Why Are Younger Evangelicals Drawn to Older Expressions of the Faith?
One morning in the spring of 1990, my sister and I watched our mom drive off the farmyard for the last time. After years of struggle and then a very tempestuous night in our home, it was now clear that our family had changed forever. On the surface, it seems strange, but this memory becomes vivid to me when I am asked why young men in particular are becoming so conservative.
Growing up, I became deeply aware of the sharp contrasts in the world around me. Ours was a close-knit community. A small farming town made up of Mennonite families who had been intertwined with one another for generations. These families had moved to Prussia together from Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands in the mid 1500s. When their way of life came under strain there, they moved as a group to Russia in the late 1700s. As religious freedom waned in Russia and the Canadian prairies opened up, another mass migration happened in 1874. Through a combination of necessity and conviction, the Mennonites formed and maintained a very distinct culture. Always wary of “the world”, they kept intact their Low German language, their distinctive food, their familiar last names, and their particular expression of the Christian faith.
In 1990, much of this accumulated history remained on display. Our small town was largely represented by a small handful of last names, a church that served as the hub of community life, and a long tradition of honouring history, hard work, and preserving a distinct identity. Families were tight-knit, and marriages were forever. Except for my family. We served as the singular case that stood out very obviously in an otherwise homogeneous microculture. My parents’ divorce marked uncharted waters for the community, and I grew up keenly aware of the fact that I was now living in two different worlds. One world mirrored what Canadian culture was fast becoming: mobile, transient, temporary, and enamoured with the novel values of secularism and the sexual revolution. The other world was connected to the old ways: fixed, generational, stable, and close-knit. Despite the unsettled nature of our home life, it remained true that my school class, my hockey team, my baseball team, and my Sunday school class were all the same group of guys. I loved it. I was naturally drawn to anything that resembled stability and strength.
Our dairy farm was a quarter mile from my grandparents’ dairy farm. I frequently stuffed a kitten into my pocket and rode my bike to Grandpa’s after dad and I were done with morning chores, so I could “help” him too. The help usually consisted of me getting pushed around the barn in Grandpa’s silage cart. Life was simultaneously unsettled and idyllic. After the divorce, our farm was sold, and my family moved to the American West Coast, where I finished high school.
God was kind to me amid all the change. Good memories were made and new friendships formed. Yet as I grew up, I felt increasingly uncomfortable inhabiting two worlds that already could barely touch each other, and which seemed to be growing even further apart. As I observed the world of transience and progressive values, I found myself drawn more and more to the old ways. This disposition was already in me as a small child, but the intentionality with which I pursued permanent things grew stronger as I got older.
After high school, I moved back to my old hometown. I lived with my grandparents and spoke primarily in Low German with them. I wanted to be sure that the language of the old world continued to live through me. I became a member of my old church, the one in which I was a fourth-generation Plett man. I enjoyed my grandma’s traditional Mennonite cooking and loved nearly every minute of working on my grandpa’s original home farm with him and my uncle.
When I started a new career at the local feed company, I met my wife. She was from one town over, also from a dairy farm, and from the same strain of Mennonites that established my town. I had a strong desire to start my own family. I knew that I wanted to move on from the unhappiness of my past, and it always seemed that the best way was to press ahead and do what I could to establish the stability I had so strongly craved as a kid. God was merciful, and He has blessed me with a wonderful wife and an incredibly fulfilling marriage. He has filled our home with three children who are now on the cusp of starting their own households.
Six years into our marriage, we had the opportunity to purchase the farm I had grown up on, the farm that sold after my parents’ divorce. This was a very specific answer to years of prayer. We started farming there as a family, and I was blessed to now provide my children with the life that was taken away from me. My sense of the importance of history, of family identity, and of being “home” grew in both importance and beauty. A few years after starting our own farm on my home place, my wife’s home farm came for sale. It provided a bigger opportunity for us, but my sense of having gone “back home” made this a difficult decision. Eventually, the decision was made to move to what is now our current farm. But even here, there were plenty of reminders of how interconnected the old world was. My grandma informed me that the 100-year-old hip-roof barn on the new farm was built by her grandfather and moved to its current location by my wife’s grandfather. It further turned out that my grandpa helped my wife’s grandpa cut the lumber that was used to build our farmhouse. The saw they used is on display on our living room wall. I was connected to my ancestors even amidst a move to my wife’s family farm.
