May 30, 2025 • 8 mins
GEN Z IS SEARCHING AND THEY ARE FINDING GOD I love this story so much. Today at 12:30 I will talk to Associate Editor John Hirschauer from City Journal about this story he did on Gen Z returning to church. I love this part especially:
Yet these cultural losses may have laid the groundwork for a revival. Public Christianity in the United States receded in part because a rising counterculture successfully challenged its restrictions on individual conduct. Advocates of cultural liberalization gained support by portraying mid-century Christian institutions as rigid and outdated. But today, that once-rebellious counterculture dominates the spaces that Americans inhabit—schools, workplaces, and popular media. And young people, always drawn to rebellion, appear to be pushing back. Many are rejecting a culture that exalts personal autonomy and denigrates self-sacrifice. Perhaps as a result, a surprising number of young adults—who might otherwise have left religion at even higher rates than their parents did—are, for the first time in decades, choosing to stay.
I love that turning to God can be an act of rebellion and an act of salvation.
Yet these cultural losses may have laid the groundwork for a revival. Public Christianity in the United States receded in part because a rising counterculture successfully challenged its restrictions on individual conduct. Advocates of cultural liberalization gained support by portraying mid-century Christian institutions as rigid and outdated. But today, that once-rebellious counterculture dominates the spaces that Americans inhabit—schools, workplaces, and popular media. And young people, always drawn to rebellion, appear to be pushing back. Many are rejecting a culture that exalts personal autonomy and denigrates self-sacrifice. Perhaps as a result, a surprising number of young adults—who might otherwise have left religion at even higher rates than their parents did—are, for the first time in decades, choosing to stay.
I love that turning to God can be an act of rebellion and an act of salvation.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
In City Journal, which is the outstanding publication comes out
quarterly if you're a magazine subscriber, and it's by the
Manhattan Institute for Public Policy. And joining me now is
the author of the column that caught my eye or
the story that caught my eye, Associate editor John Hirshower
from City Journal.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
John, First of all, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
So your story was about gen Z sort of maybe
I'm trying to think of the best way to say it.
I don't want to engage in too much hyperbole, like
they're saving the churches, but gen Z is turning back
to the church. Tell me a little bit about why
you did this story, first of all, and then.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
What you found.
Speaker 4 (00:41):
Sure, so, like you say, I mean, it's possible to
overstate what's going on here, and I want to be
careful not to do that. But basically, there's a few
releases of a survey or has released part of a
survey every year since two thousand and seven called the
Religious Landscape Study. Now they don't perform the whole survey
every year, but there are questions that they asked annually.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
They release it.
Speaker 4 (01:02):
As part of this broader survey and one of the
questions is simply you know whether the respondent identifies as
Christian or not. And from that random sample of thirty
five thousand Americans, they basically try to get an idea
of what proportion of the population identifies as Christian or
any number of other religions that they include in the
survey prompt And if you chart that out over time,
(01:24):
you see that since two thousand and seven, when Puce
started the poll, there's been a consistent decline in the
share of Americans generally, not just gen Z, but the
share of Americans generally who identifies Christians. So I think
in two thousand and seven, when they first started the survey,
you had seventy eight percent of Americans identifying as Christian,
and I think, with one exception, every year from then
(01:46):
through about twenty twenty three, it just consistently declined year
over year and bottomed out at sixty two percent in
twenty twenty three. I think there was one blip, but
otherwise it was just consistent decline year over year. But
then in twenty four there was actually a slight uptick
to sixty three percent, which was really kind of the
first reversal major reversal that we've seen of the trend
(02:08):
of consistent downward trajectory basically in the sheriff of Americans
who identifies Christian. And when you break that out in term,
you know, when you start to ask yourself, what's what's
going on, what's driving the shift? Why has the consistent
decline appeared at least to stall.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
I don't know that there's a reversal going on, but
at least to stall.
Speaker 4 (02:26):
And it seems like when you break out and you
partition the respondents by age bracket, you notice a consistent
decline over time or actually over birth cohort in the
share of each birth cohort that they're id identification as Christians. So,
in other words, people born in the nineteen forties and before,
(02:46):
eighty percent of them identifies Christian, and that proceeds down
and down over time through the birth decades until people
born in the two thousands, who are no less likely
than people born in the nineteen nineties who identify as Christian.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
Now, what is this actually cash out?
