Why Young Men Are Flocking Back to Christianity

What’s driving the resurgence of young people, especially men, interested in Christianity?

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

Mark my words: over the next decade, we’re going to see a massive rise in the number of young men, maybe 15–30 years old, that identify as Christian. There will be a 5,000 word think-piece by some Professor from Harvard Divinity School on the front page of the New York Times or People Magazine or something. And this will be front-page news because it rejects the narrative that people are becoming less religious as progress marches on.

Here’s what got me thinking about this…

Last week, I had two conversations. Two men, both were a little younger than me (late twenties, early thirties), previously Atheist or Agnostic or Areligious, that had been looking for answers to life’s big questions and started looking to religion, specifically, Christianity.

It struck me as important because I’ve heard this before. It happened three or four other notable times, right at the beginning of the Pandemic. In all, I’ve had probably a dozen conversations with young men who say the same thing, and, what’s really strange is that they all phrase it the same way.

Here’s the part I need your help with…

Why Christianity and Not Some Other Religion?

All of them had the same explanation, almost word for word. And I can’t, for the life of me, track down where this idea came from. It goes something like this:

“It’s nice because it gives answers to the questions I’m asking, in words I already understand.”

I pushed two of these people to explain further and they elaborated this way, “You know how certain races/cultures/ethnic groups process some foods better than others? Like, if that food was traditionally eaten where their ancestors evolved, it tends to work better for them than foods that evolved somewhere else? I think it works the same way with religion.”

Christianity is a Western religion. Western society, for better or worse, was built on top of Christian traditions. Using this line of logic, it works better for people of European descent than say, Buddhism…