10 Ways Male Privilege Shows Up in the Church

I’ve been thinking a lot about privilege lately. Well, not just lately. I overheard that conversation at a Starbucks in Washington, D.C. more than a year ago, and it still haunts me. The Oxford Dictionary defines privilege as “a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group”. Simply put, privilege has to do with how groups in society accommodate and cater to you.

Over the past few months I’ve had several conversations with male friends who disagree that they are “privileged” in their communities of faith and that women are at a disadvantage as a result. I had been praying and mulling over how to break through this impasse when I came across an anonymous post, “A Definitive Guide to White Privilege”. There are a lot of these lists floating around, but this one had a lot of examples that I think are also true in church contexts. I’ve rewritten a few from my vantage point as a woman in the conservative evangelical church.