Tag Archives: Pew Research Center

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So is the black church keeping black women single and lonely?

Hello World!!!

Happy Hump Day! Now that I have offered that nicety, let me get into the not-so-nice business at hand of the day…

I have been trying to ignore this topic for weeks (Black women and our dating and mating woes seem to be the topic du jour of 2010, huh?) , but Facebook friends and other friends have e-mailed this article to me one time too many, and now, I feel compelled to respond…

Dating expert, Deborrah Cooper, through her Web Site, Surviving Dating, has written an article that has the blogosphere buzzing…

The Black Church: How Black Churches Keep African American Women Single and Lonely…

Tadow…she’s really trying to hit us in the kisser huh?! If you criticize the black church, you may just be taking on an army of Christian soldiers anyone would be hard pressed to beat…

But she does make some interesting points…I won’t rehash it all here but below are a  few excerpts from her controversial article…

An examination of any congregation of the average Black church shows that single Black females fill the pews. Results of a recent study “African Americans and Religion”by the PEW Research Center’s Forum on Religion and Public Life found that “African Americans are markedly more religious on a variety of measures than the U.S. population as a whole.”

The PEW study also reported that “Men are significantly more likely than women to claim no religious affiliation. Nearly one-in-five men say they have no formal religious affiliation, compared with roughly 13% of women.”

Single Black women trying to live a sanctified lifestyle won’t be caught dead in the places where men are likely to be found. These church women refuse to go to parties, sports bars or sporting events, or clubs where there is drinking, card playing, domino throwing, s*$t talking and cussing – you know, the things that most men who enjoy life like to do. Instead these single Black women sit at home alone, or get together with their friends and read the Bible, then pray that God will bring them a husband.

Some women will argue that there are lots of “nice” single men in church and that I am being harsh. Okay, I’ve been to dozens of churches around the country and looked hard at those guys. Without a doubt I can tell you flatly that the vast majority (I’m saying 98%) of them fit into one of four categories:

  1. A loser working a 12-step program. These guys are in church looking for structure and something to believe in besides themselves, because they are weak and confused. They need help getting their lives back on track and are seeking solace and comfort in church. If they can hook up with a woman looking desperately for a church-going man of any ilk, they’ve got it made.
  2. Openly or in the closet gay men, neither of which is interested in marrying. Some gay men are wrestling with severe guilt and confusion about their desires, which they hope to pray away. Others are openly gay and attend church seeking acceptance from a community which turns its nose up at homosexuality; they are also seeking forgiveness for their sins. Whatever may be this guy’s issue, he is emotionally and psychologically unavailable.
  3. Opportunistic players on the prowl. Every player I know goes to a couple of different churches… some of them go quite regularly. They have easy pickings amongst the hundreds of horny, lonely single women that will cook and give them free meals and satisfy his sexual urges (though these players have no intention of marrying and committing to anyone). Since sex amongst unmarried singles is a sin, it is easy for him to gain the assurance of the women that they keep things secret and not speak of their “transgression” lest they feel the wrath of the Pastor. This secrecy makes it easy for him to hide the fact that he is bed hopping with four or five single ladies, right under their respective noses.
  4. Elderly reformed players. These guys have played themselves so hard and so long, they’re worn out. Their old butts finally realized that the end may be near and playtime is over. Worried about dying alone, they bring their behinds back to church to find a “good Christian woman” for marriage. Essentially they are looking for a free nursemaid and bed warmer… someone to provide comfort and take care of their old broken down a$$@s before they die.

In spite of these facts, Black women go to church week after week, hearing over and over again the message that they should be seeking “a God-fearing man.” Sistahs in church are instructed by their Pastor that there should be no room in their lives for a man without faith in The Lord.

But with so few Black men attending church, and those that are in church being largely unsuitable as marital partners, what is it that single Black women are looking for in church?

Why do Black women run to church in droves and willingly put themselves in the position to be dictated to, harshly judged and instructed like a child on how to live their lives by some man that is not their father and to whom they are not married?

Cooper also includes a YouTube video from a pastor that she believes is contributing to this issue…

Hmmm….I get what this pastor says, but I cannot agree with his premise of being hidden…The very notion of hiding suggests that one does not want to be found…This pastor seems to be saying that unless you are at church or at home or doing something obviously religious, you are setting up yourself for failure in the dating game…

But on the other hand, I don’t think a woman should chase men either…I think there is a happy medium that can be achieved…What is wrong with dating Web sites like eHarmony or going out with your girlfriends to dance at a club? God has been known to work in mysterious ways and you may meet that man through the Internet or on Friday night instead of a Sunday morning…

But I submit this whole notion of being hidden is a fallacy being promoted throughout the church in general – not the white church, not the black church, not the Asian church, not the Hispanic church, etc…

In the book “How to Get a Date Worth Keeping,” Dr. Henry Cloud, a white Christian psychologist, describes a similar scenario in which a woman, Lillie,  was waiting on God to bring her a man. When he asked her how it was going, Lillie confessed to him she had not been on a date in TWO years.  He felt compelled to help her at that point…

“Her lack of dates had to be a combination of her sitting back and waiting for the man of her dreams to come and find her and some personal dynamics interfering with her desire to be married. I could think of no other reason someone who actually wanted to have a man in her life would be that stuck.”

