According to a new report from Pew Research Center, Christianity’s long-documented decline has leveled off. Interestingly, the data seems to point to an unlikely contributor to this stabilization: young adults. Specifically, “young adults born from 2000 to 2006 have turned out to be about as religious as adults born in the 1990s,” Kelsey Dallas wrote in a Deseret article about the study. “Researchers had been expecting a notable religious decline from one birth cohort to the next.”
Similar trends among young adults have been documented outside of the United States. In Western Europe, Gen Z is more likely to attend church than their parents or grandparents. In the United Kingdom, they are half as likely as their parents to identify as atheists. At the 2024 Lausanne Global Congress — arguably the largest global gathering of Evangelicals ever to congregate — leaders focused on Gen Z as the next generation to advance the gospel and faithfully address the challenges confronting the global church. A similar focus on Gen Z was evident at Gather25, a day-long broadcast service that attracted approximately 7 million participants across the globe.
In matters of religion broadly and Christianity specifically, the focus on our younger generation is warranted.
In February 2023, a routine 50-minute chapel service at Asbury University in Kentucky did not stop for 16 days. This unplanned “outpouring” hosted approximately 50,000 guests, many of whom were young adults. We documented visitors from approximately 280 other colleges and universities representing 39 states. As they came to the altar, the prayers of students predictably fell into one of four categories: anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation or addiction. Referring to their raw and desperate prayers, a colleague said, “If we had the spiritual eyes to see it, we would see an altar covered with loosened chains.” The event came to be known as “the Asbury Revival.”
Why Gen Z? After all, this generation has been described as skeptical of institutions, discipled by phones and social media, and characterized by depression and anxiety. On the surface, they seem an unlikely cohort for spiritual revival.
The answer might be found in the ideas of 20th-century Scottish pastor James Stewart, who suggested that awakenings begin with desperation. And young adults are desperate. I believe there is a soul-starved meaning vacuum across the U.S., even the world. And this meaning vacuum is acutely felt by younger generations.
As the most marketed-to generation in history, students are not interested in yet another opinion. Rather, they are pulled toward what they perceive as genuine. It is little surprise that this is a generation that elevates and prioritizes authenticity. They want something steadfast and real to which they can anchor themselves amidst the dynamism of this moment. “[Y]oung people … are craving some kind of structure of how to orient themselves and their lives,” says British author Freya India.
Reflecting on “outbreaks of spiritual fire,” Kyle Richter and Patrick Miller of the Gospel Coalition write: “Gen Z is spiritually starved. The disorienting circumstances of the last three years … [have] created a famine of identity, purpose, and belonging. Gen Z is hungry for the very things the empty, desiccated temples of secularism, consumerism, and global digital media cannot provide, but which Jesus can.”
Commenting on some of the commitments we have seen among students over these past few years and a general wave of student spiritual interest documented across U.S. college campuses, my wife remarked that Gen Z may be more willing to “die to themselves” because, in some ways, they are already half-dead. In other words, the spiritual diseases of modern life are slowly eroding the souls of our up-and-coming generation. We are dying from mind-numbing addictions to technology, the binary grid of partisan politics, a proliferation of pornography, the empty promises of consumerism, reality-escaping drugs, a want of community, crumbling social bonds, loneliness, mistrust and paranoia, and tribal contempt.
This is a desperate generation, desirous of hope and change. This is why Robert Cunningham, founder and director of Christ for Kentucky, said Gen Z is “ready to follow the Jesus whose following is changing the world.”
As president of the university, I am frequently asked about Asbury’s campus in the wake of February 2023. What are things like now? Are students more spiritual? Have we seen change? The answer is yes — there is a blessed and encouraging spiritual residue evident throughout our campus. However, I am always quick to encourage people to broaden their outlook. Across the United States and across the world, and entirely consistent with the Religious Landscape Survey, I believe the next generation is poised for something different.
Political scientist and religious statistician Ryan Burge has long covered America’s religious decline and the rise of those claiming no religious affiliation over the past 30 years. “But things are changing,” he says. “We are stepping into a new room.” I think he’s right. And Gen Z teens and young adults are leading the way.