Speaker 4 (03:00):
As we're still talking about, you know, only forty six
percent of people in Generation Z identify as Christian, but
the fact that they did not decline as precipitously as
generations before them had. Is part of the reason that
we've seen this stability in the overall share of the
(03:20):
American population that identifies as Christian.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
You also talk about the fact that there are many
young people who are looking for a very orthodox type
of Christianity, a very very traditional type of Christianity. I
know that a friend of mine who is an episcopal
priest has said the Latin Mass is making a return
mostly because of young people.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
What do you think that's about?
Speaker 4 (03:45):
Yeah, and this is you know, this is anecdotal. There's
not a ton of great, you know, big survey evidence
on this. But just from my own experience and when
you talk to people my age, I do think, well,
first of all, young people are always rebellious, right, and
maybe in the sixties rebellion looked a lot different, the
cultural moras were a lot different.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
Now, you know, the prevailing message that.
Speaker 4 (04:06):
Young people get throughout all of these various institutions is basically,
I'm okay, you're okay, We're all okay. No one way
of living is better than any other way of living.
The choices you make basically don't matter. The reason we
exist is to you know, engage in as many acts
of like you know, sensual pleasure as possible, and then
we die and then it's over.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
And the way to.
Speaker 4 (04:26):
Rebel against that, if if you're looking your rebel, is
not to just kind of lean into the revolution even more,
but it's actually to kind of embrace an older form
of liturgy and worship that says, actually, this is not
about me. I'm not here to come to church to
kind of be affirmed as myself, but rather to like
lose myself and to look at something beyond myself. And
(04:46):
I think, you know, I don't think it's impossible for
modern liturgies to capture that, to be sure, but I
think with the older forms of worship, what you get
is a form of worship that is.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
Focused on God, on the Creator.
Speaker 4 (05:02):
Oftentimes, in the traditional Latin Mass, the priest will have
his back face to the congregations at the congregation and
the priest are faced in the same direction, and it's
just a totally different experience. And so I think it's
easy to overstate what's happening here. They're certainly enclaves of
young people who are attracted to these types of liturgies,
but is it something that's a huge widespread phenomenon. No,
(05:24):
but it's notable, like you say, because it's strange, I
think to some people to think, why are you know,
twenty two year old women wearing veils at a church?
Why are young men, you know, kind of attracted to
these forms of worship that churches had abandoned in an
attempt to appeal to young people. Right, So, I think it's.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Just a notable sociological observation.
Speaker 4 (05:48):
Even if you know, this isn't the sort of thing
that you walk down the street and you're bound to
meet a man who you know goes to some Orthodox.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
Liturgy or something.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
It's to the point that you made earlier in that
answer about young people rebelling, I actually think there's a
little more to it than just rebellion. But I do
think rebellion or salvation is a form of rebellion. Is
somewhat ironic, and I kind of love it. I'm not
gonna lie, but I think it's a rejection of the
postmodernism that you were kind of clicking through. Nothing matters,
(06:17):
nothing is important, You're completely helpless to go through the world.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
All of those messages suck when.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
You're searching, right, they're vapid, they are shallow, and all
of a sudden, if you have been innuanated with the
message that nothing matters and everything is the same and
nothing is better than anything else, even though you can
clearly see that there are things that are better than
other things. I do think there's a lot of appeal
to having that set of rules that are clear and
concise that you can easily understand that you can try
(06:46):
and attain by living a good life. I think there's
maybe a little more to it, because we see these
high levels of anxiety and depression in young people and
they see what's been fed to them before. Whether the
religion is climate change or genderism or LGBTQ rights or
whatever the new religion is, it's wildly unsatisfying.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
At least I hope that that's part of it.
