A Gallup poll released on April 16 finds that they’re increasingly foregoing video games, pickup basketball or the corner bar in favor of regular visits to their local church.
And the numbers are striking: Forty percent of men under 30 now report attending monthly or more often—a seven-point jump from 2023, and the highest level recorded in more than a decade.
The finding comes from a Gallup survey of 26,600 US adults, including 1,905 men aged 18 to 29.
“We’re sensing, based on the data, a change in the religious environment in this country,” said Gallup senior scientist Frank Newport, one of the report’s authors.
The sudden rush of young dudes to church pews could be more than a blip; it may be an early sign of a wider spiritual renaissance in America.
Consider these additional signals that the times are a-changin’:
A surge in Catholic converts is showing up in dioceses of all sizes. This Easter, Detroit received 1,428 new Catholics—the most in more than two decades. Galveston-Houston hit a 15-year high. And Des Moines saw conversions jump 51 percent in a single year.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints added 385,490 converts to its membership rolls last year, eclipsing the previous record of 331,000 set nearly four decades ago.
In a period when overall undergraduate college enrollment has declined by nearly 15 percent, many Christian colleges and universities are setting enrollment records. Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran institutions, for example, have seen enrollment spike by 23 percent.
“Headline after headline for a decade or two now has been: ‘America is becoming less religious,’” Newport said. “And now I think we’re seeing the consensus across organizations is that’s leveled off.”
As the saying goes, a rising tide lifts all boats—and for religion in America, the trend is clear.
That can only be good for the country as a whole.
In the words of L. Ron Hubbard: “For the last hundred years or so religion has been beset with a relentless attack. You have been told it’s the ‘opiate of the masses,’ that it’s unscientific, that it is primitive; in short, that it is a delusion.
“But beneath all these attacks on organized religion there was a more fundamental target: the spirituality of man, your own basic spiritual nature, self-respect and peace of mind.”
He continued: “Convince a man that he is an animal, that his own dignity and self-respect are delusions, that there is no ‘beyond’ to aspire to, no higher potential self to achieve, and you have a slave. Let a man know he is himself, a spiritual being, that he is capable of the power of choice and has the right to aspire to greater wisdom and you have started him up a higher road.”
Thank goodness more young Americans—who will shape the nation’s future—are stepping onto that higher road.
