OPINION:
The Lindsay Clancy case has exposed some truly horrific fractures in the American conscience, shedding disturbing light on gender gaps that seem to be only intensifying.
According to YouGov, 46% of Americans believed Ms. Clancy — who admitted to killing her three children with exercise bands — should have been found guilty of the killings, while 21% said she should have been found not guilty by reason of insanity and 33% were uncertain.
These statistics set off some serious alarm bells when gender is brought into the mix. While 51% of men wanted to see Ms. Clancy found guilty of murder, 41% of females agreed. Remarkably, 26% of women wished to see her found not guilty by reason of insanity compared to just 15% of men.
That gender gap — particularly considering it’s centered on such a grisly story that in any other era would deeply offend maternal instincts — should, at the least, raise eyebrows.
Certainly, it’s an anecdotal scenario, but it’s also instructive, as I believe something is unfolding that should give us all pause: a spiritual recalibration and denigration among women that requires us to look deeper at societal and individualized patterns.
For eons, American men seemed to be trending along a truly disastrous line, with loneliness and chaos brewing. At the core, males were disconnected from their spiritual calling as a result of pushing God to the sidelines.
That dynamic hasn’t evaporated and there’s still much work to be done, but there have been a slew of positive headlines and data points of late showing that men seem to be moving along a more encouraging trajectory.
But what’s happening with women, conversely, should spark concern.
In 2025, Barna, a Christian research organization, found a massive disconnect between men and women in terms of church attendance, shattering a longstanding trend. While 43% of men reported going to church, 36% of women said the same — a gap the research firm confirmed as significant.
“Men are significantly outpacing women in church attendance since the pandemic, reversing a long-standing trend in Barna’s decades of tracking,” the report read. “The 2025 gender gap is the largest recorded so far.”
Bible reading statistics show a similar trend. Though women generally have been more likely than men to read Scripture weekly, the situation dramatically shifted in 2025. Now, younger men are outpacing young women — something Barna called “unexpected.”
Women are also coincidentally now more likely to engage in occult activity such as consulting astrology or a horoscope at least once or twice a year (37%), tarot cards at least annually (14%) and even seeking fortune tellers at least once or twice a year (8%). These percentages are virtually double what they are for men.
Tragically, these troubling gender trends are also emerging among younger generations.
Barna recently released a report titled, “Reimagining Ministry for Gen Alpha,” which found that the decades-long trend of female Christians outnumbering males in church youth groups has officially ended.
Among 13- to 18-year-olds, more males are attending these groups — and the statistics are pretty stunning. Overall, 57% of self-identified Christian teenagers went to a youth group meeting in the past three months. While 52% of females reported attending, 63% of males said the same.
And it doesn’t end there. A truly shocking survey of high schoolers released last year found that young people were less likely to say they wanted to get married and have children.
The survey data, curated by the University of Michigan, found a disturbing decrease among 12th graders saying they want to get married one day, plunging from 80% in 1993 to 67% in 2023. But, again, girls stuck out like a sore thumb.
Suddenly, they are less likely than boys to say they want to one day get married, an inversion of what the statistics once said. In 2023, 74% of boys said they wanted to get married compared to 61% of girls; in 1993, 83% of girls and 76% of boys said the same.
“The drop in the share of 12th graders who say they want to get married reflects shifting views among girls,” the Pew Research Center reported. “The share of boys saying this is virtually unchanged over the 30-year period. But the share among girls dropped by 22 percentage points.”
Something has shifted among women and girls — and it’s detrimental not only to them as human beings but also to society at large.
The obsessive feminist proclivity to pretend everything is possible without men and the denigration of traditional roles — should women choose that route — have had a deeply negative impact.
All of this is further driven by a move away from the foundational truths found in church and Scripture. It’s the precise reason younger women are showing increased interest in the occult and are taking sympathetic positions when it comes to Ms. Clancy and other issues.
The only hope is a biblical framework for men and women, alike, that reforms hearts and minds.
• Billy Hallowell is a digital TV host and interviewer for Faithwire and CBN News and the co-host of CBN’s “Quick Start Podcast.” Mr. Hallowell is also the author of four books.
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