Speaker 4 (07:10):
Well, I think, you know, as a Christian, I think
I would say the reason that being a Christian reduces
your anxiety and depression is because Christianity is true. But
even if you aren't a Christian, you don't accept that,
and you want to look at the social utility of
religion and why it appeals to people in an age
like ours. I think like you're saying, you know, in
(07:30):
a digital world, forgetting even the postmodernism, which is obviously
a big part of it. But we live in a
digital world where things are so for people's attention spans
are short. The institutions we belong to are you know,
they come and go, people's images, their careers, everything is
very is very fleeting. The church provides something that's enduring,
(07:52):
and ideally, I think the forms of religion that insist
that the truth doesn't change, that there's a certain there's
certain perennial things about our lives that we can know
to be true with certainty, are those that are most
likely to attract people who are tired of feel anxious
about all of the uncertainties that I think are unique
(08:13):
in some ways unique to the modern world.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
I agree.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
John Hirshower is the associate editor of City Journal, which
is a fantastic publication. You can find it at City
hyphen Journal dot org. That cityhyphen Journal dot org. I
put a link on this blog today, mandy'sblog dot com
to this story.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
John.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
I appreciate you covering this, and it's something that I've
been looking at for the last like six months or so,
just because little more data is coming out, and I'm
here to encourage it. I think it's wonderful that young
people are looking for something bigger, something more permanent, to
your point, and something that they can be a part
of that really means something. So thanks for covering it
and hopefully we'll talk again soon.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
Sounds good, Thanks for having all right, thank you.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
That's John Hirshower.
In City Journal, which is the outstanding publication comes out
quarterly if you're a magazine subscriber, and it's by the
Manhattan Institute for Public Policy. And joining me now is
the author of the column that caught my eye or
the story that caught my eye, Associate editor John Hirshower
from City Journal.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
John, First of all, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
So your story was about gen Z sort of maybe
I'm trying to think of the best way to say it.
I don't want to engage in too much hyperbole, like
they're saving the churches, but gen Z is turning back
to the church. Tell me a little bit about why
you did this story, first of all, and then.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
What you found.
Speaker 4 (00:41):
Sure, so, like you say, I mean, it's possible to
overstate what's going on here, and I want to be
careful not to do that. But basically, there's a few
releases of a survey or has released part of a
survey every year since two thousand and seven called the
Religious Landscape Study. Now they don't perform the whole survey
every year, but there are questions that they asked annually.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
They release it.
Speaker 4 (01:02):
As part of this broader survey and one of the
questions is simply you know whether the respondent identifies as
Christian or not. And from that random sample of thirty
five thousand Americans, they basically try to get an idea
of what proportion of the population identifies as Christian or
any number of other religions that they include in the
survey prompt And if you chart that out over time,
(01:24):
you see that since two thousand and seven, when Puce
started the poll, there's been a consistent decline in the
share of Americans generally, not just gen Z, but the
share of Americans generally who identifies Christians. So I think
in two thousand and seven, when they first started the survey,
you had seventy eight percent of Americans identifying as Christian,
and I think, with one exception, every year from then
(01:46):
through about twenty twenty three, it just consistently declined year
over year and bottomed out at sixty two percent in
twenty twenty three. I think there was one blip, but
otherwise it was just consistent decline year over year. But
then in twenty four there was actually a slight uptick
to sixty three percent, which was really kind of the
first reversal major reversal that we've seen of the trend
(02:08):
of consistent downward trajectory basically in the sheriff of Americans
who identifies Christian. And when you break that out in term,
you know, when you start to ask yourself, what's what's
going on, what's driving the shift? Why has the consistent
decline appeared at least to stall.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
I don't know that there's a reversal going on, but
at least to stall.
Speaker 4 (02:26):
And it seems like when you break out and you
partition the respondents by age bracket, you notice a consistent
decline over time or actually over birth cohort in the
share of each birth cohort that they're id identification as Christians. So,
in other words, people born in the nineteen forties and before,
(02:46):
eighty percent of them identifies Christian, and that proceeds down
and down over time through the birth decades until people
born in the two thousands, who are no less likely
than people born in the nineteen nineties who identify as Christian.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
Now, what is this actually cash out?
Speaker 4 (03:00):
As we're still talking about, you know, only forty six
percent of people in Generation Z identify as Christian, but
the fact that they did not decline as precipitously as
generations before them had. Is part of the reason that
we've seen this stability in the overall share of the
(03:20):
American population that identifies as Christian.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
You also talk about the fact that there are many
young people who are looking for a very orthodox type
of Christianity, a very very traditional type of Christianity. I
know that a friend of mine who is an episcopal
priest has said the Latin Mass is making a return
mostly because of young people.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
What do you think that's about?
Speaker 4 (03:45):
Yeah, and this is you know, this is anecdotal. There's
not a ton of great, you know, big survey evidence
on this. But just from my own experience and when
you talk to people my age, I do think, well,
first of all, young people are always rebellious, right, and
maybe in the sixties rebellion looked a lot different, the
cultural moras were a lot different.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
Now, you know, the prevailing message that.
