Why are more celebrities rediscovering faith in recent years?

Few celebrities have been associated with excessive self-indulgence more than Russell Brand, who has described himself as someone who “for a long time was associated with a decadent hedonistic Hollywood lifestyle.”

So Brand understands why his new public commitment to follow Christ may come as a surprise to some — saying in the spring of 2024, “I’ve reached a point where the figure, the personage, the presence of Christ became overwhelming, unavoidable, welcome, necessary.”

“I’ve reached a point in my life where the material world was not enough,” he elaborated.

“As a person that has in the past taken many, many substances and always been disappointed with the inability to deliver the kind of tranquility and peace ... I’ve been looking for, something occurred in the process of baptism that was incredible,” Brand said the day after his baptism in the River Thames by a Christian pastor.

“I feel as though some new resource within me has switched on.”

“Suffering is not fun, is it?” he added, by way of explanation for his decision. He also acknowledged that he’s not the only one who knows “what it is to suffer” and “what it is to sometimes feel the actual presence of evil in your life.”

“Where do you turn to in those moments?” he asked. “Well a lot of people across the world are turning to religion.”

That includes other celebrities.

An unlikely trend

On New Year’s Eve last year, Shia LaBeouf was confirmed into the Catholic Church after reportedly being influenced by playing a well known Franciscan Friar in the 2022 film “Padre Pio.” Before the movie, he identified as agnostic.

In April 2024, Candace Owens decided to recommit to her faith, joining her husband who is a devout Catholic. She wrote, “praise be to God for His gentle, but relentless guiding of my heart toward Truth.”

Actor and singer Joshua Bassett shared about experiencing repentance and a renewed commitment to Christ. “Immediately I felt the Holy Spirit, which I had never felt before,” he wrote. “Just this light turned on. I literally cannot express to you the peace I felt in that moment.”

Nick Shakoour recalled praying right after accepting a role to play Zebedee in “The Chosen.” “You probably don’t even exist,” he said to God. At the time, he experienced a heavy burden from past painful experiences. “I started in my heart asking God to remove this burden,” he said. “Lord, whatever this is I’m carrying I want it off of me.”

After a miraculous encounter, the actor said, “For the first time in my life, I genuinely gave them [my idols] to God … I gave him everything,”

In the fall of 2024, Rock star Alice Cooper shared how he was healed from alcoholism so dramatically that his doctor was incredulous. “God took it away from me,” he wrote.

“If we don’t all revolve around Christ, then we’re out in space somewhere,” Cooper said. “He’s the core of everything. He’s life itself. He’s the light.”

Cook said the change he has experienced is “nothing you can explain in words, you know, it’s something that happens to your heart.”

Since that time, Cooper said that in his rock songs, “I always try to have some lyric pointing towards Christ.”

Skepticism toward new believers

There is understandable curiosity and questions about these shifts, with some raising more serious suspicions about the motives of some of these celebrities. For instance, Brand and LaBeouf’s conversions came in the wake of serious accusations raised by different women alleging abuse.

Brand has denied the allegations.

But in 2020, LaBeouf admitted to past mistakes, telling The New York Times. “I have no excuses for my alcoholism or aggression, only rationalizations. I have been abusive to myself and everyone around me for years. I have a history of hurting the people closest to me. I’m ashamed of that history and am sorry to those I hurt.”

On a religious podcast in 2022, he later confessed, “I was a pleasure-seeking, selfish, self-centered, dishonest, inconsiderate, fearful human being.”

One of LaBeouf’s spiritual mentors, Alex Rodriguez, vouches for his sincerity. “The person he is now isn’t the person he was before.”

Fatherhood has helped him stay humbled and rooted, added Rodriguez. “Redemption is a moment to moment, day by day thing. Like Springsteen said, you gotta prove it all night,” director Abel Ferrara said of the actor. “I’m rooting for him.”

About the online backlash he’s faced, LaBeouf has said, “If you spend all your time reading about the way the internet views you, you forget about any love that exists in the world.”

Maybe they do really believe?

Celebrities like this convert because “they’re convinced something is true,” said conservative commentator Michael Knowles. “Sometimes in society there can be social advantages that go along with certain positions, like becoming a Democrat,” he acknowledged.

Then he argued, “there are not really social benefits to becoming Catholic,” referencing some of the recent stories.

(Some have argued that within the new American political environment, there are some benefits to publicly committing to faith, whether that is Vice President J.D. Vance’s commitment in 2019 to Catholicism or even Elon Musk calling himself a “cultural Christian.”)

Yet Knowles went on to lament how infrequently media observers seem open to the possibility that these shifts are happening because the people actually “think it is true.”

About his own recommitment to the Catholic faith of his upbringing, he described the real difficulties, “There were plenty of things I was doing that I couldn’t do anymore. ... There’s a lot of things we’re accustomed to that you have to give up.”

“When I became a Christian, I found I didn’t ‘have to give up’ anything,” one commenter wrote in response. “The Holy Spirit took away the desire to do the things I shouldn’t be doing.”

A bigger trend

Brand said it is “not just me that’s experiencing a spiritual awakening. Across the world, there appears to be a return to religion.”

“The material world that I sought to find solace and comfort in is no longer serving that function for many young people,” he said. “That’s extraordinary isn’t it? People are waking up, people are realizing ‘it doesn’t work, it isn’t going to work.’”

In an article entitled, “Is the World Ready for a Religious Comeback?” New York Times columnist Ross Douthat wrote, “The new-atheist idea that the weakening of organized religion would make the world more rational and less tribal feels much more absurd in 2024 than it did in 2006.”

“Existential anxiety and civilizational ennui, not rationalist optimism and humanist ambition, are the defining moods of secular liberalism nowadays. The decline of religious membership and practice is increasingly seen as a social problem rather than a great leap forward,” he added. “People raised without belief are looking for meaning in psychedelics, astrology, U.F.O.s.”

Brand has spoken extensively about his own past centered on “various forms of addiction substance misuse and drinking too much and an overwhelming urge to lose myself in concupiscence continually looking for love in all the wrong places.”

“As a drug addict, you’re trying to synthesize spiritual experiences. You are trying to find meaning and connection and purpose,” Brand told Tucker Carlson. “You’re trying to transcend.”

Although a person can “find a great deal of solace” in “a loving relationship with a partner,” the actor-turned-YouTube star has also said that “sometimes the material world and human relationships — they’re not enough.”

“For me this is a new discovery,” calling it a “surrender” that is something he won’t “be able to undertake perfectly.” Yet he says, “for the first time in my life I fully understand that I’m not at the center of my universe.”

The rippling effects of religiosity

“I’ve always been a bit rebellious because I don’t like being told what to do,” Brand has also said. “But the problem was that the god I was in the service of was self and self-interest.”

“Once people believe in God, look at the things that happen,” the actor continued. “People recognize that they’re only here briefly … that we’re all brothers and sisters, all sorts of things fall, the scales fall from your eyes and you think, ‘Oh my — this doesn’t matter. If I die it doesn’t matter. What matters is how I live. What matters is what my virtues are. What my principles are.’”

Brand told Carlson that he wishes he had known this earlier. “I wish I hadn’t thought that I was too clever for the religion of my grandmothers. ... I thought that I was too smart. I thought somehow that I knew what was in the Bible even without reading it.”

Now, he said about scripture, “It’s blowing my mind on a daily basis. I can’t believe the profundity, the depth, the incredible beauty, the deep truth available to all.”