Gen Z is Killing Secularism. Will Protestants Join In?
An article in the Times last week observed that, “Young people have reversed many of the libertine trends of the later 20th century: drink, sex, social life… but atheism?” It’s true. Gen Z doesn’t drink, smoke, or have much sex. They don’t go to bars or clubs, but those were all closed during their formative years anyway. Zoomers are rightly described as under socialized. Since when are youngsters otherwise? But the effect of this under socialization—the mainstream is always the referent here—is different than what most people expected: they are free to reassess and, in some cases, reject standard social dogma and mores, including secularism (or what I’ve called elsewhere, public atheism).
What Zoomers are doing, especially the men, as part of their cultural rebellion is returning to religion. A new report from the Bible Society suggests a “quiet revival” is unfolding in the UK. Only 39 percent of Brits identify as Christian, but the number of people attending church in addition to weddings, baptisms, and funerals has risen from eight percent in 2018 to 12 percent in 2024. More telling is that the number of Gen Z’ers (18-to-24-year-olds) attending church in addition to special occasions has jumped from four percent to 16 percent. That latter figure is over 20 percent among young men. UK Bible sales have increased markedly. In some surveys, 62 percent of Gen Z describe themselves as “very” or “fairly” spiritual compared to only 35 percent of those over 65 describing themselves that way and only 13 percent of Gen Z identifies as atheist.
Conditions Conducive to Conversion
This signals that the generational transfer is already in process, especially among Roman Catholics which is in decline and losing most of its cradle Catholics rapidly (some 90 percent). Gen Z doesn’t find atheism attractive or viable, both personally and culturally. Richard Dawkins is no longer compelling to Zoomers, but neither is someone like Russell Moore who welcomed the decline of the Bible Belt and cultural Christianity. Even Dawkins doesn’t agree with Moore. Of all people, Zoomers are experiencing the deleterious conditions of a masochistic and conformist Christianity of their fathers. In other words, secularism is dead, and the secularization thesis along with it.
As the Times explains, the triumph of secularism was dependent on a certain optimism that has been thwarted by social, political, and economic realities—the ones Gen Z has grown up in without memory of the before times. Secularism, it turns out, requires affluency and political stability. Multiple recessions, boondoggles in the Middle East, new wars in Europe, inflation, stagnant wages, Covid lockdowns, and the rest are not, it turns out, events that make people more secular, but less. Factor in that “the traditional consolations of a well-lived secular life are weakening.” Meaning, “Romance, friendship, family and materialism figure less prominently as sources of meaning in the lives of a generation that is poorer, lonelier, less sexually active, less sociable, and less likely to start a family.”
It is no coincidence that more than half of Gen Z’ers believe they will be worse off (by most metrics) than their parents. In the long run, however, they may end up better off in other ways including spiritually. Secularism, rightly understood, was a highly contingent flash in the pan in a uniquely superficial moment in history, and the bottom has fallen out. In other words, we should expect a religious shift even if the Bible Society data is jumping the gun.
Too Good to Be True?
And yet, Stephen Bullivant doesn’t quite buy the revival story. The Bible Society is overly optimistic, skeptics claim—even if the skeptics earnestly hope their own skepticism is misplaced. But why not? The trend has been noticed for some time now. Now at least some data supports anecdotes and tracks other trends. Libertinism, as even 17th century prophets warned, is something of a package deal. Why would an ascetic reversal be any different?
This is different somehow from what Jospeh Bottum described a decade ago as intellectual draw to Roman Catholicism in the midst (or tail end) of the “Catholic Moment.” Now the young want aesthetic beauty and embodied community more so than intellectual rigor and “moral seriousness” solitarily consumed, and they don’t yearn for a publicly respectable religion but a publicly assertive one. That is, one that is not mainstream in fact or aspiration. These things aren’t mutually exclusive, of course, but there is a difference between the order of priority and impetus for conversion. If the Times article is any indication, Zoomers are compelled by how happy and communal Christians are—not their moral arguments so much as their lives—and their rootedness in something older than the 2010s.
