Anita Dufalla, Post-Gazette Click illustration for larger image.

Church is a chick flick.

So says David Murrow, whose book, "Why Men Hate Going to Church," is getting attention even from people who choke on some of its assertions.

The typical church, he says, has soft, pretty decor and teaches comfort and compliance rather than guy stuff like boldness and mission. While he doesn't take a stand against women's ordination, he argues that female pastors can add to the perception that church isn't masculine.

"Most churches could not care less about men. They haven't the foggiest notion of how to reach them. They are always the last priority when allocating ministry resources," says Mr. Murrow, 44, a television producer from Anchorage, Alaska, who says he wrote his book because no one else had tackled the subject. He's an ordained elder in the Presbyterian Church (USA) who now attends an independent church with his wife and three children.

Although men are half the population, they account for just 40 percent of those in church. The gender gap is highest in the mainline Protestant and historically black denominations and lowest in independent churches. Murrow views this as an exclusively Christian problem, saying that men outnumber women in synagogues and mosques.

He believes that churches -- including those with female pastors -- can rework themselves to attract men, and that by doing so they also will attract young women.

One of his success stories concerns a church that changed the decor of its prayer room. It replaced lavender paint and lace curtains with a spiritual warfare theme, using swords, shields and tomahawks as art.

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Larry Malone, national director of Men's Ministry for the United Methodist Church, urges Methodists to read the book even if they reject some of it. Their churches are filled with feminine imagery, he says.

"We like to talk about nurturing things, about giving something care, and tending it, and making it grow as a flower would," he says. Outside the church, he says, no one would approach a man and say, "Would you come over here and help me nurture something?"

Mr. Murrow believes churches are designed for the older women who fill their pews, so they emphasize comfort and security. But men want to hear about challenge, risk, change and reward.

Preachers, he writes, ought to sound like Marine recruiters: "Do you have what it takes to follow Christ? Many say that they do, but fewer than one in four will remain loyal. Are you one of the few, or when trials come, will you crumble?"

He believes that Promise Keepers, a high-profile men's ministry of the 1990s, faded because it was really women's ministry set in a football stadium. It promoted itself with images of men crying and hugging each other -- which made men squeamish. But he approves of new ads featuring gritty sportsmen. Promise Keepers, for its part, is selling "Why Men Hate Going to Church."

Mr. Malone, who has promoted the book in a denomination where one-third of the pastors are women, says delicately, "Political correctness is not one of the book's virtues." Mr. Murrow advocates putting men in visible positions of leadership because, he says, men follow other men.

"Think of it as an affirmative action program for Christianity's largest minority group," he wrote.

He acknowledges that some of the most gifted church leaders he knows are women, and he notes that the dearth of men predates the surge in women's ordination. But he argues that denominations with the high rates of ordained women are declining.

"I think he's got it completely backwards," says the Rev. Sharon Schwab, superintendent of the Indiana District of the Western Pennsylvania Conference of the United Methodist Church.

In her experience, congregations with female pastors draw more men than those with male pastors.

"I think the men initially think it's something different, so they'll come to see how it works. And because it's still true that if a woman is going to make it in a male world you have to be better at everything, the men discover that they are getting more out of church," she says.

While Beth Samuel Jewish Center in Ambridge draws more men than women, Rabbi Shoshana Kaminsky doesn't buy the idea that synagogues have more testosterone than churches.

"The tradition within Judaism is that only men had to go to synagogue," she says. "So plenty of husbands come faithfully to the synagogue while the wives stay home, which is certainly a trend that I'd love to reverse."

Whatever the reason for the gender gap, Mr. Murrow asserts that no one is training pastors of either gender to reach men.

"I don't know of a single seminary that offers a course on the spiritual needs of men. On the other hand, seminaries offer degrees in feminist theology," he says.

The feminist tendency to eliminate male words for God is a problem, he says.

"The thinking is that so many have been hurt by their earthly fathers, it makes sense to eliminate references to 'Father' in our hymns and sermons. Yet, in trying to be sensitive to the wounded, we are tossing out anything to do with masculinity, which reinforces the notion that anything masculine is suspect."

The Rev. James Mead, pastor to Pittsburgh Presbytery, agrees that churches do a poor job of appealing to men, but he doesn't believe inclusive language is a major piece of the problem.

"Women have lived forever with that sense of marginalization. In the Protestant church we don't even have the benefit of seriousness about the Virgin Mary. Men are now getting some sense of what women have experienced in church language," he says.

According to Mr. Murrow, the church abounds in feminine language about Jesus. He is meek and mild, with long flowing hair, and he is often described as "beautiful." Popular hymns speak of walking with him in a rose garden, listening to his "sweet" voice.

Concerns about the feminization of church have arisen cyclically since the Victorian era, says Stephen Prothero, chairman of the religion department at Boston University. His book "American Jesus" is a history of how Americans have described Jesus. Popular 19th-century images were downright girlish.

Mr. Murrow and Dr. Prothero agree that churches draw women because mothers are responsible for children's religious education. But while Mr. Murrow believes men's ministry should trump children's ministry as a priority -- because active Christian fathers will keep their whole family in church -- Dr. Prothero has a different solution.

"The way to fix this is to have more men involved in raising children. If that happened, they'd probably go to church a lot more," he says.

Mentoring tops Mr. Murrow's prescriptions for men's ministry. He likes to describe it with a sports vocabulary of "coaching." One of his models is a Texas church structured around "spiritual fathering." The pastor mentors 12 men who each mentor 12 more men, and so on. Women also mentor women.

He commends some well-known programs that aren't aimed solely at men. Men enjoy Alpha -- which features small group discussions after a meal -- because it's informal and allows them to be active participants. Rick Warren's "Purpose-driven" programs are ideal because men want to have a mission. And hands-on service, such as Habitat for Humanity, appeals to their desire to accomplish something and to change the world.

Mr. Murrow's Web site is www.churchformen.com.