Christian Revival Among the Young?

Is there a resurgence in religion in America and the West especially among young people? Anecdotal evidence says yes but major surveys do not confirm. Asbury University President Kevin Brown reflects here, recalling the revival on his campus three years ago. He offers some surveys showing increased interest in Bible reading and increased attendance at some religious rallies while admitting the mega data so far does not evince increased religiosity.

Major surveys seem to show that the rapid decline in religious affiliation has halted, but some predict this halt is temporary, as older religious people pass, and less religious younger people replace them. Or maybe not.

Often, I ask teachers and others who work among young people if they see evidence of more religious belief and almost always, they say yes. In response to my tweets on the topic, a British military chaplain responded that more young sailors on his recent mission were religiously interested and traditional. A young British man I met recently, himself not religious, said many of his twentysomething friends in London are now church attending. A Dutch politician I met last year reported increased Christianity.

The same is even more true among Americans I know. Newspaper articles highlight young men especially attracted to Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism. Urban evangelical churches that appeal to young people continue to grow. But so far this activity is not sufficient to appear significantly in national polls in America or Europe.

Perhaps the increased religiosity is mostly confined to educated urban people or those on prestigious school campuses who are noticed by some journalists and cultural “elites.”  It definitely appears stronger among young men than young women. By some counts, young men who are active church attenders are more numerous than young women, which is historically unusual.

This increased religiosity among young men, to the extend it exists, reflects how young men are increasingly more politically and socially conservative than young women. And young men see Christianity and the church as an outpost of traditionalism. Reputedly many young men are pushing back against secularism, wokery and in particular, cultural disdain for masculinity.

Political polarization has likely led young men and others back to the church or at least to religion. In our divided, contrarian times, there is a wide impulse to react against what our adversaries disdain. If progressive Leftists despise religion, then let’s go to church! Or let’s at least watch online preachers and Christian influencers. That’ll show them! Polarization also fuels a desire for high octane beliefs, not moderation.

Polarization, which may have led more young men towards traditional religion, may be pushing some young women away from it, as they conflate religion with politics of the right that they oppose. If young men are in fact more inclined to traditional Christianity than young women, it is historically unique. Since Christianity’s beginnings, it has drawn more women than men. Women in the early church were drawn to the church’s affirmation of and protection for women against ancient culture’s common commodification of women, who were treated as property of men.

Across centuries, women were more drawn to Christianity perhaps in part because it nurturingly esteems compassion, mercy, temperance, and chastity. Men across centuries saw the church as necessary for social stability and family life but also a hindrance to their own ostensibly manly desires for control, domination, and self-gratification.

Christianity, of course, properly understood, speaks to men and women equally, esteeming and challenging both. But churches have long struggled to convey this message effectively. Equating Christianity with a particular form of politics may result in short-term gain but can be self-defeating long-term. Every political trend eventually expires or is discredited. The church’s message is supposed to be timeless and transcend all forms of politics.

As Kevin Brown explained, Christianity cannot endure without the institutional church. But young people and many not so young are increasingly allergic to institutions, religious or not. They trust their own instincts but are loathe to commit to a wider community with its expectations, rituals and always flawed leadership. Many religious young men are more attuned to online religion than to the institutional church. The online voices can blaze drama, while the institutional church with its wider responsibilities is always more cautious and so less exciting.

There is a trend among some religious young men to out-religion their churches, to be more Catholic than the Pope, or more Calvinist than any Reformed church. This attitude exalts the personal experience at the church’s expense. And this attitude often inclines towards cultural and political extremism, inflated by millenarian (literal or figurative) expectations that cannot be fulfilled, followed by burnout and disenchantment.

Of course, exalted expectations that cannot be fulfilled typically accompany any religious revival. As Christ’s parable warned, some seed withers in the sun or on rocky ground, or is choked by weeds, while other seed yield a plentiful harvest. We have the promise that the church will always endure, but its pathway forward will be haphazard.

I think the anecdotal evidence of increased religiosity in America and the West, especially among the young, particularly young men, points to something real that cannot yet be proven by national surveys. Maybe major surveys in 2026 will begin to capture this trend. If so it’s evidence that Providence is always more unpredictable and exciting than historical determinism, which claimed that the West was destined for secularism. It also contrasts with some evidence that rigid Islamic societies, like Iran and Saudi Arabia, are becoming less religious in reaction against oppressive theocracy.  

We cannot know the future but we can remember King Solomon when he wrote: “The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.”

More from IRD:

Drawing Gen Z Women Back to the Church

Jesuit Renewal?