Zoomers (and younger millennials too) seem to want exactly what Bottum said is needed for religious participation to produce social benefits: strict moral code, thick community, high-level commitment voluntarily embraced. Media can no longer satiate this desire from a distance. Maybe millennials of the Young, Restless, Reformed days could feed on YouTube sermons from Driscoll, Piper, and Keller, but as the medium has transitioned to an influencer model and short-form snippets, the reach of online sermons is shrinking. Piper et al. took advantage of a new medium at the time with fairly little competition, but their same message could not be so easily packaged and disseminated today, never mind that the “Seashells” sermon would simply not land with Gen Z. All this is a welcome change. The priority of in-person meetings, relationships, and preaching is good. The result: less celebrity pastors. Influence will come by two means: either local and in-person (smaller but thicker audience), or by joining the influencer class (broader audience). Mainstream credentials, associations, or acceptability markers will limit effectiveness there. Most pastors will struggle to combine the two or otherwise bridge the gap mainly because the content they would produce for the latter category will not be compelling to Gen Z.
Counterculture
Ministry posture is always, in some way, seeker sensitive insofar as it is conscious of the demographics of the seekers. And this demographic—Gen Z—is the most natural for churches to embrace: the young, next generation. Renewed interest in Christianity, notes the Times, is connected (especially for men), in embrace of other counter-cultural, traditional values such as “growing hostility to perceived feminist overreach.” Another way of saying that Gen Z men are drawn to traditional masculinity and cultural assertiveness.
Those figures (pastoral and otherwise) who reflect this will draw Gen Z men. The Times recalls that the Conservative MP Danny Kruger (popular online) recently declared Britain a Christian nation. Pete Hegseth, Tucker Carlson, and JD Vance have similar popularity for their moral and culturally Christian forthrightness. An important insight from the article is that because of mass migration, especially in the UK, the spiritual environment has been disrupted. The ever-growing presence of Islam exposes Zoomers, in real life and online, to a “serious and unembarrassed,” assertive and nonconformist religious display. It is not just intellectual certainty, but cultural certainty that is confronting Zoomers raised to be secular liberals. As Muslims dominate major American metro areas and Hindu statues are erected in others, the same effect will unfold in America, and surely the religious fervor of 2020 has had similar effect. Is it any surprise that enforced virtue signaling was met with dissident vice signaling?
The paradox is that as Christians of the last generation attempted to fit Christianity into a peaceable relationship with secularism, Christianity was culturally marginalized, it lost social capital. This marginalization has produced the subculture feel for Christianity that now attracts the next generation, but the next generation wants an historically conscious, culturally assertive Christianity that does not negotiate with secularism. Wouldn’t it be ironic if future historians identify “faithful presence” and adjacent modes of Neutral World posture, as the key contributors to the rise of Christian nationalism. Zoomers find secularized Christianity boring but simultaneously want a political (i.e., secular) Christianity.
Seat at the Table
Leaders who reflect the opinions and worldview cast by mainstream media and their Evangelical auxiliaries will lose credibility with Gen Z as fast as mainstream media itself has. They are all listening to Joe Rogan earnestly entertain Christianity, not David French performatively castigating Evangelicals. In the wake of secularism’s brief predominance, Christianity that does not cater to secular conditions but offers a diametrically opposed individual, cultural, and political alternative is what is marginal, edgy, and cool—a bonified subculture in Europe and the UK.
Evidence of the Gen Z revival in the UK is centered on college towns. Certainly, age demographics have something to do with this, but so too does the fact that universities usually spawn the avant-garde (even if it’s not coming from the professors—now a detested class) and attract the intellectually open which, in 2025, means entertaining the antiquated and “irrational” rather than the modern and skeptical. The cultural currency—what it means to be a smart person—has entirely reversed and so too have the litmus tests for trust. As with any young generation, there is no better way to alienate Zoomers than to regurgitate the tired truisms of secularized Christianity.
