Good morning. It’s Easter, the busiest day of the year for many churches. The packed pews and overflowing chapels are a sign that Christianity is making a comeback, right? Not so fast.
Revival, is that you?
A bold claim is spreading across the United States, amplified by politicians, preachers and a new generation of religious influencers. Christianity is in the midst of a nationwide revival, they say. A decades-long exodus from church isn’t just over — it’s reversing. “There has been a tremendous renewal in religion, faith, Christianity and belief in God,” President Trump said in his State of the Union address, adding, “this is especially true among young people.” This purported religious renaissance is getting a lot of attention. Gen Z is making church cool again, The New York Post wrote. Roman Catholic churches are seeing a surge in converts, The Times reported. Manhattan’s downtown set say one priest’s homilies are “absolute bars”; his wine and cheese night has appeared in The Atlantic. (I’m guilty of this, too. I couldn’t resist this story about missionaries going viral on TikTok.) But anecdotes don’t make a national trend. And experts have urged caution: “These stories are a very small drop in a very large ocean, whose currents have for decades been taking people away from religion,” said David Campbell, a political scientist at Notre Dame who researches secularization. “For us to call this a true revival, we would need to see a level of conversion that we have never seen in the history of the United States.” And Pew Research refuted claims of a Gen Z revival, writing that there is “no clear evidence that this kind of nationwide religious resurgence is underway.” So why is everyone talking about it? What we know
There is one thing we can say for sure. After decades of religious decline, people have stopped leaving churches. Secularization is officially on pause. I’ve written about that a few times, including in this newsletter, and a new study just found that it still appears to be true — that the share of Americans who are not religious has dropped for the third year in a row. That’s a big deal. It upends decades of assumptions that the U.S. was on an inevitable march toward godlessness. But just because people have stopped leaving church en masse, that doesn’t mean a revival is underway, that suddenly the country is rushing back to the pews. Religious change doesn’t happen that quickly. Before secularization stalled, about 40 million Americans had left church over a few decades. This had extraordinary ripple effects. It changed how people gather, vote, marry, volunteer and find meaning in their lives. To undo that isn’t just a matter of people changing their beliefs, as Christian Smith, the author of “Why Religion Went Obsolete,” told me. It requires significant behavioral change — new rituals, habits and community. In short, conversion demands that people change their identities. And that takes time. For now, we are not seeing spikes in church attendance in national data, Chip Rotolo at Pew Research told me. And with birthrates dropping, fewer babies are being born into churchgoing families. Then why are people claiming revival?
It excites people. After years of losing status in American life, Christians are eager to claim ground. Ranjeet Guptara, a financier from Tennessee I met on a plane recently, told me a new church he’s worked with has “grown fast.” Even cloistered Catholic canonesses I met in the Tehachapi Mountains of California were talking about it, as was one of their visiting families. “Universities are starting to see a revival,” said Tom Huckins, a 64-year-old Catholic rancher and the father of one of the new canonesses. It’s politically advantageous. Republicans in the Trump administration and in Congress have allied themselves with conservative Christianity. “For a party that has staked its political prominence on defending a certain vision of America that is Christian,” Campbell, the Notre Dame professor, told me, “this helps them.” It’s a sign they are delivering on that promise. It’s a story that explains broader trends. The country is lonely, polarized, cynical, anxious and depressed. In reporting for Believing, a weekly newsletter about how people live religion now, people tell me all the time that they are searching for richer, more meaningful lives. “There is a hunger, especially in this climate, for spirituality,” Rabbi Sandra Lawson said when I talked with her last week about the redemption stories of Passover and Easter. But curiosity does not always lead to conversion. What else is happening?It’s important to recognize that something is, indeed, shifting in the culture. In particular, elite spaces seem to be growing more conversant in religious language and receptive to religious ideas. I’m talking about Silicon Valley billionaires embracing church, Hollywood making religious movies and pop stars singing about faith. (Rosalía recently sang that she was “hot for God.”) All of that is pretty new, and would have been hard to imagine even 10 years ago. Before we declare “revival,” though, we’re going to need more data.
War in Iran
Politics
Chappell Roan has been in several spats with fans and photographers who she felt were not respecting her privacy. What’s the best way for a celebrity to interact with the public? Engage with your fans. “I’m going, ‘OK now, the universe gave you what you were asking for. Now, what is it about people you don’t like? Oh, you want to be famous and rich without the people?’ It doesn’t work like that. It doesn’t work like that. You have to be able to engage,” said Lionel Richie said in an interview for “Artist Friendly.” Set boundaries. “I don’t like how she’s being treated at all. When a woman has boundaries, I think people freak out. Men can do violent criminal things and people applaud them, but when a woman says, ‘Stop following me,’ it’s controversial? It’s like: You guys just hate women, actually,” Zara Larsson, a pop singer, told The Guardian.
Trump should name a “special representative to the resistance” in Iran to help foster regime change, writes John Bolton, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. The war in Iran has put the country on “a path to become another North Korea,” writes the columnist Nicholas Kristof, with leaders who seem more repressive and determined to get nuclear weapons. Morning readers: Save on the complete Times experience. Experience all of The Times, all in one subscription — all with this introductory offer. You’ll gain unlimited access to news and analysis, plus games, recipes, product reviews and more.
One household, one vote: Meet the women who believe they would be better off letting their husbands vote for them. $400 Bible?: Luxurious scripture is on the rise. 16 strangers, one novel: What happens when you shrink down a book club to two days? Welcome to Page Break. Drunk, minus the drink: This extremely rare syndrome can cause D.W.I.s and accusations of secret drinking. It might be underdiagnosed. 30 years later: The Unabomber’s cabin in the woods has been moved around the U.S., dismantled, rebuilt and photographed like fine art.
Men’s college basketball: The championship matchup is set, with Michigan, the No. 1 seed, and UConn, No. 2, advancing after Final Four wins. Women’s college basketball: South Carolina will face U.C.L.A. today in the championship game. Women’s hockey: The New York Sirens and the Seattle Torrent drew the largest crowd ever for a professional women’s hockey game in the U.S., with 18,006 fans packing Madison Square Garden.
“The Keeper” by Tana French: Welcome to the final thriller in French’s reliably twisty and atmospheric trilogy about Cal Hooper, a Chicago cop who retires to western Ireland. In this installment, a young woman disappears — and then her body turns up in a river, causing an uproar that, for Hooper, is too close to home. You don’t need to read the previous two books (“The Searcher” and “The Hunter”) to appreciate “The Keeper.” But, Sarah Lyall writes, “if you start here, I bet that you’ll want to go back, if only for the chance to fill in the characters’ back stories and to luxuriate some more in French’s prose.” Read her review here.
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