Axios - Christianity is starting to make a comeback in the U.S. and other Western countries, led by young people, Axios' Erica Pandey reports. A decades-long decline has stalled, shaping the future of Gen Z, the drivers of the religious revival.
"We've seen the plateau of non-religion in America," says Ryan Burge, a political scientist at Eastern Illinois University. "Gen Z is not that much less religious than their parents, and that's a big deal."
Data from Pew shows that, for decades, each age group has been less Christian than the one before it.
- Americans born in the 1970s are 63% Christian. 1980s babies are 53% Christian, and 1990s babies are 46% Christian.
- But there was no decline from the 1990s to the 2000s. Americans born in the 2000s are also 46% Christian.
Gen Z-ers — especially Gen Z men — are actually more likely to attend weekly religious services than millennials and even some younger Gen X-ers, Burge's analysis shows.
Young men are leading the resurgence....
Many young people have turned to religion to find community and connection after the isolating years of the pandemic, which hit Gen Z harder than most.
- In some ways, this trend mirrors men's shift to the political right. "Religion is coded right, and coded more traditionalist" for young people, Derek Rishmawy, who leads a ministry at UC Irvine, told The New York Times.
- For some young men, Christianity is seen as "one institution that isn't initially and formally skeptical of them as a class," Rishmawy told the Times.
The resurgence is global.
- "In France, the Catholic Church has baptized more than 17,000 people, the highest yearly number of entrants in over 20 years," New York Times columnist David Brooks writes.
- The share of British people 18-24 who attend church at least monthly jumped from 4% in 2018 to 16% today, including a 21% gain among young men, according to research from the Bible Society. More
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