How Gen Z found religion
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I'm Jonquan Hill. This is Explain It To Me. A couple Sundays ago, I did something I try to do at least once a month. I climbed the stairs and entered the sanctuary of Metropolitan AME in person instead of online. ♪

When you walk in, one of the first things you'll notice are these beautiful stained glass windows. But one of my favorite features are the candelabras right behind the altar. One of them was a gift from abolitionist Frederick Douglass. He attended services there, and it's even where they held his funeral. Growing up, church was a regular part of my life. My dad's a pastor in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Church is how I made a lot of my friends growing up.

It gave me my first taste of public speaking. And since pastors in that tradition are moved around from church to church, it also determined where I lived, bouncing around different cities across the country. There's a familiarity and a comfort in going. I like hearing the songs I heard growing up. I like catching up and saying hi to the people I know. It makes me feel more grounded.

I'm a millennial. A lot of my friends don't go to church. I'm an outlier in my friend group that way. A lot of my friends don't practice any religion at all, even if they grew up with it. So I was interested to learn recently that a lot of young people are turning to organized religion today in ways that many people in their 30s and older just aren't.

And a couple weeks ago, we asked our Gen Z listeners to share their experiences coming back to church. Hi, my name is Mackenzie Haas. I'm 25. I live in the heart of the Bible Belt, Wichita, Kansas, and I have always not really been someone who cares for religion. That being said, I grew up Catholic, and now I have kind of turned a corner going back towards my faith in God and just regularly praying.

I'm a Gen Z individual, and I found religion. I did not grow up going to church. My family never went to church when I was younger, but I always had questions and felt like something bigger was out there. So as soon as I could drive myself...

I went to church and started looking for those answers. And so many of you called in with stories of returning to faith in your 20s. As a cradle Catholic that has found its way back into religion, I understand why a lot of young people are actually going back to religion. And honestly, it's more so because there's no other place to turn to, more like a higher power, in order to just see what's wrong with life or just having to find an answer immediately.

through a higher power, I guess. As someone who left the church but actually recently returned to church, it's been very refreshing to see Democrats and left-leaning candidates and politicians be proud of their stance and use Christianity and their faith in God to push forth their beliefs. They're at that age where they're

Making meaning of things, making sense of things, trying to figure out, does God love me? Me. After church, during the time where people tend to mill about before heading to brunch or whatever other Sunday plans they have that day, I asked people if they were seeing more young folks coming. We are indeed seeing that. And what we are finding are seekers who want a theological depth of

One of the things that I've learned, JQ, is young people don't just want to be preached at. They want to build community. This week, we're looking into why young Americans are getting more religious, especially when it comes to Christianity. Later on, we'll visit a traditional Catholic parish that Gen Zers are flocking to. But first, we're going to talk to a political science professor about why this is happening in the first place. Stay with us. Support for the show comes from Mercury.

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I always tell people to introduce themselves and do it like you would at a dinner party, but also a dinner party where it's okay to talk about religion and politics. That's not many dinner parties in my life. My name is Dr. Ryan Burge, and I am a guy who looks at religion data all day long. Okay, to understand where we're seeing young people turning to religion and why, I went to Dr. Ryan Burge, Associate Professor of Political Science at Eastern Illinois University.

I was a pastor for almost 20 years, three different American Baptist churches in rural Illinois. And the last church I was a pastor at actually closed down last July because we didn't have enough members to sustain ourselves. Why was membership declining? Do you have any idea?

Well, it's hard to be a growing church in a declining town, in a declining region. We were also part of the mainline tradition, which is the more like moderate flavor of Protestant Christianity, which has been in, you know, real decline now for 50 years. When I hear that, it sounds so reminiscent of stories of churches I've heard, and it sounds like it fits into this wider picture of Christianity in America. This year, Pew Research Center released the findings from their most recent religious landscape study,

Tell us what the Religious Landscape Study is and what it found this time around. Yeah, so Pew spends a lot of time and resources on getting religion questions right. And it kind of creates like the benchmark, the barometer, which all other surveys that talk about religion try to use that as sort of like the measuring stick of did we get it right or did we get it wrong? The Pew numbers on like the share of Americans who are Christians or non-religious is sort of considered to be like the most authoritative source on these things.

So as far back as we have survey data, Christianity has been in decline in America. So since the early 1970s, general social survey started in 1972, about 90% of Americans were Christians in that first wave. And then over time, it just continued to decline, decline. It's almost like every year you expect it to just be one point lower than the prior year, two points lower than the prior year. American Evangelical Church in Freefall.

