Religion is Growing Again

KEVIN HARRIS: Bill, we’ve been hearing for at least the past decade that Christianity is all but disappearing in the US. You've always been rather skeptical of that and cited data that showed the opposite including that many of the “nones” were not atheists but merely non-denominational or undecided. Well, big headlines a few days ago: religion is growing again. The New York Times reports^[1] pure research writing. Is religion growing again?

The answer appears to be yes. People have stopped leaving churches en masse, according to a new study released this morning by Pew Research^[2]. America’s secularization is on pause for now, likely because of the pandemic and the country’s sustained spirituality. Most Americans — 92 percent of adults — say they hold one or more spiritual beliefs that Pew asked about.

Those were:

Share of U.S. adults who believe ...

* “... people have a soul or spirit in addition to a physical body” (86% said yes)

* “... in God or a universal spirit” (83% yes)

* “.. there is something spiritual beyond the natural world (79% yes)

* “... in an afterlife (heaven, hell, or both) (only 70%)

* “... one or more of the above” (92%)

First, are we a body that has a soul or are we a soul that has a body?

DR. CRAIG: That is a great question, one that divides Christian philosophers and theologians. I've recently come to believe that I am a soul who is intimately connected with a body as an instrument that the soul uses to act in the world and to receive perceptions of the world. It's remarkable that 86% of the people in this survey believe in anthropological dualism – that we are not just bags of chemicals on bones but that we have a soul or spirit in addition to our physical body.

KEVIN HARRIS: This 70% – only 70% – believing in some kind of an afterlife kind of surprised me. That's lower than belief in God and other things in the research which would seem to point to that. Do you have any speculation on why they may be a little lower on the afterlife?

DR. CRAIG: I think 70% is still very high. That's pretty good, I'd say. But it might be that there are alternative views of what happens when you die. For example, it could be that reincarnation is an option for many people, and they wouldn't exactly call this an afterlife. Rather, you're reincarnated into this life to live it again in another form. That could decrease the percentage of people believing in an afterlife.

KEVIN HARRIS: The article cites Penny Edgell, a sociologist at the University of Minnesota. She said, “Spirituality is not declining. And in fact, it’s high; it’s stable,” And from the LA Times^[3],

Members of Gen Z in their teens and twenties are much less likely to identify as atheists than their middle-aged parents in Generation X or their Baby Boomer grandparents, a study has found.

The youngest generation is also much more likely [I believe that's the “alpha” generation now] to say they are “spiritual” than those in the oldest groups.

Do you have any concerns over spirituality versus Christianity? Or should we just be glad to see so much spirituality?

DR. CRAIG: Oh, I think we should be very glad. This spirituality may not be full-blown Christianity, but it is certainly better than secularism or indifference. So I think this is good news indeed.

KEVIN HARRIS: The article continues,

The United States is an outlier compared with most other Western countries, which are far less religious. America’s persistent religious and spiritual curiosity is visible in its centers of power. In Washington, President Trump and JD Vance talk a lot about God in their quest to remake America. In Silicon Valley, tech billionaires — long obsessed with religion-adjacent projects like artificial intelligence, transhumanism and immortality — are warming to Christianity. In Hollywood, films and shows about faith, such as “Conclave,” the latest season of “The White Lotus” and “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” have dominated streaming charts.

I can see why people would want to watch Secret Lives of Mormon Wives! It sounds like a big soap opera! "Wow, that would be interesting." You've also been concerned about the UK in particular. Justin Brierley thinks there may be some signs of a revival of sorts. Are you optimistic about Europe?

DR. CRAIG: Well, I'm not optimistic yet. I would like to be, but I just don't see much. Justin believes that he sees what he calls some green shoots coming up in the dead winter ground. But that's about it – just some green shoots. So not much reason for optimism yet.

KEVIN HARRIS: Continuing, The New York Times says,

Over the last 25 years, tens of millions of people left American religion. It was a major shift that affected how people voted, when they married and where they lived. Christianity took the hardest hit: Around 15 percent of American adults who once went to church stopped going. While some people switched to new faiths, many left religion altogether.

Experts called this phenomenon the “rise of the nones,” a group that includes atheists, agnostics and people who said in surveys that they identified with “nothing in particular.” The nones grew to include about 30 percent of the country.

But the rise of the nones has stopped, Pew found. People are no longer leaving churches en masse, and other major religions are growing, largely because of immigration.

Immigration is another factor to which the church must respond. Spiritually and practically we need good policy. We also need a good response to the influx of various religions.

