faith

Is Revival Beginning in America, With Younger Men Leading the Way?

Ainsley Earhardt interviewed Christian and country singer Anne Wilson on Fox and Friends Sunday to “discuss the resurgence of Christianity among younger generations and her third studio album Stars.”

Earhardt led the segment by saying, “Young Americans are leading a Christian revival across the country.” She pointed to three cultural indicators to in support.

  • Annual U.S. Bible sales shot up 41.6% since 2022.
  • Downloads of “Religion and Spirituality Apps” were up 79.5% since 2019.
  • Spotify streams for Christian music increased 50% since 2019.

The 23-year-old Grammy and Dove Award winning artist with popular singles like “My Jesus” and “Living Water,” said it was encouraging to see those in her generation turning toward Jesus. 

Eric Daugherty, assistant news director for Florida’s Voice, posted a clip of the segment on X, garnering more than five million views.

Bibles, Prayer Apps and Worship Music

Earhardt’s statistics reflect trends building for several years toward faith. In December 2024, World Magazine and other outlets reported, “Americans bought more than 14 million Bibles in 2023 and more than 13 million in the first 10 months of this year.”  

While “religion and spirituality apps” include non-Christian meditation and “mindfulness” apps, it also includes prayer apps like Hallow and Pray, as well as Bible reading and study apps like YouVersion, Bible Gateway and Blue Letter Bible.

Those apps have seen significant increases in downloads and usage.

Denison Forum reported on the surge in Christian music in September 2024,

Contemporary Christian/gospel music (CCM/gospel) has been the fourth-fastest growing genre in the industry across the first half of this year. Its popularity has risen by more than double the industry standard and does not look to be slowing anytime soon.

And the most encouraging part is that the growth has been fueled largely by the younger generations, with Millennials and younger accounting for roughly 45 percent of its listeners. On average, fans are spending 56.8 hours a month listening to CCM/gospel, which is an increase of 19 percent in the last year alone. 

All of these statistics indicate a growing interest in spiritual growth and renewal through Bible reading, prayer and worship. But there are several other signs of God is moving in a new way – especially among young men – to build His kingdom.

Commitment to Christ  

The Christian research organization Barna reported, “Sixty-six percent of all U.S. adults say they have made a personal commitment to Jesus that is still important in their life today.”

The research group explained the significance, saying, “That marks a 12-percentage-point increase since 2021, when commitment levels reached their lowest in more than three decades of Barna tracking.”

This shift is not only statistically significant – it may be the clearest indication of meaningful spiritual renewal in the United States. Commitment to Jesus was lowest in 2021 and 2022, when it bottomed out at 54 percent. Since then, the research shows a steady, year-over-year increase in the key indicator.

The report notes the surge is driven by younger adults, born after 1984, with men showing the greatest increases in claiming a commitment to Christ:

Since the pandemic, however, Millennials and Gen Z have shown significant increases in commitment to Jesus.

Men – especially younger men – are more likely to be Jesus followers than are younger women. For example, among Gen Z men, commitment to Jesus jumped 15 percentage points between 2019 and 2025. Millennial men saw a similar spike of 19 percentage points.

Mass Baptisms and Conversions

On college campuses across the country, there are reports of large-scale worship and evangelism services followed by mass baptisms.

UniteUs is a ministry dedicated to the “movement of college students united to lift the name of Jesus.” The group has hosted outreach events at colleges since 2023. This fall semester they reported,

  • University of South Florida: “Almost 7,000 college students filled the USF arena and God moved powerfully! Close to 2,000 salvations, over 300 baptisms, a generation marked by Jesus!”
  • “Last night at The University of Tennessee!! Over 8,000 gathered. Over 500 salvations. Hundreds baptized. Countless lives changed forever.”
  • “Thousands of young people gathered at the University of Oklahoma last week to worship Jesus. Hundreds were saved, and many were baptized in the early morning hours. GOD IS MOVING IN THE NEXT GENERATION.”

