This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Editor's Note • Robert Kirby is somewhere off the coast of Florida. This is a reprint of an earlier column.

I am in the middle of an important church book that explains a lot. The title grabbed me because at first I thought it was my unauthorized biography. Turns out that "Why Men Hate Going to Church" by David Murrow is only partly about me. The book decries shrinking male church attendance in general.

Look around any congregation on Sunday, and you'll find more women than men. According to Murrow, it's because church music, service and worship are slanted toward the feminine.

Being a guy who frequently hates going to church, I read Murrow's book to find out why I am thus afflicted. There are a number of reasons, but I already knew the main one.

Church is boring.

Yeah, it is. I've been to a lot of church, and mainly it's all about conformity. Any serious discussion involves finding a new way to agree with something you've heard 500 times before.

Church is not suited for a guy with ADD who is deeply suspicious of authority and believes that convention is just another word for hypnotism.

When it comes to church as a stimulant, I have to go with P.J. O'Rourke's observation that "If God wanted us to go to church a lot, He'd have given us bigger behinds to sit on and smaller heads to think with."

The last time I pointed out something so heretical, it was countered with, "Well, the Brethren certainly never think that church is boring."

Wrong. The Brethren never SAY that church is boring. If they never thought it was, they wouldn't sometimes fall asleep in the middle of it.

Besides, I didn't say that worshiping God is boring. I said church is. And if you can't tell the difference, you're probably a big reason that it is so boring.

Look, it's OK if you find church wildly stimulating. People are different. So different, in fact, that if you're getting your needs met by a particular format, you can bet that someone else isn't.

Boring isn't the only reason men don't like church, or at least find it less appealing than women. Turns out there are a lot of things that scare us off.

Apparently, men fear being emasculated by Christianity. In many churches, the image of Christ is that of "Mr. Rogers with a beard." What guy wouldn't be alarmed by the suggestion of becoming one with that?

The typical Christian mandates of being meek, submissive, gentle are not natural male behaviors, according to Murrow, and have set the modern standard of holiness as a "Victorian womanliness" that repels many guys.

Speaking of which, a lot of guys aren't very emotive. We're bothered by the church notion that the Spirit is strongest when there's weeping and trembling. But as the book says, "sometimes the Holy Spirit works without Kleenex."

Finally, long church meetings are more suited to the communal nature of women than the solitary one of men. My church meetings last three hours, or about 90 minutes longer than I can pay attention without becoming annoyed.

Maybe that's why going to church is so important, even if it is boring. If you never went, you'd never know that hating it isn't entirely your fault.

Robert Kirby can be reached at rkirby@sltrib.com or facebook.com/stillnotpatbagley