Single Christians Feel 'Ignored' by Church Community, UK Study Finds

I'm curious about what it is that might be causing this issue for the church in the UK, is it a Christian attitude toward singles, or a focus on the family to the detriment of singles? Is it time that Christianity adapted it's avenues of approach to society and broadened it's focus so as to not place so much importance on family or is this something on which Christianity simply can't be flexible because of values instructed by Christian tenets?

Not to beat the freakonomics horse, but I would like to see the sample size not be exclusively people on online dating sites. Not to be crass, but don't 40 percent of people on online dating sites feel "inadequate" or "ignored" anyway, which is why they resort to online dating? Maybe that's an exaggeration, but you can see a bias arising from this group.

Not dumping on online dating, just saying there may be a bias when selecting your sample exclusively from a medium that will attract a certain type of person, more than others.

lol, quite possibly...

It's not the most rigorous of litmus tests but I did assume that because the article I linked is from a Christian site, and not a site that might have some agenda for negatively criticizing the church, that the study was considered valid.

This feels like a classic Mightybooshian one-way street. If the article were saying something positive about the church, I'm moderately sure you would consider the study to be invalid.

Perhaps they meant well and did not have an agenda, I just don't see this study accurately representing the true statistic.

It's one of the problems with these types of studies, to be truly accurate you would have to have some control groups and run it several times, to where it wouldn't be worth your while just to find out if single people are excluded in some venue.

I do love freakonomics though, I didn't read the book like you suggested, but I cheated and watched the movie. The abortion and crime rate co-relation was beautiful.

Long-ish post of personal experience incoming, but the cliffs are basically that I doubt anyone single attending church finds this headline shocking.

Some true stories:

When I was 14-18, I attended a small Baptist church. I stopped going when I realized that once I was out of high school and too old for the "teens" Sunday school group, I the only group I could attend with people in my age group was "Young Married," a group taught by a couple and focusing on Godly roles in relationships.

When I was single and in my late teens and early 20s, I found it hard, unless I went to a megachurch, to find any sort of engagement in church activities. Nearly everything involved stuff that was either populated by old people or married couples. As a single I felt super awkward and totally isolated, like that one guy that shows up to a movie with his friends and discovers he's the only one there without a date.

I got married, and instantly all that cleared up. Suddenly my wife and I were able to get involved with ease, getting asked to help out with stuff in the church, getting asked to attend social events, etc. There were a few single people around, but they were, for the most part, regarded as odd ducks.

When we got divorced, the isolation and stigma of being single returned. I left organized religion shortly thereafter.

Every church is different and some churches do a fine job of making sure "young singles" have a social circle to be in, but most (in my experience), don't.

It seems to be a descriptive study, not an inferential one. That is to say that it speaks of the surveyed population and not the general population. So your criticism is not warranted if it is raised towards the study. The ambiguity stems from the headlines, not the what is being stated.

There might be other issues (phrasing, priming etc) but those are hard to assess without a look at the instrument.

I agree with you, but then what is the point of conducting a survey that only applies to a couple of thousand people?

These types of studies imply their results represent the general population, when they obviously don't. They aren't saying that within this small subset of people from a specific medium, the results are as follows. They are implying that their statistic is representative of the UK, as you said, by the erroneous title.

I don't have a dog in this fight, I don't care if the stat is true or is not true, logic would dictate it depends on many factors, I'm just sick of seeing these types of studies masquerading as reliably representing society. You see these a lot with the food industry or health products, claiming their product has better results than is actually true.

I agree that some churches do not even make an effort to make singles feel welcomed, and that some actively pressure people to get married or whatever. But many times, this is a matter of just being self-conscious.

For example, a lone black woman in an otherwise white church may feel awkward even though nobody is doing anything in particular to make her feel unwelcomed. There are people who feel this way as single parents or divorcees. In some of those situations, the stigma is merely perceived by the individual even though it's not expressed by the group.

Why do you think this is?

Clearly, it's because religion is a completely different social organization than every other social organization, subject to entirely rules of social perception than everything else.

For example, if it is true that singles are subject to stigma, it's clearly a different social function than the stigma that cultural anthropologists experience when they do field work. Those people NEVER have to make up stories about having family and kids and that sort of thing in order to avoid creating a social stigma that inhibits their ability to form social bonds with the people they're studying.

And if it is false that singles are subject to stigma and that it's self-perception, it's clearly because religion is different and this has nothing to do with broader patterns of self-perception among those who have a "different" background than others in a group.

Yes, but this study doesn't generalize. It is a survey of users of an online dating site.

The findings are still interesting, but I think the only ones who are trying to generalize are commentators.

Our church in Toronto is currently touching on the subject of celebrating singleness if anybody wants to watch (I'm biased, but i think that main pastor, Bruxy Cavey, is easily the most gifted spiritual teacher that I've ever heard. He's also very down to earth as he often preaches wearing jeans and a walking dead t-****. I encourage anybody reading this who has ever been even the slightest bit curious about Christanty to check out his sermons. The following is on singleness as mentioned above :

http://www.themeetinghouse.com/teach...ingleness-5549

As a married man, i can absolutely admit that I've often neglected singles in church. I think there are a few things at play. First, my wife and i experienced this loneliness when we first moved to Toronto (from the US). We found a church, started to attend and immediately felt overlooked. In the first 6 months that we were here only 1 couple bothered to introduce themselves to us (they were part of the 'welcome team'). Everybody else seemed to already have their formed social circles within the church and didn't seem to notice people outside of their immediate group of friends. Of course, this works both ways; We could have made the effort to connect ourselves. However, I think it's natural to feel like an outsider in any new social situation so there's a tendency to keep to yourself until you've been welcomed by others.

I imagine this is even more pronounced when single. I've seen people sitting alone in church and haven't reached out to them more than I'd like to admit. Being that i'm married, I tend to look for couples to introduce myself because I find it's an easier dynamic to break the ice. I was largely blind to this sense of loneliness that singles might feel until i listened to the sermon above and now it's something I'm being proactive about.

Personally, I think it is easier to be single in a bigger church, as most of the bigger churches have singles ministries, and there are plenty of other single people, and you really don't have to be single for long. Being single in a smaller church can become uncomfortable, however.

I've attended a non-denominational megachurch on and off for 20+ years (with a 15 year absence, tho). I love the church. The praise and worship is amazing. The pastor was born to preach, and is on television and sometimes TBN. But in these bigger churches, if you aren't active in the ministry, you can get lost to the congregation. You can attend this type of church for 20 years and still be unknown. For example, I have never had a conversation with the pastor.

In Florida, I was part of a small, growing church. I sat in the pastor's office before service and chatted. He picked me up for prayer meeting. I knew every member by name. This thread speaks to me, because I have recently decided to seek out a new church-- smaller, and more intimate.

But if I was single, I'd probably stay in the larger church. There seems to be a large amount of singles there. You wouldn't feel out of place. And I've wondered if singles are drawn to these megachurches just because of the large amount of other singles. It's easy to be nameless and faceless in a crowd, but you can't pull that off in a small sanctuary with 15 people in it.