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If you’ve recently entered a church, you may have seen something interesting: twenty-somethings in the pews too. It’s been a while, but they’re back. And why they came back may tell us about the time we are in as a nation and where we are headed next.
The awakening of the faith of the young has been remarkable and rapid. A Gallup poll this year found that 42% of young men now say religion is “very important” in their lives, the highest figure in a quarter of a century and up 14% from 2023 alone.
According to the Barna Group, Gen-Z churchgoers are now attending more often than any other generation, marking a “historic shift” and “the first time Barna has recorded such spiritual interest led by younger generations.”
POLL FINDS STRONGER GROWTH IN PEOPLE WHO CALL RELIGION ‘VERY IMPORTANT’
Sociologists are still confused. Something is happening, but they don’t know what. I have an idea, in part because my faith journey is similar to that of these young men.
I grew up in a Catholic home and attended Catholic grade schools. But while most of my high school classmates enrolled at Holy Cross or other Jesuit schools, I chose Williams College, the country’s playground – and left my faith.
Like many rebellious children of the early 1960s, I was lured by the idea of breaking the shackles of religion to live a life of indulgence. For a time, the questions of the season seemed stronger than the answers I was given.
I remember the principal of my Catholic high school, Father Anthony McHale, telling me, “We’ll get you eventually.” And he was right. I returned to Catholicism in my twenties – mostly, I suspect, for the same reason as young men today.
The previous decade was not much different from the 1960s, marked by progressive excesses, cultural apathy, moral decay, and political upheaval. Like my generation, today’s young people believe that meaning can only be found in self-expression and political activism. But it left them rootless and empty.
Many began to ask the same question I had asked: Is this all there is? And in their search, they found an answer.
The shackles of religion do not restrict but liberate. By using the country, we find communities that accept all our desires. Through faith, we find communities that call us to be better. And that is what all young men desire: a purpose built through struggle, sacrifice, and service to something greater than themselves.
REVIVAL OF FAITH FOLLOWS CHARLIE KIRK’S DEATH AS MANY PEOPLE ATTEND MASS AND READ THE BIBLE.
My prayer today is that this will be the stirring of a new Great Awakening in America. If delayed, it could set us back on the politics my generation experienced in the Reagan years – one that trades progress for the pursuit of a moral society based on shared values and beliefs.
This is not an unreasonable hope. A generation that recovers a sense of transcendence will not accept the idea that the state is the highest authority. They may value the family, resist the politicization of childhood and education, and defend religious freedom not as a special interest but as an essential element of a free society. They may also appear immune to the despair and rage – even violence – that has marked much of the recent rhetoric.
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After the murder of Charlie Kirk last September, Bible sales jumped 36% in one month. Sales hit a 21-year high in 2025, double what they were in 2019. No wonder why. Kirk’s courageous witness of faith, and the ruthlessness of his execution, prompted questions about the death and claims that social media could not answer.
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These signs encourage me. I believe that today’s young people may not just match the honesty of my generation but surpass it. Because the dark clouds of their time – AI, democratic socialism, gender ideology, and so on – are far more dangerous than those that hovered around the 1960s. The darker the darkness, the brighter the light.
History shows that the hunger for God never ends completely. It can only be pressed for a season. If it awakens, the political and cultural consequences can be profound—and, with God’s help, deeply hopeful.