My instincts have always been of a conservative nature. I have always valued the permanent over the popular; the stable over the sexy. The values that came in vogue after the 1960s always seemed unserious to me. The egalitarianism, progressivism, collectivism, the sexual license, and the transience seemed capable of using up the capital that past generations had built, but entirely unable to create more of that capital, or even of maintaining what remained. While there are many good and godly men and women from the Baby Boom generation who have managed their families and lives in a God-glorifying manner, the overall ethos of their generation marked a very significant shift. The move from the silent generation to the boomers appeared to me to resemble a car that grandpa made sure to fill up before parking. My parents’ generation went on a joyride until it was empty, then left it parked that way for their children. It seems like the whole world was moving into a prodigal son mentality. An entire generation was happy to walk away with all the wealth previous generations had slowly and meticulously built up and contented themselves with the notion that they’d be rich for weeks. The emphasis had seemingly shifted from playing the long game to pursuing self-fulfilment and leisure. Like King Hezekiah, far too many seemed to be unconcerned about the long-term consequences of their actions, as long as they could die before seeing the worst of it (2 Kings 20:19).
Becoming a father in 2005 forced me to reckon with the responsibility of shepherding little hearts. I wanted this work to be intentional, and I wanted a firmer foundation than personal instincts and cultural memories to raise my own family with. Bible study and exploring unresolved questions took on a new intensity for me. Through a series of many complex providences, I found myself exploring Calvinist soteriology, quite much against my wishes. The Mennonite expression of Christianity revolves quite strongly around personal morals, such as pacifism and distancing oneself from the world. It has never really concerned itself with doctrinal precision, expository preaching, with a theological vision that extends beyond the private life of Christians, or with the history of the church. I had many questions as a kid, and it seemed like they must have been bad questions since I couldn’t get satisfying answers for many of them. Calvinism was definitely bad, but we weren’t quite sure why.
Since the earliest days of Anabaptism, there has been a self-conscious rejection of the history of the church with its creeds, confessions, and public theology. The proverbial baby was thrown out with the bathwater. Everything between the book of Acts and the rise of the Anabaptists was seen as part of the idolatry of the Roman Catholic church, to be discarded wholesale. Lutheran and Reformed Christians preserved far too much of church history. They knew too much. Their theological vision was far too ambitious. Their understanding of sola fide would probably lead to loose morals. Ironically, the (small) tradition which had given me so much comfort growing up had its roots in a much older and very intentional rejection of the (big) Tradition which has marked Christianity through the ages. Mennonites are often quick to point out that while they aren’t Roman Catholic, they are also not Protestant. Nor are they in between. They represented something altogether different: a radical approach to the faith which allowed them to look at all the major streams of Christianity with suspicion. Anabaptism is a tradition of rejecting Tradition.
Nevertheless, I am thankful that my Mennonite tradition instilled in me a respect for the Bible. Because of this, I remember being at a crossroads of telling myself, “If I’m committed to the inerrancy of the Bible and to the laws of logic, then Calvinism is correct. But I don’t have to like it.” I made the uncomfortable change in doctrine and lived in that dissonance until a winter of depression caused me to see that God’s meticulous providence was not merely true, but also good and beautiful. I remained firmly planted within my Mennonite church setting despite this change in my theology. My love for my roots and my family identity was strong enough that I never considered switching churches to even be an option.
