“And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overpower it.” (CSB – Read the chapter)
The church has a bit of a bad rap. Some of that we’ve earned over years of hard work. Much of it is unfair thanks to the equally hard work of critics who range from ignorant to bigoted to hurt and vengeful. Whatever the precise reason, though, the church in America and in the cultural West more generally isn’t what it once was. This trend started in earnest a couple of generations ago, but over the last generation it has accelerated to a sociologically rapid pace. Yet while there have been folks variously cheering and mourning this decline depending on which side of the line they fall on, some recent cultural trends backed by a growing body of research is pointing to a potential need for the ones celebrating and the ones mourning to change sides. Let’s talk for a few minutes this morning about the cultural comeback of Christianity.
I started noticing this trend to an extent I couldn’t ignore it any longer a few weeks ago. As I engaged with news from a variety of sources and partisan affiliations, I began to see more and more articles reflecting the reemergence of Christianity as a cultural force in the West. This was happening at the same time churches that had been declining slowly and steadily—and sometimes not so slow or steady—for years were suddenly making a rather dramatic comeback. Baptisms are up. Membership is up. Attendance is up. Reputation is up.
What is going on?
While some of those same ungracious critics might try to point to some sort of cultural weakness, it perhaps won’t surprise you to learn that I think there’s more to the story. In just the last few days I’ve seen several different articles all pointing to the same basic thing: this trend back in the direction of the church is being fueled by…wait for it…young people.
Yes, those very same people we were told not all that long ago were all but lost to the church are starting to make very intentional and statistically significant moves back in its direction. So, were the ones telling us they were lost to us wrong? Not necessarily, but they were talking about a different group of young people.
Generation X (of which I am partially a member) didn’t go to church as much as their Boomer parents, but they did still go to church pretty consistently. Their attendance, though, wasn’t largely driven by high levels of devotion, but rather tradition and expectation.
Then the Millennials came along. After 9/11, Millennials who were already tired of being forced to go to church by their parents had started drifting from it. When a group of Muslim terrorists shoved the awful violence that is part of some religious traditions in the face of the world, many Millennials responded by saying with their feet that they didn’t want anything else to do with religion. And, because most of this was happening in the West where Christianity has long held dominant sway, it drew much of the focus of the ire.
They turned en masse to a group of prominent atheist voices and elevated them to the place of cultural sage. It became a badge of cultural honor to announce oneself as having departed the dark halls and binding constraints of religion to join the ranks of the “nones.” For a nation that had a uniquely religious heritage, the extraordinarily rapid rise in the number of these “nones” shocked sociologists and statisticians believing and unbelieving alike. Emboldened by their surging numbers, atheists and secularists of various other stripes confidently asserted the soon-coming eradication of Christianity and religion in general from the world. And for about 20 years it looked like they were right.
Then it didn’t.
While the rise of the “nones” surged through the early 2000s, starting in 2013, that rise began to slow. By 2020 it stagnated. In the years since, it has started to decline. At the same time, the number of people identifying themselves as Christians is on the rise again. Pretty much every source I have checked out all attributes this shift to the same thing: Generation Z. To put that another way, instead of departing from the church, young people seem to be more and more coming back to it.
And this isn’t simply an American phenomenon with its still uniquely religious heritage to blame either. The trend is even more pronounced in Europe. Recent reports I’ve seen have pointed to thousands of new baptisms into the church just in the last few months. Nations that secularists have gleefully pointed to as prime examples of how a secular society can thrive far better than a religious one are seeing statistically significant shifts toward the church. Norway, England, and France are all cited as examples.
Something else notable about this shift is not just its average age, but its gender makeup. Religion has often been seen as the domain of women. Moms dragged their children to church while dads worked or fished or hunted or golfed or did anything other than go to church. This new movement toward the church is primarily made up of guys. I can attest to this personally. In my church with an average worship attendance of about 140 we regularly see 30 or more middle and high school students involved in our thriving mid-week activities. That number will increase to closer to 40 in a few months. And the group is overwhelmingly male. When I was growing up, boys would go to one church or another because of the girls who were there. We get girls coming to the group because of the boys who are here.