Recent findings from the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University found a growing decline in Christian beliefs and church attendance. With each passing year as fewer of us attend religious services regularly, we're losing our places of worship. But what's interesting is, at the same time the share of Americans who are non-religious has also risen. We saw just an unbelievable rise. We call them the nuns, N-O-N-E-S, non-religious people.

They went from 5% of America to almost 30% of America in 2022. So nuns go from 5% to 30%. Christians go from 90% to low 60%, 62%, 63%. But the biggest story in all that is what's happened the last four years or so, which is the share of Americans who are Christians has stopped changing.

and the share of Americans who are non-religious has also stopped changing. They sort of hit these plateaus. And for all the movement and change and volatility we saw, the last four years we've seen none of it. It's been relative stability, which is really intriguing from a demographic perspective, a religious perspective, a societal perspective, why that's happening. Is the decline that we saw specific to Christianity, or did that happen to other organized religions too?

So, smaller groups are really hard to measure because they're small. You know, numerically, it's hard to figure out. Like, Jews are between 1% and 2% of a survey, depending on what survey you do. So, any decline there probably is within the margin of error. Hindus are half a percent of America. Buddhists are 1%.

Latter-day Saints are 1%. So it's really hard to sort of track those really small groups with a lot of specificity. But at the end of the day, there's a lot of Christians in America. There was a lot of Christians in America 30 years ago, and there's actually still a lot of Christians. Most Americans today are still Christians. I think we forget that sometimes.

So how did this decline we've seen in Christianity break down along the generational lines? Every generation is less Christian than the prior generation, at least as far back as we know, right? Going all the way back to the early 1900s. And what's fascinating is the drop is very consistent. If you look at the religious differences between Gen Z and millennials, it's actually incredibly small.

So a person who's 40 years old today, their religiosity on average is not that much different than the religiosity of a 20-year-old. And on some metrics, I've seen some data, and I've published this data, that says that young people are actually more likely to be weekly religious attenders than millennials are.

So there are some metrics that say that young people's religiosity actually might be higher than people like in their 30s and 40s. So that's a huge, we've never seen that before. I'm kind of curious why we're seeing more young people turn towards religion in this moment.

hard to say. You know, the pendulum swings in a society from one direction to the other direction. Politically, we had that in America, right? With the Great Society in the 60s, we were a very liberal country, and then we had, you know, the Reagan Revolution, and we swung back to the right. Then we had Obama, we went back to the left, and we had Trump, we go back to the right. Well, with religion, the pendulum's been swinging towards secularization for 40 years now, right? You

You know, to be a young person is to rebel against your parents. And, you know, in my generation, it was like, oh, I grew up very, like, hardcore Catholic or evangelical. And so I became an atheist. Like, that was the most rebellious thing you can do.

But imagine if you are a second-generation atheist or third-generation atheist. You know what the most rebellious thing you can do is be a Christian or be an Orthodox Christian or be like a Catholic that goes to Mass every Sunday. So I do wonder if young people are sort of reacting to all the changes we've seen in society. And I do think you are seeing some young people go, I want something that feels ancient and traditional and historical, that seems more rooted and more concrete than what we have right now. And I think for some young people, that's very appealing to them.

Are we seeing this shift happen equally among women, young women and young men, or is there a gender breakdown? So this might be the most interesting story in American religion right now.

We've always known in social science that women tend to be more religious than men by a couple points. More likely to go to church, more likely to identify as Christian or Catholic, you know, some religious tradition. And what's really fascinating is among Gen Z, the gender gap has gone to zero on religion. That men and women are probably as religious as each other in Generation Z. And on some metrics, like religious attendance,

young men are actually more likely to go to church than young women are. Recent data shows young Gen Z men are finding their faith and leading a resurgence back to church. I mean, when this first started to kind of emerge in surveys, it...

it shocked experts. So to see young men driving this is really, really surprising. And we're seeing sort of anecdotal stories about like Orthodox Christianity seeing a huge rise in young men. The Catholic Church is seeing a huge rise in young men, kind of traditional Catholicism. So all those things, we don't really understand why that's happening exactly, but there is some, there's something cooking in the data where it looks like the gender gap has closed completely.

I wonder if politics might be driving this religious divide among young people, because in the general discourse, I think a lot of men feel like they're being overlooked. And if you go to a Catholic church, it's like, okay, this is one of the few places in society where men are seen and actually have a privileged position in that hierarchy. I'm curious which religious denominations we're seeing young people turn towards to more right now.

Yeah, so traditional Catholicism, which for the audience listening to this, let me make this clear. Traditional Catholicism is not Catholicism that you think of. Traditional Catholicism thinks that we should go back to a Latin mass, that women should cover their heads, that the priest should face the table when he blesses the elements. That's the kind of religious that's drawing in young men especially.

