I was sent the article below I mentioned the ubiquitous claim that there’s a religious revival in America, supposedly because people are experiencing a loss of “meaning and purpose.” The return to religion, as the MSM and some liberals like to say, is because filling the “God-shaped hole” in our souls with religion will help set this cockeyed world aright.
But is there a religious revival? I’ve been dubious. All the evidence for it I can see is the slowdown in the continuing rise of religious “nones” (people without formal affiliation to a church) in the last few years. Here’s a graph showing that as documented by the Gallup organization:
That is not a revival but a plateau, like the one we had in the mid-1980s. And that plateau turned again into a rising cliff. Likewise, the Pew organization found that the fall in the proportion of Americans identifying as Christian has also plateaued:
And again, that’s not a burgeoning of Christianity, unless you count a 1% increase from 2024 tio 2024 as a “revival”. There may be a slowdown in proportion of “nones” (as documented below, atheists seem to be holding steady), but this is hardly reason for religious people to cheer—or confect rah-rah articles and books about how religion is back.
The article below from the ARC News, in fact, argues that there is no revival and that any data supporting that scenario is very thin. Click to read. Note that the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship is associated with Jordan Peterson, and is designed to give coherence to modern conservativism. That makes the article even more interesting!
Click to read (the author, Maggie Phillips, writes for Tablet):
The article is rather scattershot in both scope and writing, but it does cast a cold eye on “revival” scenarios. I’ll give a few quotes:
The Harvard Catholic Center wrapped up 2025 with huge news: the number of potential converts coming through its doors had doubled from the previous year. According to The Wall Street Journal “Free Expression” newsletter, the HCC is “booming,” dynamic proof that the kids are looking for something to believe in. The WSJ was only the latest to buy into the hype of a new American religious revival. Vanity Fair says twentysomethings are taking communion at a D.C. dive bar. The New York Post reported that in Greenwich Village, the number of adults interested in converting to Catholicism had tripled since last year. Similarly, the National Catholic Register reported that Newman Centers for Catholic college students are packed, signaling a “golden age of campus ministry.” Christian research outfit Barna says reading the Bible is back, with Millennials and Gen Z leading the charge. And that’s not all—Barna also says Gen Z now leads in church attendance. Over at The Free Press, the “Faith” section is explicitly dedicated to covering what it matter-of-factly calls “the new religious revival.”
But it’s hardly clear that this talk of religious “revival,” while nice wish fulfillment for many, is backed up by the evidence. The Harvard Catholic Center revival consists of eighty students. With Harvard’s graduate and undergraduate population of over 24,000, many thousands of whom are Roman Catholic, that’s a pretty capacious definition of “booming.” The tripled number of conversion candidates in Greenwich Village comes to a modest 130. Now, in the grand sweep of history, eighty new Catholics in Cambridge, Mass., is not nothing. And 130 more practicing Catholics, especially converts in first blush of religiosity, will make a difference to the spiritual life of Greenwich Village, or at least certain apartments there. But is something stirring in the hearts of young Americans outside of college campuses and trendy urban enclaves? Are we actually on the threshold of a new Great Awakening? Probably not. As religion demographer Ryan Burge (who teaches at the Danforth Center, which produces Arc) never tires of pointing out, accounts of America’s great religious revival have been greatly exaggerated.
“About 25 percent of Americans report attending a house of worship on a typical weekend,” Burge wrote recently in Deseret News. “If that rose by even three points—a small but noticeable increase—that would mean 10 to 12 million more people in church today than just six months ago. That’s hard to imagine, given that there are only about 350,000 houses of worship nationwide.”
Here’s a tweet from Burge showing only two changes among the four cohorts: those who believe in “some higher power” have increased 8% from Boomers to Gen Z, while in the same period those who believe in God with “no doubts” (the dark yellow bar on the far right) have fallen a full 17%.
Generation Z is the least likely to believe in God without a doubt compared to any previous generation.
Just 40% indicate certain believe. That’s 8 pts lower than Millennials.