As it turns out, the relentless force of logic keeps moving. Calvinistic soteriology cannot be neatly isolated from the broader Christian vision. Over the course of years, Trinitarianism, Christology, ecclesiology, covenant theology, and eschatology all needed sorting out in a consistent manner. My own move from one narrow slice of Calvinism to full-orbed Reformed theology is not an uncommon one. Worldview is about coherence, and isolated ideas don’t fare well on their own. The shift to a consistent and thoroughgoing Reformed vision of the Christian life was much more pleasant than my initial step into Calvinism. Most notably, the move to covenant theology and postmillennialism breathed new life into my veins. There, I discovered that there was, in fact, a reason for my conservative instincts. These instincts exist because man was made for dominion – to occupy and expand. To take his place in the story, downstream from his grandfathers and upstream from his grandsons, as he makes Christ known in every sphere. The knowledge of the Lord will indeed cover the earth as the waters cover the deep (Hab. 2:14; Isa. 11:9; Ps. 72:19). The Great Commission is how the gospel recovers what was lost in Eden. Grace restores nature; it does not destroy it. Families are not about self-fulfillment or mere biological urges. Rather, they are God’s primary means of re-heavenizing the cosmos. We do not show up as blank slates, but as products of the past and a bridge to the future. My instincts about history, home, and intergenerational duties weren’t just private instincts but a glimpse into how reality actually works. Despite my religious background, I realized I was now operating with a rock-ribbed Reformed and Puritan vision for the lordship of Christ over absolutely everything.
As satisfying as the “all of Christ for all of life” approach is, it marked a painful realization that I could no longer operate in my Mennonite church circle. Anabaptist pietism and separatism are quite at odds with a theological vision that sees Christ as having crown rights over every sphere of life. Yes, even over economics, culture, and law. Ironically, my desire to retrieve an older, more historic expression of the faith forced me to leave my own personal history.
Fast forward several years, and I find myself still dairy farming but also pastoring a confessionally Reformed Baptist church in the heart of Mennonite country. Such churches didn’t exist here 15 years ago. Now an entire network has formed. We are young in more ways than one. As a church, we are barely four years old. In terms of demographics, we are likewise young. There is a constant stream of young families and young children flowing in. Over two-thirds of our congregation is below the age of 30. The cooing of babies is to be heard all around. And the back stories of newcomers tend to share a familiar theme. Young people have been taught to respect the Bible. They value marriage and children and passing on the faith. Like me, they see the folly and self-destructive nature of progressive values. Like me, their instincts are conservative, but lacking explanation. They want it to make sense. But, like me, they have not been given satisfying answers to their questions. They desire a coherent vision of Christianity that has a historical pedigree. They long for the permanent things; the ancient things. They are homesick for a younger, yet much more ancient world which they haven’t yet visited, and they mourn the century of neglect and vandalism that has been unleashed on what their great-grandparents built.
It has been a tremendous joy to be part of what God is doing at Trinity Fellowship, where I pastor. People from many different backgrounds are finding their way to Trinity and to other churches like ours. On the whole, these are young families looking for stability, for consistency, and for a path to see the resurgence of historic Christianity. They have replaced skits and anecdotes with intentional liturgy and catechesis. But many have noticed one other trend. Farmers and blue-collar people tend to be overrepresented in churches like ours. At Trinity, roughly 30% of our households are involved in farming, despite the fact that farmers make up 2% of the population. We have our share of educators and engineers and health care workers and salesmen, to be sure. But blue-collar trades seem to be over-represented. One of our farmers, a first-generation European immigrant, asked me why we have so many farmers at Trinity. It’s an interesting thing to consider. What is driving all this? Why are young people flocking to the old paths? Why are young men leading this way, and why are young women so receptive to it? And why so many farmers and blue-collar folks?!
Last week, one of our young men sent me a link to a country song called McArthur. It poignantly tells the tale of four generations of McArthur men who have stewarded the land that their patriarch had secured for the family. The youngest generation is faced with the decision of a payout from a real estate developer or of honouring their father. The lyrics reignited my curiosity over what God is doing among young men, and why we have so many of them coming to Trinity, despite the fact that they do not come from a Reformed or Puritan background. Further, why are so many of these young men blue-collar guys with young families?
My suspicion is that the attraction to Reformed Christianity is multi-faceted among these young men. Reformed Christianity’s emphasis on the continuity of church history is appealing to those who have been born in the wake of the Baby Boom generation. Theirs was a generation that valued “Freedom 55”, moving away from family to pursue careers, having unnaturally few children, no-fault divorce, the normalization of gender confusion, and optional church attendance. For those of us who have felt first-hand the destructive and anti-productive nature of this new way of living, the permanent things hold a special appeal. It does not surprise me in the least that conservative Reformed Christianity is one of the main beneficiaries of a generation that is rejecting the superficiality of their parents’ generation. The big box evangelical churches are not equipped to shepherd a generation of young Christians back to the world of normal. The young people I talk to want something sturdier and more intentional.