You know, like, it's not—like, we don't want dumbed-down religion. We want actually really elevated religion. And they're also being drawn to evangelicalism, but not just, like, those non-denominational churches you see all over America. Like, the really hardcore, like, Calvinist churches, we would call, that have, like, really strict doctrines. Like, they're looking for a lot of rigidity and structure and rules.

Young Christians are actually more committed to their faith than young Christians were 15 or 20 years ago. Because I think what's happening is as the share of young people who are Christians gets smaller, the people who are left are the real true believers. They're not just Christians because their parents were Christians or they grew up in a Christian household. Like, they really do believe this stuff. So I think, you know—

The number, the aggregate number of Christians in America has been declining for a long time, but the fervency and the commitment of those Christians is actually higher today than it was 30 years ago. So it's just interesting. When people say, is religion declining? I want to say, yeah, but what do you mean by that? Can you be more specific? It's not like religion is declining across the board. There's actually some metrics that make religion look like it's kind of having a resurgence in America.

Okay, that's the religious picture for young people in America now. When we're back, we visit a traditional Catholic parish in San Francisco. That's after this break. At New Balance, we believe if you run, you're a runner, however you choose to do it. Because when you're not worried about doing things the right way, you're free to discover your way.

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It's Explain It to Me. We're back. And before the break, we were hearing about how young people, especially young men, are turning not just towards religion, but towards a more rigorous expression of Christianity, like conservative Catholicism. Our producer Gabrielle Burbay went to visit a church that's more traditional. Gabby, where'd you go? I went to San Francisco and visited a Catholic church called St. Dominic's.

It's this big Gothic church in the heart of the city. And on the spectrum of traditional Catholic churches in San Francisco, St. Dominic's is on the more traditional side. They sometimes hold Latin mass. If you go to mass, you'll see some women veiling, like literally covering their heads with embroidered veils.

But the reason I wanted to go to St. Dominic's in particular is because I had heard that they were attracting a ton of young Catholics from all over the Bay Area. And I think some listeners might be surprised to learn that a liberal city like San Francisco was seeing this resurgence of young people turning to Catholicism, but I think it's a testament to how widespread this trend actually is.

So I went by the church on a Wednesday evening, which is the night they hold the Young Adult Group Night. Father Patrick Rooney runs the different youth groups at the church, and he sometimes holds the Dominican version of Latin Mass for young adults. I actually run a youth program and a young adult program and a 30s, 40s group program, so there's actually many peer ministry groups here that I run in.

The Young Adult Program, which I was there for, is for people in their 20s and early 30s. And I learned that when they started the Young Adult Group a few years ago, there were only about 12 members there.

Now, there are about 60 to 70 young people, a lot of them people of color, who meet in the parish hall every Wednesday night. A lot of young adults who join the Catholic Church end up really desiring the richness of the Catholic tradition, and that includes the Latin Mass. So it's just like the sense of timelessness, the sense of the sacred, the sense of transcendence, right?

And I think that actually explains a large part why there's so much interest in the Latin mass among young people, because they didn't grow up with that much of a sense of the sacred. And so they're searching for the sacred. And so where are we going now? We're going to the parish hall. So the parish hall is right down here.

Father Patrick let me hang around the parish hall before they started their group meeting. People were mingling about these big round tables loaded with snacks. And I went up and asked some of them about the trends we've been seeing with young people turning towards traditional Catholicism. Hey, my name is Michael and I'm 26 years old.

It's really weird. I feel like there's been a big revival in the Latin mass recently, especially within the college ages. Why do you think that is? It kind of points to a tradition, a long tradition of the church, which people nowadays really appreciate, especially when a lot of things in this world are trying to break down traditions nowadays, especially a lot of the good ones. What traditions do you feel are being broken down right now?

A lot of traditions of basic morality, you know, I mean, a lot of promiscuous lifestyles are permitted, you know, of course, with more technology and the digital age computers, with that comes a lot of temptation. And I think people confuse freedom nowadays with breaking down traditions and that they think that a lot of traditions are just there to control us. And I think that's where people get it wrong.

When I go to other Catholic events around the country, I notice a noticeable difference in...

the reverence of, I think, even the Gen Zers. Daniela is one of the older ones in the group. At the ripe old age of 30, she's the president of the young adult group. And she talked about how her Gen Z peers have been kind of a religious guide for her on her spiritual journey. I mean, that is a generation where you're seeing the veils come back. That is a generation that in many ways are seeking out the Latin mass. That is a generation that is

is seeking that when they find someone that they love, they want to get married. I just started veiling this past year, and I think it's because it's, I've seen so many Gen Zers in the younger generations start to bring back those veils. Did you grow up Catholic or did you convert? I have like a reconversion when I was 18 years old. I was feeling kind of...