Within several months of counseling, the woman in Dr. Cloud’s book was in a significant relationship and eventually, some months later, she got married….And Lillie met her Christian husband through a dating website.

Below is another excerpt from Dr. Cloud’s book.

“Many people have been taught to view dating similarly to the way Lillie did: ‘God will bring the person to you. Just wait.’ And they think this approach is spiritual. But in reality, it negates the dual track of the Bible that teaches God will guide the way, but we have to actively walk in that way and fight the battles.”

Now on to Cooper’s belief that if one does meet a black man in church, he falls into one of the categories above…

Again, it’s not just black women that seem to be frustrated with men in church, white  Christian author and actress Susan E. Isaacs, describes her hilarious dating life in her book,  “Angry Conversations With God: A Snarky But Authentic Spiritual Memoir.”

“I also spent time with loads of Christian men who were funny, emotionally present, and not threatened by my intelligence. Men like Mark who were gay or trying not to be. The rest of the single men at my church were perpetually on the healing conference tour. And who has time to date when you’re at the healing conferences, getting healed? (Or taking notes about getting healed?)”

Hilarious huh? Yes, a good man is hard to find in church —and sometimes the church promotes ideologies that keep men of all races outstide of the church….

— but the real truth of the matter is a good man is hard to find anywhere…just ask your girl that is not a Christian…

Any thoughts?

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The Rise of the Alpha Female…and the men they choose to marry…

Who Dat?

And that’s pretty much all I’ma say about the Super Bowl…I was gonna write something that had to do with the Super Bowl, but I’ma keep it real…I don’t get into football like that…although I know the Saints will be marching in by the end of the day…How can they lose with a name like that?

So after I saw the third article on this topic, I knew I had to discuss it here on this blog…In one article I read, former Us Weekly Editor-In-Chief Janice Min made more in one paycheck than her husband made in a whole year!!!(Apparently, she made roughly $2 million a year…I would say that is PHENOMENAL for a journalist. READ: Can I get somma dat some day?) According to an article in The New York Times, more men are likely to marry women who earn more money than they do than ever before according to Pew Research Center data….NPR,  in another article,  “Modern Marriages: The Rise of The Sugar Mama,” explored the same topic using the same data. In this article, one husband is married to a woman who works at the same company as he does — except she is two management levels above him. And THREE of his wife’s brothers are in a similar situation…Below is an interesting excerpt from the same article…

“I think this is really an example of an outdated idea,” says Stephanie Coontz, author of Marriage: A History. Coontz says that in a 1967 poll, two-thirds of women said they’d consider marrying a man they did not love if he had good earnings potential.

“Now, women have a completely different point of view,” Coontz says. “They say overwhelmingly — 87 percent — that it’s more important to have a man who can communicate well, who can be intimate and who will share the housework than to have someone who makes more money than you do.”

So how do y’all feel about that? Could you marry a man who makes less than you do? A friend and I were discussing relationships yesterday as we often do. We talked about how some of us who are still in the game (the dating game) still tout money as one of the main qualities that a eligible man must have. She said the term “love” rarely comes up as a quality – meaning that women rarely talk about a man loving them as an important quality. She cited a Bible verse…

 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her… However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband. Ephesians 5:25-33

In sum, husbands are commanded to love their wives, and women are commanded to respect their husbands…So I wonder if women need to look at love as the most important quality to look for in a man…But then again, some women may not be able to respect a man if his earning potential is less than hers…

But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.  I Timothy 5:18

Now to be fair, providing for your household does not mean that you have to make more in my opinion. It does means that you have to provide your share…But some women may interpret that verse as meaning that a man must make more money than they do…What do you think? What do I think…

Well, when I was in j-school (journalism school), I found out pretty quickly that journalism was not one of the careers you chose if you are simply trying to get paid…People typically become journalists become they love the written word and have an insatiable curiousity. (READ: Me in a nutshell.) And now that our country is in its current economic state, journalism, as y’all probably know,  has become even less lucrative across the board…With that in mind, would it make sense for me to marry a man that makes less than I do…I’m honestly not sure…but judging from what I’ve seen in the news, some of the world’s richest, most powerful men make the worst husbands…And then again, just because a man is not rich and powerful doesn’t mean that he’s a keeper either…

Any thoughts?

To honor Black History Month, I will offer a memorable quote from someone in black history on each post I write this month…

“No person is your friend (or kin) who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow and be perceived as fully blossomed as you were intended.”  Alice Walker….(Did y’all know that Alice Walker has a blog?)