Greg Laurie, senior pastor of Harvest Christian Fellowship and founder of Harvest Ministries, began hosting evangelism and baptism events in 2023 at Pirate’s Cove in Newport Beach, California. Laurie chose the site because it “was used for baptisms during the Jesus Movement in the 1960s and ’70s and was depicted in the 2023 Lionsgate film, Jesus Revolution.”

Laurie reports that his ministry has seen more than 10,000 people baptized since then.

During the COVID-19 lockdowns, evangelist and musician Shean Feucht began hosting “Let Us Worship” events in cities across the country. Two years ago, Feucht reported on the number of people attending those events: “Over 1 million gathered in person. Millions more online. Hundreds of thousands of decisions for Jesus. Tens of thousands of baptisms.”

Church Membership and Attendance

It’s not just evangelicals and charismatics who are experiencing signs of revival. Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches have seen an influx of new members joining their churches. Again, young men are leading the way.

The Pillar, a Roman Catholic news outlet, reported earlier this year,

  • The Diocese of Cleveland expected “812 converts at Eastertime 2025, which is about 50% higher than in 2024 (542) and about 75% higher than in 2023 (465).”
  • The number of converts in the Diocese of San Angelo is 56% greater in 2025 (607) over 2024 (388). 
  • Converts in the Diocese of Worcester in central Massachusetts are up almost 25% this year (323) over last year (259), and this year’s figure is 152% higher than in 2022 (128).

The Orthodox Studies Institute surveyed Orthodox churches around the country and found a statistically significant increase in male converts in 2022. The survey found that new converts were primarily younger, with 62% under 40 years old.

Across all denominations, recent Barna research shows an increase among young adults attending church. “For decades, older adults – Boomers and Elders – were the most reliable churchgoers. Today, the pattern has shifted. Gen Z and Millennials, often labeled as disinterested in faith, show the highest levels of regular attendance.”

Historically, women attended church more frequently than men. But the organization’s studies show that script has flipped, with men attending church more than women.

“As of 2025, 43 percent of men and 36 percent of women report attending church regularly, based on reported weekly attendance. In five of the last six years, men have outpaced women in this key measure of religious engagement, and the 2025 gap is the largest measured.”

Growing numbers of young men attending church has become so noticeable that even The New York Times reported on it, “For the first time in modern American history, young men are now more religious than their female peers. They attend services more often and are more likely to identify as religious.”

Historic revivals included an outpouring of God’s presence with outward manifestations of the Holy Spirit, bringing deep repentance and grief over sin, transformed lives, social changes, and church growth.

Certainly we’re seeing signs of all these today – especially among young men. It’s too soon to declare that this is a full-blown national revival, but it really does seem like the beginnings of one. Let’s pray that these signs grow and bring lasting change to individuals, our churches and our world.

Related Articles and Resources

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‘I Forgive Him’: Three of the Most Impactful Moments from Charlie Kirk’s Memorial

‘I Forgive’: Tim Allen Forgives Father’s Killer, Inspired by Charlie Kirk’s Widow

In Praise of Harrison Butker’s Courage, Conviction and Christ-Centered Commencement Speech

Jesus Boldly Proclaimed at Ohio State, 50 Baptized

Meet the Christian Triplets Using Social Media to Share the Gospel: ‘Jesus is the Way’

The Myth of the Dying Church: How Christianity Is Actually Thriving in America and the World

Nearly 100,000 People Woke Up at Dawn for Charlie Kirk’s Memorial. Here’s Why.

NFL’s Jake Bates: ‘I Hope People Can See Jesus Through My Story’

Pray for Ongoing College Revival

Image credit: Fox and Friends

No, Science Can’t Answer the Biggest Questions of Life and Existence

As we consider a new year, the start of year 25 in this new millennia, our minds often turn to questions of ultimate importance. God is giving us another year to live for Him and others. How do we find what matters most in this New Year?

A go-to line from secularists and critics of Christianity and faith is that science is where it’s at in terms of getting real answers to the biggest questions about life and existence in the universe. They maintain that science is able to accurately tell us all we need to know about life’s biggest questions, while religion is just gussied up superstition.

But is this really true?

