Rise of Christianity in Gen Z
Famously, in his book The Gay Science, Friedrich Nietzsche said, “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.”
Nietzsche did not mean a literal death, but rather that belief in God had become unbelievable for modern society – signalling the end of the framework that Christianity provided for European culture.
Nietzsche was highlighting a potential crisis where people lose purpose and values when traditional religious anchors disappear, and how only the Übermensch will be able to move European society beyond traditional good and evil through new, life-affirming values.
Theologians in the 1960s suggested that God would require reinterpretation in a modern world, and that faith will need to adapt in an environment where traditional religious language no longer resonates.
Religion since the mid-20th century has been a story of decline.
From its peak in 1947 of 45 per cent of the US population attending church weekly to the low of 21 per cent in 2025.
The image is similar in the UK, with a peak of 15 per cent weekly attendance in the 1930s to a collapse at 4.7 per cent. The trend seemed to be a slowly closing book on faith.
Yet, there is an odd image.
The generation with the highest average monthly visits in the US is now Gen Z at 1.9 times. This trend is mirrored in the UK; in 2018, just 4 per cent of 18–24-year-olds said that they attended church at least monthly. Today, this has risen to 16 per cent – second behind the 65+ cohort (third in attendance is actually the 25–34 group). The shift is even more dramatic amongst young men; there has been a fivefold growth in attendance from 4 to 21 per cent.
As researcher Dr Rhiannon McAleer says, “These are striking findings that completely reverse the widely held assumption that the Church in England and Wales is in terminal decline… There are now over 2 million more people attending church than there were six years ago.”
Strikingly, this extends beyond the traditional conception of faith, as 62 per cent of 18–24-year-olds claim to be “very” or “fairly” spiritual, compared to just 35 per cent of those over 65. Only 13 per cent of Gen Z identify as atheists, in contrast to 20 per cent of Millennials and 25 per cent of Gen X.
This all leads to the question: why has faith been reignited by Gen Z? I think that can be neatly summed up in three factors.
One that is likely to be overplayed is the influence of online “manosphere” types. Many alt-right creators explicitly suggest religion; foremost amongst those is Jordan Peterson, who suggests that through faith the youth can revive that forgotten moral framework. The influence of this explains some part of the male rise in attendance but is overblown.
Secondly the pandemic. Gen Z and Millennials are anxious and lonely; the pandemic only worsened those issues. However, after the restrictions lifted, Zoomers were desperately searching for community but also, interestingly, tradition. Zoomers have largely favoured liturgical or orthodox traditions, seeking structure and a strong moral framework as opposed to the looser spirituality of the 90s.
Lastly, the search for meaning. Gen Z has a unique problem: it is a generation paralyzed by the lack of purpose. Many Zoomers look online and see a hellscape of influencers, hustle culture, and meaningless consumerism – which they sought to reject. They turned towards faith to help them find a purpose in life and try to grapple with the question of why they exist. For many Zoomers, faith is a rejection of consumerism and a search for ‘why’.
These are, of course, not all the reasons for the revival of faith amongst the youth; however, I think they play a key part in it. And in a world of such turmoil and unknowns, Gen Z are finding faith is helping them find light through all the chaos.