So again, what is going on? Folks observing and researching and documenting this undeniable trend point to several possible explanations. It could be a reaction to the loneliness epidemic. Multiple nations (many of which are very secularized) have taken notice of just how lonely their people are and announced efforts to do something about it. Christianity is inherently communal in nature. Secularism is not. At all. And when you combine a worldview that is isolating with the incredibly isolating nature of the ironically named phenomenon of social media you wind up with people who are powerfully lonely.
When you don’t have a strong community that you are an essential part of it is hard to socialize, to date, to get married, to build and maintain relationships more generally. The church provides the kind of community where you can experience all of those things and more. We were made for community. One of the more interesting trends during the rise of secularism was the appearance of secular “churches” in which a bunch of atheists got together to fellowship, sing some songs they all liked, and hear an encouraging or challenging message about some topic of interest. I never saw much commentary on the irony of these folks who ostensibly hated the church creating their own version because they missed what the church provided for them. A lonely people hungry for community will go where they can find it. There is no solution to that problem better than the church.
Another explanation is that young people tend to reject whatever the status quo happens to be in favor of something different. Very often this other thing is not just different, but the opposite of whatever the establishment of the previous generation happened to be. In the West, the cultural establishment is secularism. Young people looking to rebel against the views and beliefs and practices of their cultural forebears are turning to the church as the logical alternative.
I think there’s more here too. Young people aren’t just rebelling against the secularism of their Millennial parents because that’s what teenagers do, there are growing signs that they are sick of secularism. They are sick of how judgmental is has proven to be. Secularists rose to cultural prominence through the 1990s and early 2000s by condemning the church for being so narrow-minded and judgmental. Once it became established, however, and started forming its own orthodoxies as every worldview is wont to do, these proved to be even more narrow-minded and judgmental than the church they had condemned.
There are countless stories of people who have crossed the new, secular, woke regime that occupies nearly all the places of cultural and political and corporate power and been crushed for it. The whole idea of being canceled is a feature of the new secular orthodoxy. If you say the wrong thing or don’t have the right minority label, you can find yourself out of favor, out of work, unable to gain access to resources, and so on and so forth. The people who cursed Christianity because of its judgmentalism and intolerance established a new order that not only didn’t do away with those things, they doubled down on them, except in the opposite direction.
The difference between secularism and Christianity, though, is that while both worldviews have clear views on what kind of behavior is considered to be sinful, secularism doesn’t have any notion of grace or forgiveness. If you cross the secular orthodoxy there is no path to redemption for you to walk. You are simply out. Christians don’t get the teachings of Jesus right all the time (or even very often). We can indeed be judgmental and intolerant when we let cultural preferences taint our proclamation and application of the Gospel. But grace and forgiveness, redemption and restoration are part of our foundation in a way that makes failing a whole lot safer of a thing to do with us than it is in a secular context.
And so young people who are sick of living under an establishment that is all judgment no love, all truth and no grace are coming back to find the thing they’ve been missing.
One last explanation. Sociologist Ryan Burge recently released a report arguing that being a part of a church leads to greater levels of happiness. That is, going to church makes you happy. And the more you go to church, the happier you will be. And he’s got the receipts to back up his claim. Among those who report never going to church, just 22% report that they are very happy. From there, as church attendance starts to climb from seldom to yearly to monthly to weekly, and finally to more than once a week, reported levels of happiness increase smoothly all the way up to 43%. In case you missed the math there, people who are active, involved members of a church who attend at least once a week report being twice as happy as those who never go.
And this is in person attendance that we are talking about, not online. Among those who report only online church engagement, even when they do it weekly, the percentage of folks who are very happy is just 28%. Being engaged with the church online is better than nothing, but it doesn’t hold a candle to the real thing. People who think they can get all the church they need by watching a service online once a week are fooling themselves if they think that’s going to work for them just as well as being there in person. In a culture that practically obsesses over being happy, there aren’t many ways better than regular church attendance to increase the amount of overall happiness in your life.
When Jesus was first revealing His plans for an institution that would continue His work once He was no longer on the scene physically anymore, He told the disciples that the gates of Hades would never overcome it. That is, the unbelieving world will never overcome and overpower the church. It would never render the church irrelevant. It would never stop its mission. It would never destroy it. It would never get rid of the need for it. A decade or two ago there were some folks wondering if maybe the church had seen its last good days. It turns out that Jesus was right after all. Cultural winds may blow, and they may be fierce, but the church always stands strong when it stands in Him. Let’s keep standing strong.
