Is Gen Z truly experiencing a religious revival?

My Christian higher education colleagues and I are witnessing a trend-reversal emerging among Gen Z teens and young adults — and not just at Asbury University.

In the last few years, we have seen:

Describing some of the radical expressions of faith witnessed in our own community by younger generations, my wife made the provocative comment: “Perhaps Gen Z is willing to die because they are already dead.” Culture is deadening. The scripts handed to younger generations are deadening. The nihilism and malaise of a world optimized around dopamine surges — a “dopamine nation” as psychiatrist and bestselling author Dr. Anna Lembke puts it — has left Gen Z teens and young adults disoriented and unsettled, no longer “at ease in Zion.”

Consistent with data from the Pew’s Religious Landscape Study released in February, younger generations are demonstrating religiously oriented sensibilities that attract them to the Christian faith and challenge the status quo.  Christianity’s long-documented decline has leveled off.

I’ve seen this first hand with the young adults at Asbury University, where I serve as president.  In February 2023, a routine chapel service on the campus led to a 16-day, non-stop worship gathering that brought over 50,000 people to the two-stoplight town of Wilmore, Kentucky. Everything I witnessed during that time ran counter to prevailing scripts of modern life. The space was peaceful, unified, apolitical, radically humble, hopeful, and age/class/ethnically diverse. It was nameless and faceless. “No celebrities but Jesus,” we said. I have never seen such deep and penetrating spiritual hunger in my life — a demonstrative ache for a right relationship with God and others. 

Importantly, though, I saw the “loosened chains” of a younger generation unevenly burdened by the pathologies of modern life (isolationism, digitization, social discord, mental health challenges, and waning institutions). Students from nearly 300 colleges and universities made the trip to Asbury for a transformative spiritual encounter. Their testimonies were raw; unedited.  They embraced strangers like family. They occupied the altar, sometimes for hours. They led, fearlessly. They prayed, zealously. Describing Gen Z, a friend remarked, “They are ready to follow the Jesus whose following is changing the world.”

Gen Z young adults don’t want to tribalize and divide. They want to include others. They prioritize belonging. Sensitive to hypocrisy, they don’t want a “do as I say and not as I do” religion; they are less interested in propositions. They are “won over” through the currency of relationship and trust, not empty platitudes. They value authenticity. The next generation isn’t chasing worldly success and comfort. They want to commit to a cause. They want purpose. And they can no longer exist in a flattened, disenchanted existence that is deadening. They desire meaning, the kind increasingly found in traditional Christianity.

For these reasons and many others, I have called Gen Z “the corrective generation.” In a challenging moment, I am inspired by the Religious Landscape Survey and to a greater degree by what is being embodied and lived out in teens and young adults. A resurgence of spiritual commitment among forthcoming generations is not only good for our religious institutions, but also for democracy and America.

The corrective generation is coming.