Young men are returning to church — and it could reshape America’s future

If you’ve attended church recently, you may have noticed a curious sight: twenty-somethings in the pews again. It’s been a long time, but they are back. And why they are back may tell us about the time we are in as a nation and where we are headed next.

The resurgence of faith among the young has been notable and swift. A Gallup poll this year found that 42% of young men now say religion is "very important" in their lives, the highest in a quarter century and up 14% since just 2023.

According to the Barna Group, Gen-Z churchgoers are now attending more frequently than any other generation, marking a "historic reversal" and the "first time Barna has recorded such spiritual interest being led by younger generations."

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Sociologists are bewildered. Something is happening, but they don’t know what. I have an idea, in part because my own faith journey mirrors that of these young men.

I was raised in a Catholic home and attended Catholic grade schools. But while most of my high school classmates were enrolling at Holy Cross or other Jesuit schools, I chose Williams College, a secular playground — and left my faith behind.

Like so many rebellious kids in the early ‘60s, I was seduced by the idea of breaking the chains of religion to live a self-indulgent life. For a time, the questions of the age seemed more compelling than the answers I had been given.

I recall the headmaster of my Catholic high school, Father Anthony McHale, telling me, "We will get you in the end." And he was right. I returned to Catholicism by my mid-twenties — largely, I suspect, for the same reason as today’s young men.

The past decade was not so different from the 1960s, marked by progressive overreach, cultural secularism, moral bankruptcy, and political turmoil. Like my generation, today’s young people came to believe that meaning could be found in self-expression and political activism alone. But it left them rootless and empty.

Many began asking the same question I had asked: Is this all there is? And in their search, they found the answer.

The chains of religion are not restrictive but liberating. Through secularism, we find communities that accommodate our every desire. Through faith, we find communities that call us to be better. And that is what every young man craves: purpose forged through struggle, sacrifice, and service to something bigger than self.

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My prayer today is that this is the stirring of a new Great Awakening in America. If it takes hold, it may lead us back to the politics my own generation discovered in the Reagan years — one that exchanges progressive relativism for the pursuit of a moral society rooted in tradition and shared conviction.

This is not a baseless hope. A generation that recovers a sense of the transcendent will not accept the idea that the state is the highest authority. They are likely to value the family, to resist the politicization of childhood and education, and to defend religious liberty not as a special interest but as essential to a free society. They may also prove less susceptible to the despair and rage — even violence — that have characterized so much of recent discourse.

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After the assassination of Charlie Kirk last September, Bible sales jumped 36% in a single month. Sales reached a 21-year high in 2025, double what they were in 2019. It’s little wonder why. Kirk’s brave witness of the faith, and the callousness of his murder, inspired questions about mortality and meaning that social media could not answer.

I am encouraged by these signs. I believe today’s young people might not merely match the faithfulness of my generation but exceed it. Because the dark clouds of their time — AI, democratic socialism, gender ideology, and more — are even more ominous than those that hovered over the 1960s. The greater the darkness, the brighter the light can shine.

History shows that the hunger for God never fully disappears. It can only be suppressed for a season. When it reawakens, the political and cultural consequences can be profound — and, with God’s help, profoundly hopeful.