But the atheist share of each generation is very consistent (5-7%). pic.twitter.com/wyFK0OwqqJ
— Ryan Burge 📊 (@ryanburge) February 15, 2026
The article also notes that we see a plateau, not a rise, in religiosity:
In fairness, numbers showing both Christianity’s steady decline and the exponential growth of the religiously unaffiliated “nones” seem to have slowed, or even halted, for now. But the same religious outlets with optimistic headlines about the great American youth revival seem to have forgotten their previous handwringing about the rise of the nones. A leveling-off of decline does not a revival make. After all, across the United States, thousands of churches still appear poised for closure.
In the end, the evidence for a revival happening now is inconclusive:
A national religious revival would suit both the religious, worried about decline and its consequences, and the secular, worried about theological mission creep into politics. And in a tale as old as time, a religious revival also suits grifters and opportunists. But unlike the recent Asbury revival, people can’t even agree that one is happening, at least all that much. It’s Schrodinger’s religious revival, at once happening and not. What it means, if it means anything at all, remains to be seen.
It’s paragraphs like the last that I find confusing. Yes, a religious revival would suit the religious and its touters like Ross Douthat, but why would it suit secular people.? If we’re “worried about theological mission creep into politics,” then why would be heartened by even more religious people?
Still, when you hear someone being gleeful about how America is now becoming more religious, simply ask them for their evidence.
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I was just sent this article from Utah’s Deseret News that argues the same thing (click to read):
A couple of quotes from author Ryan Burge (again):
. . . . as someone who looks at data on American religion nearly every day, I can say without equivocation that there’s no clear or compelling evidence that younger Americans are more religious than their parents or grandparents. In reality, many casual observers are overinterpreting some short-term shifts in survey data.
The General Social Survey, for instance, reported a steady rise in the “nones” between the early 1990s and 2020. In 2018, the figure was 23%, rising to 28% in 2021. The two most recent estimates are slightly lower — 27% in 2022 and 25% in 2024. Similarly, the “headline finding” from Pew’s Religious Landscape Survey was that both the decline of Christianity and the rise of the unaffiliated have paused in recent years.
But neither of these surveys suggest any real resurgence in American religion, for one simple reason: generational replacement. Every day, older Americans die and are replaced by young adults turning 18. This process unfolds slowly — almost imperceptibly — in the short term, but over five or 10 years, it can produce profound shifts in the overall landscape.
. . .People of faith will rightly say that true revival can’t be predicted or modeled — that it’s a movement of the Holy Spirit, not a statistical trend. And that’s fair. No regression equation can capture the divine.
Still, as Carl Sagan famously said, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” As it stands now, there’s nothing extraordinary in the data, however much we might wish it were so.
As a religion researcher (now retired), I have been enduring the religion-resurgence claim for decades. As one of my colleagues liked to say, “This is the wishful thinking of the faithful.” Secularization theory examines and describes one clear trend: the decline of influence of organized religion. That decline has been steady for at least 200 years. Predictably the graph is never a straight downward slope, and it often flattens out for a while, or rises. But the occasional rise is never able to overcome the downward trend. And the reasons for the (so far) irreversible rise of secularization have been long known but constantly denied by those who don’t want to believe the data. This latest claim of a resurgence differs not at all from all the previous claims. As a researcher, I have no dog in the fight. If there really was a resurgence of religion, I would have published the evidence just as any honest researcher would publish today.
Conjecture: counted as religious are those imbued with the moral maxim, “it doesn’t matter which sect you believe in, as long as you believe in something greater than yourself.”
Its the pall spread over The West by Marxists that collectivism is “The Good” and individualism is crass Selfishness at the expense of others. This fertilizer is intended to prevent fallback when NewMarxistMan is called on to voluntarily (no state) egalitanarianize himself.
This is an emotion. I conjecture that legions of young people have zero belief in God, heaven, the supernatural, yet worship altruism with fervor. They feel it as “some sort of higher power.”
I would bet that the current plateau is the combination of (1) a continuing decline in the religiosity of the existing population of America, and (2) the effect of mass migration from highly-Christian central America.
Similarly, in Europe, religion is perhaps increasing somewhat overall, but that is entirely driven my mass migration from third-world countries that are highly religious (in the UK today, as many people will attend a mosque in a typical week as will attend a church).