The Nexus 
As Islam is apparently on the rise would you attribute the same societal, community benefits etc in becoming a Muslim? Or how about Hinduism?
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“The church has a bit of a bad rap.”
wow, it’s great fun to see christians try to minimize the harm that they’ve done in the name of their god. Let’s see, the crusades where they killed for their god and also attacked other christians. the various religious wars between catholic and protestant royalty. The inquisition. the dum diversas that said that any non-christian can be enslaved with no problem. The christian slavers in the US. The attacks and lies about LGBT+ people. The attacks on each other during the irish civil war, adn the continued attempts of all versions to convert each other in their “missionary” work. So no, it isn’t unfair to point out the lies of this religion or of any religion.Not sure where you got that “Baptisms are up. Membership is up. Attendance is up. Reputation is up.” what I’ve seen is that they are all still down, and still declining. All that is seen is that christians are moving between versions, and each tries to claim that they are the only right one. The only places that show some increase are those ignorant countries around the world where christianity preys on ignorance and fear.
“When a group of Muslim terrorists shoved the awful violence that is part of some religious traditions in the face of the world, many Millennials responding by saying with their feet that they didn’t want anything else to do with religion.”funny how that violence is part of Christianity too, despite the attempts of christians to lie about that. “For a nation that had a uniquely religious heritage, the extraordinarily rapid rise in the number of these “nones” shocked sociologists and statisticians believing and unbelieving alike.”The US? Funny how it doesn’t have a “uniquely religious heritage” but a uniquely secular heritage, where the founders intentionally ignored Christianity and other religions. Not one was cited in the constitution. Why did you try to lie about this?
“. They are sick of how judgmental is has proven to be. Secularists rose to cultural prominence through the 1990s and early 2000s by condemning the church for being so narrow-minded and judgmental. Once it became established, however, and started forming its own orthodoxies as every worldview is wont to do, these proved to be even more narrow-minded and judgmental than the church they had condemned.”another nice set of false claims. Curious how christians love to claim this and yet can’t show it to be true. They find that since they can’t force their religions on others, that means they are such martyrs. Sorry, doesn’t work in a country where there are hundreds of christian tv and radio stations and millions of churches.
“The difference between secularism and Christianity, though, is that while both worldviews have clear views on what kind of behavior is considered to be sinful, secularism doesn’t have any notion of grace or forgiveness. If you cross the secular orthodoxy there is no path to redemption for you to walk. You are simply out.”This is quite the lie too. Alas, for you, it is human to forgive, not just christian. The secular justice system works better than a religious one where garbage like “blasphemy” is punishable by death. One pays one’s “debt” to society and that’s how redemption works. Happily, we also have love, so your attempt to cause fear to get poeple to join your cult is quite pathetic.
“One last explanation. Sociologist Ryan Burge recently released a report arguing that being a part of a church leads to greater levels of happiness. That is, going to church makes you happy. And the more you go to church, the happier you will be. And he’s got the receipts to back up his claim. Among those who report never going to church, just 22% report that they are very happy. From there, as church attendance starts to climb from seldom to yearly to monthly to weekly, and finally to more than once a week, reported levels of happiness increase smoothly all the way up to 43%. In case you missed the math there, people who are active, involved members of a church who attend at least once a week report being twice as happy as those who never go.”Actually it isn’t an explanation at all. Burge ignores that community make people happy, not religion, so your claims fail miserably again. People are also happier going to mosque, going to synagogue, etc. You intentionally misrepresented Burge’s work. Curiosu activity for a person who claims to worship a god who hates lies and liars.
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Another Christian pastor comes on WordPress to spread more lies about atheism, and is soundly rejected and thrown into the garbage can by Club S.
Seems like lying is endemic to the position of Christian pastor. but at least their pathetic, poorly-written self-advertisements and recruitments get slapped around here.
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thanks, Nota! Unfortunately, for them, their religion depends on ignorance and fear. If they told the truth about what is in their bible and history, they’d not get many converts.
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I thought I might hear from you again, Club. Posts with the “atheist” tag tend to be pretty potent catnip for you. There’s much to your response that I won’t bother responding to except to note that you don’t bother citing any evidence for anything you say.