DR. CRAIG: Yes. In England, immigrants have saved the Church of England. If you visit John Stott’s old church – All Souls, in Langham Place in London – you will find that church a multiethnic church filled with Jamaicans and Africans and other immigrants from around the country. The Church of England would have collapsed in the absence of these immigrants who have a vital and vibrant Christian faith and are coming into the Church of England. Similarly, in the United States, Hispanics are more likely to be Catholics than not, and so this should be a big boost to the Catholic Church and to the cause of religious belief in our country.

KEVIN HARRIS: That paragraph said that Christianity took the hardest hit. It might be just because Christianity is so dominant in the US. The majority is always vulnerable for hits like this. Nevertheless, Christianity fell from 78% in 2007 to 63% in 2025.

DR. CRAIG: As I've said before, I think that what these statistics represent is the collapse of the mainline denominations – the old Presbyterians and Episcopalians and United Methodists and United Church of Christ and the Roman Catholics. These mainline denominations, which have for the most part deserted the proclamation of the biblical Gospel, have been bleeding members over the last few decades. As I've said before, there's no reason to get up on a Sunday morning in the cold and the dark and go worship somebody who you don't believe really exists. So people have been emptying out of these mainline denominations, their seminaries are closing or coalescing in order to stay open, whereas evangelical Christianity is holding its own in American culture. So this phenomenon of the decline of Christianity is largely due to the decline in these nominally Christian denominations.

KEVIN HARRIS: We've said before in podcasts past that there is some research that shows that these “nones” just mean that they're non-denominational. They just consider themselves one of the big non-denominational churches that are out there – some of the megachurches – or just non-denominational and so they put down “none.” It doesn't necessarily mean atheist or agnostic. But the article offers two main reasons for the resurgence. It says,

Experts point to a few possible explanations.

First is the pandemic. Pew found that people turned to faith for support during those years, as the number of people going to religious services — either in person or virtually — remained consistent at about 40 percent. About a quarter of Americans even told Pew that the pandemic had strengthened their faith. “Religion was in their psychological tool kit for dealing with the hard times,” said Alan Cooperman, an author of the report.

The second explanation is that secularization has a limit in the United States.

Americans pray more often, are more likely to attend weekly religious services and value faith in their lives more than adults in other wealthy democracies like Canada, Australia and most European countries, Pew found in a separate study. Americans — both religious and not — also report high levels of spirituality: Eighty-three percent say they believe in God or a universal spirit, Pew found.

I actually thought that the pandemic would scare us all into a huge revival. It kind of might be an indication there, but it certainly got our attention. Any thoughts on those two explanations?

DR. CRAIG: I was really surprised what they found about the pandemic that church attendance remained consistent at about 40%. I remember when Jan and I were living in Germany, our German friends could not believe that 40% of the American population would get up on a Sunday morning and attend church on a regular basis. That is just unheard of in these very secular European countries where most people never darken the doorway of a church. So that is really good news indeed. I think however that the second is the more enduring and important factor that Americans are more deeply religious and have higher levels of spirituality. We need to do everything we can to foster that and encourage it.

KEVIN HARRIS: The article continues, and this is pretty much the conclusion here. It says,

We’re in a moment of resurgent religious conservatism. The Supreme Court has anointed prayer in public schools. Elon Musk said he believes in the teachings of Jesus. Religious tradwives reign supreme on Instagram.

I’ve been hearing about tradwives. I looked it up to make sure. It means traditional wives. For a long time it's been way out of vogue, but this says that millions of women have found feminism and some of the tenants of the feminist movement to be very unsatisfying and have resorted to more traditional roles. They are extremely popular on Instagram, on Tik Tok, and others. Some that have millions of followers – these tradwives – who show them cooking and doing things like that.

The right says it all amounts to a “vibe shift.”

Still, those examples are anecdotal. And as the swing from George Floyd protests to sudden D.E.I. takedowns shows, vibes in America can shift quickly.

I want to say something about that. We have found that. Sometimes it would take a long time for an attitude on something to change. One thing that we've seen in the last 20, 25 years especially is that there can be these sudden shifts, almost like the opposite view is taken. So this can happen in America quickly. But The New York Times says,

This data doesn’t rely on vibes. Instead, it offers measurable insights on the trends shaping American politics and culture. The ranks of the godless have stopped growing for now.  And when it comes to spiritual longing for the possible, the transcendent — Americans are surprisingly in agreement.

Maybe we're seeing some positive trends here. Any suggestions from you in response to all of this?

DR. CRAIG: I think living in a momentous time like this, every one of us needs to be trained in how to share your faith, how to lead a person to making a decision for Christ, and then be ready to share your faith at the drop of a hat when the opportunity arises. Christians who are trained to do evangelism and ready to do so will be a powerful force in a culture which is spiritually hungry and open in the way that ours is becoming.

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