Speaker 4 (04:06):
Young people get throughout all of these various institutions is basically,
I'm okay, you're okay, We're all okay. No one way
of living is better than any other way of living.
The choices you make basically don't matter. The reason we
exist is to you know, engage in as many acts
of like you know, sensual pleasure as possible, and then
we die and then it's over.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
And the way to.
Speaker 4 (04:26):
Rebel against that, if if you're looking your rebel, is
not to just kind of lean into the revolution even more,
but it's actually to kind of embrace an older form
of liturgy and worship that says, actually, this is not
about me. I'm not here to come to church to
kind of be affirmed as myself, but rather to like
lose myself and to look at something beyond myself. And
(04:46):
I think, you know, I don't think it's impossible for
modern liturgies to capture that, to be sure, but I
think with the older forms of worship, what you get
is a form of worship that is.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
Focused on God, on the Creator.
Speaker 4 (05:02):
Oftentimes, in the traditional Latin Mass, the priest will have
his back face to the congregations at the congregation and
the priest are faced in the same direction, and it's
just a totally different experience. And so I think it's
easy to overstate what's happening here. They're certainly enclaves of
young people who are attracted to these types of liturgies,
but is it something that's a huge widespread phenomenon. No,
(05:24):
but it's notable, like you say, because it's strange, I
think to some people to think, why are you know,
twenty two year old women wearing veils at a church?
Why are young men, you know, kind of attracted to
these forms of worship that churches had abandoned in an
attempt to appeal to young people. Right, So, I think it's.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Just a notable sociological observation.
Speaker 4 (05:48):
Even if you know, this isn't the sort of thing
that you walk down the street and you're bound to
meet a man who you know goes to some Orthodox.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
Liturgy or something.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
It's to the point that you made earlier in that
answer about young people rebelling, I actually think there's a
little more to it than just rebellion. But I do
think rebellion or salvation is a form of rebellion. Is
somewhat ironic, and I kind of love it. I'm not
gonna lie, but I think it's a rejection of the
postmodernism that you were kind of clicking through. Nothing matters,
(06:17):
nothing is important, You're completely helpless to go through the world.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
All of those messages suck when.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
You're searching, right, they're vapid, they are shallow, and all
of a sudden, if you have been innuanated with the
message that nothing matters and everything is the same and
nothing is better than anything else, even though you can
clearly see that there are things that are better than
other things. I do think there's a lot of appeal
to having that set of rules that are clear and
concise that you can easily understand that you can try
(06:46):
and attain by living a good life. I think there's
maybe a little more to it, because we see these
high levels of anxiety and depression in young people and
they see what's been fed to them before. Whether the
religion is climate change or genderism or LGBTQ rights or
whatever the new religion is, it's wildly unsatisfying.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
At least I hope that that's part of it.
Speaker 4 (07:10):
Well, I think, you know, as a Christian, I think
I would say the reason that being a Christian reduces
your anxiety and depression is because Christianity is true. But
even if you aren't a Christian, you don't accept that,
and you want to look at the social utility of
religion and why it appeals to people in an age
like ours. I think like you're saying, you know, in
(07:30):
a digital world, forgetting even the postmodernism, which is obviously
a big part of it. But we live in a
digital world where things are so for people's attention spans
are short. The institutions we belong to are you know,
they come and go, people's images, their careers, everything is
very is very fleeting. The church provides something that's enduring,
(07:52):
and ideally, I think the forms of religion that insist
that the truth doesn't change, that there's a certain there's
certain perennial things about our lives that we can know
to be true with certainty, are those that are most
likely to attract people who are tired of feel anxious
about all of the uncertainties that I think are unique
(08:13):
in some ways unique to the modern world.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
I agree.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
John Hirshower is the associate editor of City Journal, which
is a fantastic publication. You can find it at City
hyphen Journal dot org. That cityhyphen Journal dot org. I
put a link on this blog today, mandy'sblog dot com
to this story.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
John.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
I appreciate you covering this, and it's something that I've
been looking at for the last like six months or so,
just because little more data is coming out, and I'm
here to encourage it. I think it's wonderful that young
people are looking for something bigger, something more permanent, to
your point, and something that they can be a part
of that really means something. So thanks for covering it
and hopefully we'll talk again soon.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
Sounds good, Thanks for having all right, thank you.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
That's John Hirshower.
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