David Quinn
Could there be straws in the wind of a mini-religious revival underway, not so much here in Ireland (yet), but in countries like the United States?
Recent data seem to show that among young American men in particular there has been a small uptick in the numbers regularly attending church services. Some opinion polls can be merely blips, but the recent data show that around 2 or 3% more American men born after 2000 attend church compared with men born in the 1970s, adding up to around one in four of the total.
A church attendance rate of 25% around young men in their early twenties might not seem like much, but if we had a similar attendance rate among that age group here, we would be delighted.
But even if the data I am quoting is only a blip and there has been no increase, at a minimum they appear to show that the ongoing decline in religious attendance among young American men seems to have stopped, and that is good news on its own. (The data come from an article written by American academic, Ryan Burge, which can be found on his ‘Substack’ page).
Rise
For years now, there has been a rise in the number of young Americans describing themselves as ‘nones’ meaning they say they don’t belong to any particular religion. This is not to be confused with being an atheist, by the way. Some people who don’t belong to a specific religion might still be ‘spiritual’ in some other way.
Also, young Americans who never attend church still outnumber those who attend regularly, so this is all relative.
Nevertheless, something seems to be going on, and it is encouraging. What might that be? I think part of the answer is that as modern life becomes more chaotic, more unstable, more individualistic, more every-person-for-themselves, some people are reacting to that by seeking something more solid, more stable, that offers answers to the great questions in life, and also offers a sense of community, and a good church will do all these things.
Here, I use lower case ‘c’ deliberately, because one Catholic parish can be better than another and one Protestant church better than another, even if they belong to the same Church overall.
Older people can underestimate how disorientating life can be for young people today. We might have many more personal freedoms than in the past, but we also lack the same sense of community we once had, and the personal freedom that is liberating in many ways, has also created a far more individualistic society.
I don’t think it is any coincidence that mental health problems, especially among the young, are on the rise. If you create a crisis of meaning, that will have knock-on effects”
The preeminent sign of this, in my view, is that people are a lot less likely to marry, and stay married, than they once were, and are also a lot less likely to have children. This means a lot more people are going to feel lonely in the future. They have also been told to look inside for the answers to life’s great questions, or else they are told to seek out materialistic goals, and not to trust organised religion to offer anything good.
I don’t think it is any coincidence that mental health problems, especially among the young, are on the rise. If you create a crisis of meaning, that will have knock-on effects.
Therefore, a certain number of young people are reaching out for things that offer meaning and purpose and timeless answers to the timeless questions.
But the recent data I am citing has uncovered something curious, namely that it is young American men specifically who are seeing a small uptick in the numbers coming to church regularly, and not young women.
In fact, this is the first generation ever recorded in which there are more young men than young women attending church, even if the difference is still small.
Attendance
In every other time we know of, church attendance has been more a female than a male thing.
What is going on? We can’t be sure yet, but perhaps young women regard the Churches as misogynistic because of issues like abortion (although this does not prevent them attending liberal churches which are very pro-choice and pro-LGBT).
Young men, for their part, may find that the churches they attend are among the only places they will not be told that masculinity is ‘toxic’, when this message is being constantly pumped at them by the general culture.
Is there also some kind of ‘Jordan Peterson-effect’? Peterson is the Canadian psychologist and academic who shot to fame for opposing his university requiring staff to use students’ ‘preferred gender pronouns’, denouncing this as an attack on free expression.
But he offers guidance on how to live a useful and responsible life and young men in particular are drawn to his message. He starts with the simple advice ‘tidy your room’. In other words, begin restoring order to your life there.
Are some of the young men being drawn back to church genuinely sexist?”
Peterson is not clear on what he actually believes from a religious point of view, but it is clear he is pro-religion, generally speaking, and maybe some of the tens of millions of young men who listen to him have responded by attending church?
Are some of the young men being drawn back to church genuinely sexist? It would not surprise me if that is sometimes true, but it is more likely that Christianity will turn them into the sort of men women actually want to marry, instead of them remaining permanently adolescent in their attitudes and behaviour. Christianity encourages people to grow up, and to become morally responsible adults.
Revival
Are there signs of any kind of revival in Ireland? Certainly, there isn’t one big enough to be picked up in polls but there are certain early indicators. For example, the Dominicans are very successful at attracting young people to their events and have been managing to attract a healthy rate of vocations for years now.
A lot of young people seem to be drawn to the Latin Mass.
I was speaking to someone recently who works with a Christian ministry in one of our universities and she says the students are more responsive now to their outreach than they were a few years ago.
The Iona Institute (which I head) has just held a very successful event aimed at young people who were delighted to meet other young people like themselves.
Ireland is usually behind the curve on these things, but it would not surprise me if in the years to come we do see a small increase in church attendance among some young people alienated by the emptiness of modern individualism and seeking an antidote to that. Parishes and church best geared up to respond will bear the most fruit.