Can science actually provide us with the answer to everything most meaningful? The confidence of those who assert it can is as large as it is wrong. This outsized belief in the ability of science is called scientism and it is important we all understand its limits.

Late last year, professor Marcelo Gleiser, a theoretical physicist at Dartmouth College, published a brief and important essay explaining the practical limits of science in answering some of humanity’s largest questions about life, reality, and existence. His piece is as interesting as it is humble.

What Is the Universe Made Of?

Right out of the gate, Gleiser explains that science still has far more questions than answers about the fundamental nature of the universe itself. The professor explains that for all the remarkable progress science has made of late, “we know only 5% of the composition of the Universe.” He adds, “The mystery is the other 95%, composed of dark matter (roughly 27%) and dark energy (roughly 68%).” Gleiser confesses science’s agnosticism here,

We don’t know what dark matter or dark energy are, and there are hypothetical explanations that try to modify Einstein’s theory of gravity to accommodate the observations and do away with the darkness.

He concludes that “after decades of searching, we [scientists] remain quite ignorant.” That is refreshing admission.

How Did Life Come About?

As cock-sure confident as some evolutionists and secularists are about the origins of life, Gleiser admits science has no real, final answers. He acknowledges “the mystery here is how aggregates of nonliving atoms gathered into progressively more complex molecules that eventually became the first living entity, a chemical machine capable of metabolism and reproduction.” The complexity of life is too complex for science.

And what about the seeming orderliness of life, the fact that things grow with intention and in reasonableness, evidenced in the regular seasons of life and nature that we all enjoy? How does that happen? Gleiser tells us “The fact that living matter is matter with intentionality remains a profound mystery” to science.

Elsewhere, Gleiser explains that the very question of what life actually is defies science because it bleeds into arenas outside science’s scope. After all, the word “animal” for living creatures comes from the Latin anima which means “soul.”

What Makes Us Human?

The next big question professor Gleiser tells us science has been unable to answer is this: What makes humans truly different from the animals? He explains our DNA is almost identical to gorillas, but we have three times as many neurons and our development is far more advanced than any animal. Why is this? If all life evolved or originated from one source, what caused humans to become so distinct from the rest of the animal kingdom? To date, he admits, science has no plausible and definitive answer to this very important question. Only questions.

What Is Consciousness?

Consciousness is so basic to our being that we are often not even aware of it. It just is, but that is is what allows you to read and consider this very sentence. Without consciousness, life as we know and experience it as humans would not be possible. It is our most basic operating system for being human. But science has so far failed to adequately answer the question of how human consciousness developed, but also what it actually is. Dr. Gleiser asks,

How is it that the brain generates the self of self, the unique experience that we have of being unique? And why is there a consciousness at all? What is its evolutionary purpose, if any?

Science is unable to answer this question because consciousness cannot be observed and tested.

Why Does Matter Exist?

Like consciousness for human experience, the interrogation of why matter exists is the basic question for the physical world. And again, science has no satisfactory answer.

Matter itself is a conundrum for science because according to the laws of physics, “each particle of matter – each electron, proton, neutron – should have a companion of antimatter, like twins.” But it doesn’t. Gleiser explains “the mystery is what happened to this antimatter” and science has “been trying to figure this one out for decades with no great success.”

So, science is stuck with its own serious and intractable mysteries. Any good philosopher of science will admit this. The proposition that science is the one sure way to all knowledge is a religious dogma of scientism.

Yes, religious faith has many unanswered questions too. It trades in mystery and has limits in its own knowledge. Just like science.

This shortcoming of science is not a criticism of science because it is a remarkable tool allowing humans to understand much about ourselves and the larger world. Science actually arises out of a Christian worldview where it is understood that God created an orderly universe that operates reasonably and is worthing of our exploration. It is sensible.

We do not know for sure that we will be given our next breath or tomorrow’s sunrise, but it is a very reasonable assertion that we will because of the orderliness of nature. Creation is far more reliable than it is capricious, and Christianity brought that understanding to the world out of paganism.