I agree these analyses have to account for changes over time in the demographic structure of the sample (age, culture). Without breaking out those factors, the trends over time are open to incorrect interpretations. The articles Jerry is pointing us to all want to use population trends to draw conclusions about how individuals are changing their expressed beliefs over the course of their lifetimes (the way Zach Davis in this morning’s Hili dialogue changed from a Mormon to an atheist then back to a Mormon). But demographic change could account for all of the observed trends, without anyone “experiencing a loss of meaning and purpose.” It’s the ecological fallacy.
In my city neighborhood in Frankfurt, Germany, I observe a steep rise in people attending religious services, with lots more “buildings of worship”, too, and it’s entirely driven by immigrants and their offspring.
The surveys don’t catch this trend, maybe partly because of questions not well suited to immigrant religiosity and/or biases in the sampling: they call people on landline phones which many immigrants don’t have, they talk to people in complicated German, which is too much of a bother for many more recent immigrants.
Another reason my observation clashes with the surveys is that my city neighborhood is not representative of Germany – yet.
Also, a lot of that worship attendance isn’t primarily religious, it’s ethnolinguistic community-building in an increasingly segmented society. Even Roman catholics of immigrant background now segregate according to language and ethnicity. The Catholic church around the corner has separate services and separate priests for “the Eritrean community”, “the Polish-speaking community”, etc.
Rumors of God’s resurrection are being greatly exaggerated. As Kurt says above, it’s “the wishful thinking of the faithful.”
Unfortunately religious affiliation is an imperfect index of disbelief in its supernatural elements. Pew has lots of data on this. About 80% of US adults, including young adults, believe “people have a soul or spirit in addition to their physical bodies.” About 55% of nones believe in some “other higher power.” Not surprising given explicit atheists and agnostics, constitute smaller portions of none than “nothing in particular.” The latter is about 60% of nones, with about 20% of nones in each of the other categories. Given nones are only about 30% of the population, atheists (20% of 30%) have a long way to go, atheism being the only rational choice of course. Broadly defined, even lots of scientists still need to see the light.
Giving up church is the first step to giving up God. But I’m under no illusion that atheism is burgeoning in America. One thing is for sure, though: people who don’t belong to a church, or people who are “spiritual,” will not proselytize or tell you how you should live.
With respect, Prof. Coyne, the data suggest that giving up religious affiliation is often the last step, not the first step. Secularization theory measures the decline in INFLUENCE of organized religion. Influence declines among active participants at various rates, but it declines nevertheless. In most cases that can be measured, dissent from the community’s defined beliefs and behaviors precedes abandonment from the community. For instance, evangelicalism gains most of its converts from more traditional Christian churches (only a tiny percentage convert from non-Christian backgrounds). This is a result of abandoning core beliefs/behaviors for a “Christian-light” flavor of Christianity. Then, for a generation or two or three after joining an evangelical church, this family will participate, but a gradual loosening of loyalty to core evangelical beliefs and behaviors can be measured over those generations. By about the fourth or fifth generation, evangelicalism proves to have been a stepping stone from Christianity into a secular life for a significant number of family members.
This makes sense in light of the social role religion plays. Expressions of belief are about belonging. Community–i.e. a social network–is what religious believers are seeking, not transcendence. It follows that leaving the group would be among the last acts to take, either after finding another group or going solo.
I disagree with the first statement, but the last sentence is spot-on.
When discussing religious belief, it is useful to separate those who believe that a Deity exists and those who participate in organized religion. Many of the former object to the latter. And as far as society goes, IMHO, the most important thing is whether the religious person believes that religion should play a part in public life—especially government. Those who object to separation of Church (any religion) and State should try living in a country where that separation does not exist.
Regarding your last sentence, there is a wide gulf between systems like current Iran and Afghanistan on the one side and Israel or pre-Erdoğan Turkey on the other.
Both Israel and Atatürk’s Turkey do/did not have separation between church and state. But in Turkey (pre-Erdoğan), the state administered religion mainly to keep it in check, and in Israel, religion’s role is confined to a small part of the law (even though this is controlled by hardcore fundamentalists). Both countries are/were better to live in than many a fully state/church separated country, e g India.
Words such as “soul” or “spirit” can be interpreted rather widely. For some, such terms could simply be regarded as referring to mental activity – thoughts, imagination, dreams – as opposed to physical reality. So a high degree of agreement with such terms may not necessarily have religious connotations per se, but probably also encompasses the simple dualism we experience every day.