Even in Canada in 2026, the cultural memory of Christianity remains vivid for many. With that comes a built-in respect for the Bible. Oftentimes, this respect for the Bible has not been equally paired with a strong understanding of what this Bible teaches. The Reformed vision of sola Scriptura not only cherishes Scripture as our sole final authority, but it does so while still recognizing the subordinate authority of the history, creeds, and confessions of the church. These are simply a historical record of how the church has summarized the teaching of the Bible. The Reformed doctrine of sola Scriptura thus preserves the unique authority of Scripture while avoiding the shallow biblicism that refuses to extend the logic of Scripture to all of life.
What is Reformed theology without the Calvinistic emphasis on the sovereignty and providence of God? This too finds resonance in homemakers and blue-collar men who are forced to live in reality. In an age that pretends that two men could be married, or that a man could transform himself into a woman, reality continues to insist that the lights won’t come on if a house is wired wrongly, that bridges won’t bear weight if built incorrectly, that concrete won’t set if poured poorly, that you can’t harvest soybeans if it’s raining, and that bull calves will never get pregnant, no matter how zealous our efforts. The war of our age is the war for normal. Is reality optional? The war is increasingly waged via the stories we tell ourselves. Which story can account for the world as it actually is? We know it to be the Christian story. The story of creation, fall, and redemption isn’t just compelling; it’s true. As it turns out, even in the year 2026, reality remains mandatory.
The covenantal and postmillennial emphasis that has historically marked Reformed and Puritan life, however, is one of the most compelling aspects of the Christian story, in my mind. The biblical world picture involves the succession of generations, of the sovereign Lord producing godly seed through godly parents (Mal. 2:15). Further, it consistently pictures the history of redemption as a history not of decline and catastrophe between Christ’s first and second advents, but rather as a history of incremental growth and advance, even through setback and suffering (Ps. 2; 110:1; Matt. 13:31-33; 16:18). It is the story of how God is restoring paradise lost. Through the gospel of Jesus Christ, He is incrementally uniting heaven and earth.
Young men have an innate and God-given desire to use their strength. A vision of Christianity that teaches these young men that the world will indeed be won for Christ through the faithful use of their strength is far more compelling than a vision that teaches them to do the right things but then turns around and assures them that “we lose down here”. Worse yet, some have a Gnostic vision that treats the physical creation as though it doesn’t really matter at all. God will annihilate the physical creation at the final judgment, so we can continue to float around as disembodied spirits. The classically Reformed emphasis that God is renewing this creation rather than discarding it altogether to replace it with some kind of ethereal “heaven” will naturally capture the masculine imagination. Farmers and blue-collar men already think this way. They are surrounded daily by reminders of the barn that grandpa built, the land that great-great-grandpa cleared when he moved here from the old world, and the plumbing company that great-grandpa started with his friend. Men in these professions also frequently work with and plan for their sons. As men age, they go through the natural stages of risk-taking, building, guarding, and then legacy planning. A biblical view of history assures them that, under the lordship of Christ, these instincts are not only correct but in fact bring glory to God (Prov. 13:22). A biblical conception of history breathes life into masculine men.
Of course, I see the world through a masculine lens. I am wired for dominion, for productivity, for advance instead of decline, for turning the five talents I was given into ten, if the Lord blesses. The social and economic damage that was done in the 20th century is heartbreaking to see. The “compassionate” (Prov. 12:10) policies of the last few decades have made us all poorer, and they have made normal things like property ownership and a stay-at-home mom feel like an impossibility for some. My job as a pastor is to help move people from cursing the darkness to turning on the lights. Many of these young men in their 20s and 30s hope to live long enough to see the end of the 20th-century mindset. I hope they do. I would personally welcome the repeal of the 20th century. I feel a natural kinship with the young men in our congregation who realize that turning the lights back on will mean they will have to think and live more like their great-grandfather’s generation than like their father’s generation. They seem up for the challenge. But it is not only young men drawn to the old paths. They are bringing their wives and children with them, and many single ladies also seem drawn to the same vision for their own reasons. In my conversations with women who have found their way to churches like ours, I frequently hear words like “wholesome”, “traditional”, “safe”, and “natural”. Just as young men naturally know that their strength must be for something, so young women know that their beauty and their softness must be for something.