When you note that, “The only places that show some increase are those ignorant countries around the world where christianity preys on ignorance and fear,” do you consider Norway and England and France to be included among that list of countries?
Last point, you write that “Burge ignores that community make people happy, not religion.” Do you have any research that backs that up? Burge was citing findings from Pew Research. That’s not really a hub of Christian devotion.
Pew asked 37,000 people, “Generally, how happy are you with your life these days?” The three options people had for responding were “not too happy,” “pretty happy,” or “very happy.” Among those who responded with “very happy,” just 22% don’t ever go to church. Meanwhile, 43% of people who said they attend church weekly or more. I suspect that Muslims who are active in their mosque community and Jews who are active in their synagogue would respond with higher levels of happiness than those who aren’t.
You say there right at the end that I “intentionally misrepresented Burge’s work.” In what way? Are you a member of the online pastor’s fellowship where the article of his in which he posted that data is behind the paywall? Have you read it such that you can help me understand more specifically how I intentionally misrepresented his work?
Thanks as always for your…unique…perspective. Have a good weekend.
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Jonathan, did you avoid my question because you have no data or because it does not support your Christian slanted narrative?
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Here is the census.
Read into it what you will.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/culturalidentity/religion/bulletins/religionenglandandwales/census2021#:~:text=There%20were%20increases%20in%20the,%2C%201.5%25%20in%202011).
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notable how you can’t show I’m wrong yet again, Jonathan. You claim I haven’t cited any sources to support my claims. If that is the case, then show where I’m wrong. When you try to use Burge’s research to claim chistainity makes people happy, that’s not quite true is it? It isn’t christianity it’s “religion” and since no religions are similar other than being communities, there is no reason to assume the religion is the causative factor for happiness.
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You don’t seem to be reading very closely, Club. I didn’t say merely that Christianity makes people happy (although I am convinced it indisputably does). Neither did Burge in the article you still claim I misrepresent without having actually read it. I said that going to church makes people happier. That’s what Burge argues because that’s what Pew Research’s data shows. The data shows that people who attend church regularly report being very happy with their lives at a rate double what people who don’t ever go to church report. That’s just what the data shows. You are free to interpret it further however you please.
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I did read closely and you literally claimed this:
“One last explanation. Sociologist Ryan Burge recently released a report arguing that being a part of a church leads to greater levels of happiness. That is, going to church makes you happy. And the more you go to church, the happier you will be. And he’s got the receipts to back up his claim. Among those who report never going to church, just 22% report that they are very happy. From there, as church attendance starts to climb from seldom to yearly to monthly to weekly, and finally to more than once a week, reported levels of happiness increase smoothly all the way up to 43%. In case you missed the math there, people who are active, involved members of a church who attend at least once a week report being twice as happy as those who never go.”
a church is a christian thing. So your attempts to lie to me don’t work very well.
Again, Burge said that all religions seem to have the same effect, so it can’t be the content of the religion, but something else.
The only thing similar amongst religions is that they are communities.
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I am glad at least that I can still provide you fodder for you own blog ;~)
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Are you really glad? I wonder.
As you are trying to spread this so-called gospel of love, grace, salvation etc, etc I would at least be marginally concerned why the reaction from a former believer such as Club is far from inline with what you claim.
Furthermore, the degree of disdain you display toward her is in itself telling.
*There is a comment in moderation with a link to the UK census. The figures don’t appear to support the OP.
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when jonathan lies about being glad to be blog fodder, does he think his god doesn’t notice?
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After a few years I have come to notice that these so called ‘defenders of the faith’ are similar in their approach. They really have little interest in evidence and merely trot out the party line.
And of course this will depend on which sect’s beliefs they currently champion.
Consider the recent dialogue with Phillip Mast – a perfect example of one who has switched sides and now analnost manic champion for orthodoxy.
And just look at the responses right here from Thomas.
I genuinely appreciate that Jonathan runs a open blog but while I acknowkedge he enjoys to write ( and which blogger does not? ) I wonder if he is truly interested in engaging for the sake of pursuing truth (evidence) or merely to ‘hear’ ( read) the sound of his own voice?
The gods know, right?
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