fewer people are pairing off.
That’s the tension Burge and other sociologists are paying attention to: not just a growing divide between the religious and nonreligious — but a gendered one. One that may explain why so many young adults are delaying marriage or giving up on dating altogether.
Because for Gen Z, the question isn’t just whether they want relationships. It’s whether they can find someone who shares enough of their worldview to even start one.