One of the most destructive abnormalities of the 20th century was feminism, which has proven to be hardest on women. The sexual revolution overturned the ancient exchange of a woman’s sexual exclusivity for the protection and productivity of a man’s strength. Birth control and an abandonment of biblical norms meant that women went into the sexual marketplace priced as cheaply as men. Feminism refused to see the dignity and glory of women as women and replaced that vision with one that tied a woman’s value to her ability to operate like a man. The cold, godless machinery of feminism is opposed to both nature and grace. It always has been. Women were sold a bill of goods and realized the hard way that they can’t have it all. Balancing a corporate career, a fulfilling marriage, fruitful child-rearing, and being a Titus 2 mentor was never going to be possible, but a generation or two of women have sacrificed their lives attempting to defy gravity in this way. Many older women are burnt out, broken, and alone. Families are spread across the country with little connection, and the memories of a career are insufficient to fill the void and the silence of an empty house. The young ladies I talk to are relieved to discover a Christian culture that assures them that their instincts and their nature are not defective. The desire to marry and have children and be a homemaker is not only acceptable; it is a woman’s highest calling. It is her glory to build her house (Prov. 14:1; Titus 2:5). It is a visible relief for many of these young women to finally have a church leader tell them that they are not settling for second best, but pursuing their highest and best use when they commit their lives to being present in the home to shape immortal souls. It is evident that they feel honoured, protected, and glorious when they are surrounded by a church full of strong masculine men. As it turns out, patriarchy is the greatest safeguard of a woman’s unique glory, and it always has been.
My own ancestors actually did live this way. They had a wider world of Christian culture to show them how utterly normal this way of living is. Depending on region and personal experience, people can know the Anabaptists as either very traditional (Amish, old Mennonites, etc.) or as extremely liberal (Mennonite Church Canada, Mennonite Church USA, etc.). The radical roots of the Anabaptist movement will naturally tend towards liberalism, in my opinion. But the culture of farming and of being tied to the land tends to act as a counterbalance, where it is still found. But in a world that has tried its best to throw off the customs and virtues of Christianity, young people are left at a crossroads. They can leave the faith altogether and be consistent with the Hegelian spirit of our age; the religion of the progressives. They can live in a contradictory world where their actions follow the old paths, but without a proper grounding. Or they can find themselves among many others who are finding a home in an older expression of Christianity. One which attempts earnestly to account for head and heart; body and soul, heaven and earth, past and future.
It has been correctly said that the entire narrative of Scripture can be summed up as “kill the dragon, get the girl”. This is the meaning of the world. We hear the echo of this True Story in the stories that we have always enchanted ourselves with. Good stories have always included courageous knights, ugly dragons, and beautiful princesses. Good stories involve advance, conquest, and a kingdom. We have told ourselves these stories all through antiquity because they are true. They point us to the ultimate story arc of the cosmos, of a Warrior King who, even though bruised, crushes the head of the serpent so He and His bride can enjoy eternal peace. He is making her more beautiful every day. No wonder these stories are so powerful. Consciously or not, we enact them in real life. The pioneer lifestyle of my ancestors repeated this story well. When they got here, there were no jobs but plenty of work. There were dragons to slay, families to raise, and kingdoms to establish. So it is again, with different dragons to slay and new families and kingdoms to build.
The church I pastor so happens to be on Manitoba’s historic Red River. We meet a stone’s throw away from the Mennonite Landing Site, where my grandfather’s grandfather got off the boat to start a new life in a new world, to secure a blessing for his children’s children. He, too, left his familiar world for something he trusted was bigger and more enduring. God tells the best stories.
Image: The Cornell Farm (1848), Edward Hicks. Wikimedia Commons.