But science cannot do everything. It has profound strengths to be sure. But it also has its very real limitations, just like everything else, save for God. And anyone who claims science reliably answers all our most pressing questions demonstrates they are not a dutiful student of the discipline.

“Equality Act” Discriminates Against Faith-based Adoption Agencies

Before the November 2018 elections, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, who was then the House Minority Leader, announced that she would make passage of the “Equality Act” a top priority if Democrats took back control of the House. After the Democrats did just that and she was re-elected as House Speaker, Pelosi reiterated her promise, “We will make America fairer by passing the Equality Act to end discrimination against the LGBTQ community,”

Pelosi made good on her promise in March 2019, when she introduced the act in the House. The House version of the Equality Act, H.R. 5, has 240 co-sponsors, while the Senate version, S.788, has 46 co-sponsors. The legislation would amend the 1964 Civil Rights Act to redefine “sex” and prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI). The bill similarly amends a number of other federal laws, including the Fair Housing Act, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act and the Government Employee Rights Act of 1991.

While touting the idea of making America fairer, Pelosi consistently fails to explain the discriminatory consequences of this legislation for a variety of different groups. In a previous article, we looked at some of the negative effects on religious freedom – as the legislation labels truths about marriage, family, and men and women to be “discrimination.” And we saw the effects on privacy and safety – especially for women and children – as it opens restrooms, locker rooms and dressing rooms to those who believe they are the opposite sex.

But there are other harmful consequences from this legislation. In addition to the concerns we’ve already written about, H.R. 5 creates problems for faith-based adoption agencies.

The Equality Act Redefines “Sex”

When the Civil Rights Act of 1964 banned discrimination on the basis of “sex,” it was clear what “sex” meant: being male or female. But the Equality Act redefines “sex” to include:

(A) a sex stereotype;

(B) pregnancy, childbirth, or a related medical condition;

(C) sexual orientation or gender identity; and

(D) sex characteristics, including intersex traits.

For modern gender ideologues and their allies, it’s a “stereotype” to believe that there are just two sexes – male and female. It’s a “stereotype” to believe that marriage is the union of a husband and wife. And it’s a “stereotype” to believe that children deserve a mother and a father. Those who act on these truths are, according to the Equality Act, discriminatory.

The Equality Act labels basic truths discriminatory “stereotypes” and elevates sexual confusion to the same status as basic Constitutional rights such as freedom of religion, speech and association.

Faith-based Foster Care and Adoption Agencies

From its very beginning, the church worked to save human lives and to stop the atrocities of abortion, infanticide and infant abandonment. An early Bishop of Rome, Callistus, set up “Life Watches” where abandoned infants were rescued and placed in Christian homes.

The Christian practice of caring for orphans continues today, with Christian organizations helping place children in homes with a mother and father. Oftentimes such groups work with federal, state and local government agencies, helping parents navigate the adoption and foster care systems.

But in states that have passed SOGI non-discrimination laws, numerous faith-based foster care and adoption agencies have been forced to stop their work – because they will only place children in homes with a mother and father. Catholic Charities of Boston refused to comply with a Massachusetts law protecting sexual orientation. The organization asked for a religious exemption, but was denied. It closed its doors in 2006.

That same year, San Francisco Catholic Charities announced that it would end adoption services rather than place children with same-sex couples. The organization was following 2003 guidelines from the Vatican that noted that same-sex unions lack “sexual complementarity” and children placed in such homes “would be deprived of the experience of either fatherhood or motherhood.” Catholic Charities in Illinois, Washington, D.C, and Buffalo, New York have followed suit, ending their involvement in adoption.

Other Christian adoption agencies are fighting to continue their work and follow their beliefs in Pennsylvania and New York. Michigan recently announced a settlement with the ACLU where the state would no longer provide funding to adoption agencies that only place children in families with a mother and father.

The Equality Act has no religious exemptions. In fact, it specifies that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which was designed to preserve religious protections, may not be used as a defense for violating the Equality Act. As a federal law, the Equality Act will cause more Christian adoption and foster care agencies to close – or else violate their religious beliefs.