The New York Times recently reported that Gen Z men were increasingly more religious and church-going than their female peers. In the US, anyway. Maybe it’s the Jordan Peterson effect: young men are more drawn to the structure, rules and order of organised religion. Meanwhile, women today are more on the “spiritual but not religious” side of things; that is, they are more likely to be out of love with the institutional church. God only knows what’s going on here, but this is a reversal of the expected order of things: historically, women have been considered more religious than men.

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There’s another factor at play, too. Recent Gallup research suggests that the sexes aren’t only polarising religiously, but politically, as well: young men are increasingly trad and right-leaning, young women more liberal and left-leaning, with #MeToo apparently the catalyst. This isn’t just a North American phenomenon, either, according to the Financial Times, but a global one.

If guys are getting godlier – and admittedly, that’s a big if – then it really matters what kind of god they’re taking their cues from. A man who, nudged along by his religion, is pushed to sacrifice his self-interest – including any hint of sexual entitlement – may wind up being the most eligible bachelor in today’s sexual wasteland. Hot Priest, Hot Rabbi, and Hot Prod, then, might have the edge over Hot Agnostic any day. Chances are that the former three get that they can’t always get some – especially if they’re Catholic – and that changes the dynamic between the sexes.

But human yearning runs even deeper than sexual desire. Humans are “desiring creatures”, as one philosopher-theologian puts it, whose ultimate love object is God. Ernest Becker, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, said the death of God left us a God gap we ached to fill with “apocalyptic romance”. Becker wasn’t a believer, but he got how a romantic partner could come to bear the burden of all our hopes.

In other words, even the likes of Hot Rabbi are only human. That’s the devil in the detail, in the words of church father and reformed cad Saint Augustine. “You have made us for yourself, O Lord,” Augustine pants, “and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” There’s a spiritual itch, that is, that no human, no matter how hot, can scratch.

Justine Toh is senior fellow at the Centre for Public Christianity.