Is there a religious revival underway? On the face of it, that seems ridiculous to believe. The biggest religious development in America and the wider Western world over the last 25 years has been the rise of the “nones” (atheist, agnostic, or nothing in particular). The constant reports one hears is that the West is either in or approaching the “post-Christian” age.

Yet there seems to be evidence that such a revival is underway. After reaching its highest ever margin of 30% in 2022, the number of nones dipped to 28% in 2023. Other trends have shown an increasing growth of religiosity among young men. Religious scholar Tara Isabella Burton in Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World chronicles numerous new sects, cults and other groups that show the tenuousness of the atheistic worldview and the human longing for spirituality. With Catholicism, significant increases in adult baptism, seminarians and parish growth have occurred in France, Belgium and Norway.

Such revivals are not unprecedented. After the French Revolution and its ensuing de-Christianization, the country experienced a religious revival personified by Chateaubriand’s bestselling work The Genius of Christianity. In America, there were the “Great Awakenings” of the 1730s 1740s, 1790s and 1800s.

Two new works — New York Times columnist Ross Douthat’s Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious and Claremont Review of Books editor Spencer Klavan’s Light of the Mind, Light of the World: Illuminating Science Through Faith — both strive to understand this new phenomenon. The two authors discussed their analyses at a panel on Feb. 6 for the Institute of Human Ecology at the Father O’Connell Hall at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

At the center of both authors’ arguments is the death and failure of the new atheist project: the idea that a world without religion would lead for a more enlightened, rational, scientific and tolerant society. Not only has such a society not come to fruition, with many nones simply adopting their own idols and “dogmas” such as “gender ideology,” but public opinion also shifted to the view that even if one is not personally religious, religion is needed for a healthy and functioning society. As Klavan, a Protestant, put it: “The modern dogmatism of atheism is just as hidebound as it wants to make medieval Catholicism out to be.” The best example of this trend is the declaration by the leader of the “New Atheists,” Richard Dawkins, that he is a “cultural Christian.”

While Douthat, who is Catholic, said that it’s too early to know if a revival is underway, there is clearly an increased interest in religion, particularly among Generation Z, as opposed to previous generations. Indirectly referencing Burton’s research, he compared the current rise of nontraditional spiritual sects to that of the 1970s, which saw a similar rise of cults and new religious movements. He mentioned conversions to Christianity or Catholicism, especially among certain public figures and intellectuals, such as Vice President JD Vance — who, like Spencer Klavan, was a “New Atheist” in college — Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Adrian Vermeule. Douthat also pointed to “a general recovery of interest in the idea that religion is good for society.”

Klavan focused on the issue of a materialistic worldview that only what we can grasp as matter is important. He traces this issue to periodic instances that followed major scientific breakthroughs such as the Copernican Revolution and the theory of relativity, which led some to declare either a disregard of the Bible or of religion itself.

What does this increase in religious interest pertain for the Church? As both Douthat and Klavan mention, the sort of “natural religion” of deism and other nontraditional spirituality showcases the human longing for God, but they also are spiritually shallow and fail to satisfy that longing. As Klavan said of it, “it is not a resting place, and people don’t rest there.” During the Enlightenment, Orthodox critics of these beliefs said that they were nothing but a stop on the way to nonbelief, and history soon proved them right.

Is it possible now, amid the ending of the atheistic-materialist worldview, that such beliefs could now occur in the reverse? Klavan, quoting from C.S. Lewis, thinks so. Lewis, in describing his path from atheism to Anglicanism mentions that the first stop in his journey was the belief that there must, or at least probably, be a Creator-God at the center of the universe.

Conclusive evidence of a religious revival will need additional time before a trend can be established, but the observations of Douthat and Klavan indicate a cultural shift and, as Douthat said, “also a kind of general recovery of interest in the idea that religion is good for society.” That is coupled with the reality that, he added, “The age of the ‘New Atheist’ has passed; and even if people are still agnostic or atheistic personally, there is much more of a sense that ‘Oh, actually you know, getting rid of organized religion did not in fact make the world a happier, less polarized, more enlightened and rational place.’ Quite the contrary.”

Paul J. Macrae is a writer in the Washington, D.C., area.