Date of Award

2026

Document Type

Project Portfolio

Degree Name

Doctor of Ministry (DMin)

Department

Seminary

First Advisor

Robin Pyles, DMin

Second Advisor

Darcy Hansen, DMin

Third Advisor

MaryKate Morse, PhD

Abstract

Why are Generation Z women (born approximately between 1997 and 2012), increasingly leaving organized Christian religion in the United States? This question became personal in my office at a Christian liberal arts college, where national statistics took on the faces and stories of students I teach and mentor. For the first time in American history, young men are now more religious than young women, and nearly four in ten Gen Z women identify as religiously unaffiliated. Yet their departure is not primarily a rejection of God; it is a rejection of distorted representations of God, faith, and church.

Drawing on interviews, sociological research, and lived experience, Prodigal Daughters reveals a consistent pattern behind this exodus. Young women are leaving not because they lack belief, but because they have been wounded by purity culture, the church’s idolatry of marriage, patriarchal theology, spiritual and sexual abuse, and church environments that prioritize control and conformity over safety, truth, and belonging. For many, leaving is not rebellion; it is survival.

Prodigal Daughters speaks directly to Gen Z women, reframing disaffiliation not as spiritual failure, but as a response to experiences of hurt, silence, or exclusion within faith communities. Drawing on the story of the Prodigal Son, it explores the questions many young women carry about identity, belonging, and how to remain faithful amid complexity. Rather than defining “return” as going back to former systems, the book reimagines homecoming as restored identity, deeper intimacy with Christ, and genuine belonging in God’s family. Written by a pastor and campus minister, this work is a pastoral invitation that offers theological reflection rooted in lived experience and bearing faithful witness to Gen Z women as seen, heard, known, and already beloved.

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