Lonely, miserable, and I was looking at myself and I didn't like what I was seeing. And one night I remember I just asked God, if you're there, please, I just need to know. And suddenly I just felt a presence that was looking at me and looking at all the things that I didn't like.

And he was loving all of them. And it was like feeling that, I don't know, the only comparison that I can think about is like putting a glass of water under a waterfall. It was overflowing. It was completely overflowing. My name is Lily and I'm 27. I think that people are looking for something real. I think people my age have grown up right alongside the internet. We grew up

We barely had a chance where like the internet or computers were not part of our lives. And there's so much false information out there. There's so many fake things. You're behind a screen. You don't even know what people really look like. And we live in such a world that is constantly broken. I mean, by the time I'm 27 and like 17 world major events have happened in my lifetime, I'm like,

Where if you're growing up in a society, in a world like that, you have to find something that's like concrete and real and honest. So I think that's where people are gravitating more towards religion and also like taking other people with them. In many ways, our world has taken such a liberal shift. And of course, there's people that, how do I say it, like...

lean in to a lot of those liberal ideologies, but I think in some ways it's gone so left that people are searching for truth. You know, in the conversations that I have with my peers, with my young adult friends, I think people are very concerned with how they want to raise a family one day because they see out on the media, they see in the world really just like the crisis of a family and

And they hear about what's being taught in the education system for these young minds. And they're very worried about, I think, particular types of like gender ideology that is being taught and promoted.

There are people that are going to say that the Catholic Church is narrow-minded. They need to get with the times. Their teachings need to match up with science. They need to be more empathetic and open. But when it gets down to it, I think there's so much just about the natural world that the Catholic Church doesn't.

Like has its grounding in one trend that we are seeing is that we're seeing a lot of specifically Gen Z men who are drawn to Christianity. Is that something that you're seeing here?

there are definitely more men than women in the group. And maybe this is just a good testament of what we're seeing statistically across the country, that there are more men that are coming into the faith. I think that the Catholic Church is probably one of the only places right now that is really encouraging men to be men in the sense of,

Being strong for their wives, being strong for their families. I think the church is really trying to call us men to serve, not just as leaders, but as those who serve, you know, like a servant leader, like what Christ was. I guess Christ, of course, he's a man. I guess he's the model for, you know, the modern clergy, you know, a priest, people in a religious life.

And even laymen, you know, like regular men out in society, regular society, they should act as Christ did. When you're thinking as a priest of how to bring in more women, how do you think about that? Well, I would say that this particular trend that you're talking about is unique in the history of humanity in a certain respect, certainly in the history of Christianity.

So that is a project I'm working on. Why do you think that young people are turning towards Catholicism right now? It may be, for example, that when there is a religious revival, which happens multiple times throughout human history, that God's grace is at work in the world in a way different than it was before, in ways that are mysterious to us and only God knows why. But if we want to look at natural reasons as well, I think...

There is something, I would say, about Catholicism swimming upstream. If you're a Catholic young person today, you are choosing to be Catholic. When it's hard to be Catholic and you're swimming upstream,

Then when you do get together with young adults, there's a kind of vibrancy and a kind of authenticity that's there that you wouldn't have before. Because everyone who is there is actually choosing to be Catholic, is actually swimming upstream. And it does a lot for you in terms of just the excitement in the room. Are there cultural reasons or events in the world that have happened that you've heard young people talk about?

when talking about why they've chosen Catholicism? I will say that there does seem to be a thirst for authenticity. And I think a lot of times when people come back to the church, it's because they started out living their life for pleasure, and then they kind of found the hollowness of that life and how empty it was. And then they start searching for meaning, and that search for meaning eventually takes them to faith. ♪

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Good and gracious God, we thank you for the gift of the Incarnation.

This episode was produced by Gabrielle Berbet. It was edited by our executive producer, Miranda Kennedy. Fact-checking by Melissa Hirsch with engineering by Matthew Billy. Special thanks to Christian Paz. If you want to read more about Gen Z and Christianity, we've linked to one of his Vox pieces in our show notes.

On an upcoming episode of Explain It To Me, we're going to summer camp, and we want to hear from you. Do you have a favorite memory from camp or a horror story? Or do you think summer camp is overrated and overpriced? Thank you so much for listening. Talk to you soon. Bye.