The same goes for “credentials.” Democratized communication has once again made “influence” currency and discarded “credentials.” (The Vatican itself seems to already understand this.) Arguments and narratives have to be compelling, not merely credentialed. Everything is being questioned; everything is up for grabs. But make no mistake, Zoomers are not cynical like their secularist predecessors—its not the same dynamic. They don’t need the fine-tuned apologetics against secularism of Ravi Zacharias and the like. They need serious, confident, and public religious practice.
Moreover, you don’t see Catholics disciplining Zoomers online for holding “radical” or edgy cultural or political views. You see them doing everything they can to bring Zoomers into the fold and capitalize off their youth and energy—their conversions are very (intentionally) public. There may be inherent limitations for Protestants in this regard but said limitations should be interrogated to ensure that they are not simply cultural holdovers from the secular age. The message currently communicated by at least a very visible subset of Roman Catholics is that they want to be counter cultural and, in this way compelling or attractive, especially as they are bleeding members (especially the cradle Catholics). Maybe they deal with edgy Zoomer views in private, but they certainly don’t do so publicly. There is, at least, a strategic lesson there. Embracing the Zoomers might be unpredictable and a nerve-racking (for boomers) but so are all bets on the future. The Christian denominations with the highest risk tolerance will profit.
Fundamentally, Christian institutional leaders must accept that religion is now right wing coded (and male coded), and that the future cohort to target is the young men who are more conservative and religious than both female counter parts and their own fathers. Being right wing, even being MAGA right wing, is what’s fashionable (and youthful), and these are the people who will determine future elections, these you want to influence and catechize. The “mainstream” begrudgingly recognizes this; leftist strategists recognize it. Christian leaders should recognize the trend too though what they do with this information is obviously different. All we are identifying here are demonstrable cultural shifts.
That religion is right coded and that being right coded is fashionable is an asset that western Christianity has not had in several generations. The development is inherent in the cultural dynamics of the reversal itself—rebellion against the status quo (i.e., left wing)—but also the condition of who set the table first. It was right wing spaces (broadly conceived) that presented new religious messaging and facilitated counter cultural discussions first. Anyone arriving late at the party does not have the luxury of setting the table, and new arrivals must prove they belong at the table by showing their willingness to tolerate and converse with the other guests. It would be particularly impolite for late arrivals to set the table with dirty silverware and plastic plates.
Any ministry strategy calibrated to Negative World will have to account for and adjust to these dynamics in navigating the cultural edge that is now right wing and masculine. Secularism was cool in Neutral World, but Christianity (of a certain posture) is cool in Negative World. And there is competition. Although Tiber and Bosporus swimming may be overblown, there is something going on. In 2022, the New York Times called the Catholic Church “New York’s Hottest Club.” Vibes aren’t permanent, but it’s clear that Rome’s evangelism strategy is multi-faceted. They’re seriously investing in the future. The Augustine Institute just bought a scenic, 284-acre retreat center in Missouri that was built by Boeing. Its self-professed purpose is evangelism and theological formation. Is there any recent, comparable Protestant investment out there? Does any Protestant pastor have the reach and influence of Bishop Barron? Is there any major cultural center that currently features Protestants setting the tone, leading the charge outside of their own ghettos? All that to say, Protestants need to think seriously about how to respond to the moment. Lest Protestants fool themselves into thinking that the vibe shift will boomerang them back into a more comfortable Neutral World, they must recognize that the shift itself precludes it. What Gen Z wants is not a return to the cultural and political neutrality in which Christianity was tolerated and secularism ascended. Such a settlement would only reproduce the preconditions for the present, which they resent. Again, what they want is a Christianity entirely foreign to both Christians and secularists of the past world. If their experiences have taught them anything, I gather, it is that there is no going back, and they don’t want to. The choice is between Negative and Positive World, and least in Negative World Christianity is countercultural again.
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