I’m cautiously optimistic about the effects of the Interwebs’ on Gen Zs and others. While the sciences benefit from the scale of data and speeds of analysis, Big Religion scrambles to offset the effects of cold hard fact (e.g.: separation of Church and State in Iran?). I’m probably not the first to think of it but perhaps soon folks will (with the help of Artificial Intelligence) be able to find their own Personal Chatbot – Someone who’s always there – Someone who cares (Apologies to Depeche Mode).
I also recall you previously discussing social dysfunction driving religiosity. e.g.:
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2014/11/18/the-ecology-of-faith-what-makes-societies-religious/
Given the COVID pandemic and the current political state of the US, I could see why that might cause a bit of backsliding into religion, explaining the recent plateau. But, hoping that our society does recover from this current situation, I expect religiosity will continue its downward trend. The only “hope” for a widespread religious revival is if things really do go completely to pot.
“A national religious revival would suit both the religious, worried about decline and its consequences, and the secular, worried about theological mission creep into politics.”
I’m not quite sure what that last bit means either, but a rather cynical take on it would be that secular organizations might find a national religious revival useful to their bottom lines: “Everything is going fine! In fact, it’s getting better!” doesn’t motivate people to get out their credit cards and make a contribution. “The Other Side is on the rise!” tends to be featured in pitches for donations (as any of us who have ever donated money to a cause can well attest).
CJust read an article this morning in realclearinvestigations that reaches a different conclusion. “Even the cognitive elites are experiencing a growing trend to embrace religious activity. Indeed, in a rebuke of the aggressive New Atheism of the early 2000s advanced by thought leaders such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, a counter-movement appears to be growing among scientists, philosophers, and public intellectuals who view religious tradition not as a delusion to be eradicated but as a sustainable civilizational operating system.” And “The implications and promise of this trend cannot be overstated. Data show that religious communities function as potent engines of human capital accumulation, risk mitigation, and social capital. These mechanisms effectively propel adherents up the socioeconomic ladder.” If accurate, perhaps religion is just another way to organize diverse groups of humans into cooperative units by including among “us” humans we may not know but can trust because they share our culture/values.
https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2026/02/17/surprising_revival_gen_z_men_and_highly_educated_lead_return_to_religion_1165235.html
Anecdote: In the rural Deep South, the churches are filled with the educated middle class. The proverbial bubbas and hellraisers wouldn’t be caught dead there. And as the article suggests, I suspect you would find slightly more “nones” among those uneducated men and women.
Speculation: For educated young men who want to be fathers, the odds are far higher you will find an agreeable mate among those listening to sermons rather than those preaching in graduate seminars. This dynamic could explain a small shift of young educated men into the pews.
It is shocking that only 5-7% of Americans are atheists. The corresponding numbers in Czechia and Sweden are 66% and 41%. Why is that?
Serious question, Janus. Do you live in the US? If not, I can see why you’d be wondering. It’s hard to explain. Religious hegemony (there are still places in the US where atheists, at least technically, are not allowed to hold public office), polarizing tribal mythologies about the country, an education system second to, well, just about everywhere, friday night high school football (gridiron) games, and NASCAR. God bothering is a part of our national gestalt and though it is usually exactly as deep as “thoughts and prayers” sounds, it’s as American as apple pie, baseball, and school shootings.
” . . . an education system second to, well, just about everywhere . . . .”
The students subject to the ministrations of this system are subsumed in a culture of anti-intellectualism and Philistinism and bring the adverse effects of those influences into the classroom.
“Anti-Intellectualism in American Life” – Douglas Hofstadter
“Amusing Ourselves to Death” – Neil Postman
“The Age of American Unreason” – Susan Jacoby
Well, the terms “Christian” and “Jewish” appear in social media constantly even among atheists! Stop with the religious tribalism altogether if you ask me.
Only 31% of germans do really belive in a god as he is introduced in the Bible. But 38 % of MUSLIMS in Germany believe in such a christian god! Dedicated CHRISTIANS show 46 % of approval.
https://www.alexander-wallasch.de/gesellschaft/um-gotteswillen-weniger-als-ein-drittel-der-deutschen-glaubt-an-gott