Revival or Reset? What 2025 Really Tells Us About Faith in America
Dr. James Emery White
Audio By Carbonatix
By Michael Foust, Crosswalk.com
What, exactly, is going on?
As we approach the end of another year, many are scratching their head as to whether we are in the midst of a Gen Z revival, still in the throes of the ongoing rise of the “nones,” experiencing a decline in the number of Christians, or seeing a return to the growth of religion. It can’t all be true, can it?
Well, yes, kind of.
For example, this year I’ve blogged about the findings of Pew’s Religious Landscape Study, which found that the rise of the “nones” that has dominated most cultural assessments over the last decade or so appears to have temporarily stabilized, as has the number of Christians. Translation? The Christian population has stopped hemorrhaging, and the “nones” have leveled off. But, lest we forget, that stabilization comes after a meteoric rise in the number of “nones,” and a 16-percentage-point drop in Christians since 2007.pP
I also explored whether we are experiencing a revival of sorts among Generation Z. There were promising reports from a Bible Society/YouGov survey out of the U.K., along with positive signs from Barna’s State of the Church 2025 report. But in that same blog, I noted that according to Gallup, younger Americans as a whole are becoming less likely to say they are religious, with around a third of Generation Z and Millennials now identifying as having no religion whatsoever. So while there are encouraging signs of people, particularly younger people, being open to exploring spirituality, and specifically the Christian faith, it is a minority report.
This was recently affirmed through a new Pew report that found, again, that while the decline of religion remains temporarily stalled, there’s no revival taking place. Young Americans remain decisively less religious than their parents or grandparents, with just more than half (55%) claiming a religion.
I blogged about further reports of a revival among the young being premature, and even more recently blogged that Pew has found that Islam is now the fastest-growing religion in the world. Christians still make up the world’s largest religion, but in terms of overall growth, have actually declined percentagewise between 2010 and 2020. One of the main reasons is the number of people leaving the Christian faith and becoming religiously unaffiliated—making the “nones” the second fastest-growing religious group.
So...
… we can state the headlines of the year as follows:
- The “nones” have risen dramatically and will probably continue to rise due to younger generations of unchurched coming onto the scene. But for now, their numbers have temporarily stabilized at around 30% of the U.S. adult population.
- Christian decline has also stabilized (temporarily), but after a precipitous fall.
- The stabilization of the “nones” and the number of Christians will not last as older, more religious generations die off, and younger, less religious generations reach surveyable age.
- The reports of revival, particularly among Generation Z, are largely anecdotal.
Is there anything else to add to the picture?
Yes, there is.
Christian Smith, a prominent sociologist who runs the Center for the Study of Religion and Society at the University of Notre Dame, told the Washington Post that mainstream U.S. polling categories are missing a massive world of what he calls “enchantment”—young people seeking meaning in everything from paganism to magic to books and games about demons.
“The context is that our broader mainstream culture is a dead zone of larger meaning,” Smith said. Commercialism, careerism, technology that makes lofty promises with unclear costs, he says, don’t tell people: “What are we here for? … Humans are constitutionally meaning-seeking, purpose-seeking.”
As I wrote in Meet Generation Z:
We live in a day that is more open to spiritual things than ever. Not defined religion, mind you, but spirituality. And specifically, the supernatural. There is a keenly felt emptiness resulting from a secularized, materialistic world that has led to a hunger for something more, but many are unable to go further than the search for an experience. As a result, an extraterrestrial will serve as well as an angel, a spiritualist as well as a minister. Borrowing from the late historian Christopher Dawson, we have a new form of secularism that offers “religious emotion divorced from religious belief.”
No surprise, then, that in the U.K., paganism is now the top choice for Christians who convert to a new faith. So, as I noted in an earlier blog, we may not be having a revival, but we are definitely in the midst of a moment of opportunity.
And that opportunity is for some good old-fashioned evangelism.
James Emery White
Sources
Bob Smietana, “Decline of Religion Remains Stalled, Says New Pew Report. But There’s No Revival Yet.” Religion News Service, December 8, 2025, read online.
Michelle Boorstein, “Religious Leaders Say They’re Observing a Hidden Trend Among Younger Americans,” The Washington Post, December 9, 2025, read online.
James Emery White, Meet Generation Z (Baker), order from Amazon.
Kaya Burgess, “Paganism Is Top Choice for Christians Who Convert to New Faith,” The Times UK, December 2, 2025, read online.
Related Article
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Photo Credit: ©Getty Images/franckreporter
Michael Foust has covered the intersection of faith and news for 20 years. His stories have appeared in Baptist Press, Christianity Today, The Christian Post, the Leaf-Chronicle, the Toronto Star and the Knoxville News-Sentinel.
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