God Is Back

A significant and surprisingly broad phenomenon has emerged: a quiet revival of faith among young people in both the United States and the United Kingdom.

My latest on American Thinker.

In recent years, a significant and surprisingly broad phenomenon has emerged: a quiet revival of faith among young people in both the United States and the United Kingdom. At the same time, a parallel rediscovery of God is taking place among many leading intellectuals. Together, these two trends deserve careful attention  and serious reflection.

Let’s begin with the “ordinary people” before turning to the maîtres à penser.

England and Wales: Young People Are Returning to Church

According to The Quiet Revival report published by the Bible Society, the share of young people aged 18 to 24 who attend church at least once a month in England and Wales has risen from 4% in 2018 to 16% in 2024, with men driving much of this growth. Many of these young churchgoers are also gravitating toward Catholicism: among those aged 18-34 who are active in church life, over 40% identify as Catholic, surpassing Anglicans.

Paul Williams, CEO of the Bible Society, summarizes the findings this way:

“The Quiet Revival is a hugely significant report that should reshape perceptions of Christianity and religious practice in England and Wales. Far from sliding toward extinction, the Church is alive, growing, and making a difference for individuals and society.”

This favorable trend is also reflected in a rise in adult conversions and baptisms. Many parishes now report record numbers of adults entering the Catholic Church -- typically motivated by a search for authenticity, truth, and community.

A Similar Trend in the United States

The same dynamic is unfolding in the United States. According to Pew Research, about 1.5% of American Catholic adults today are converts. Many of these younger adults say they are seeking a “stable moral order” and a spiritual depth they no longer find in contemporary secular culture. For a growing number of them, the structure, ritual, and aesthetic beauty of Catholic liturgy are decisive factors.

In other words, a generation is rediscovering in God not only a transcendent ideal but also a concrete community and a form of stability that secular society struggles to provide.

A Leadership Roundtable study notes that young adult Catholics in the U.S. are among the most engaged parishioners -- attending Mass, confession, and eucharistic adoration -- while also feeling tension between their personal dedication and the institutional fragility they perceive in parts of the Church.

This is not a series of isolated conversions. It is a demographic and cultural shift -- and a profound one.

…And the Intellectuals Are Returning to God

Alongside this youth-driven religious revival, a comparable phenomenon is unfolding among intellectuals.

For the past two decades, a large portion of the western cultural elite embraced the paradigm of the “New Atheism.” The formula seemed obvious: economic progress + science + technology = final emancipation from all religion.

But that season is over.

Philosophers, writers, commentators, and even high-profile figures in the tech world are now moving in the opposite direction: returning to God -- or at least to the religious dimension as an indispensable cultural foundation.

This time the trend does not originate with the masses, but with the people who shape ideas. And that matters: cultural currents often begin at the top and filter downward into public opinion.

Though the personal stories differ, they share a common thread: the realization that hyper-rationalism no longer explains the world -- and no longer helps people live well within it.

Here are some emblematic cases, drawing on an insightful Free Press article by Peter Savodnik.

Matthew Crawford: From Academic Agnosticism to the Anglican Church

Matthew Crawford -- long seen as a symbol of secular intellectual life -- found faith through a human encounter: meeting Marilyn Simon, a scholar and believer. His story is simple yet revealing. It wasn’t doctrine he lacked, but meaning. A higher moral order became, for him, a response to today’s radical individualism and fragmentation.

Paul Kingsnorth: The Environmental Novelist Who Found Orthodoxy

Once a leading figure in European environmentalism, Kingsnorth explored several spiritual paths before embracing Orthodox Christianity. His reasoning is partly sociopolitical: the ecological crisis, he argues, is at its core a spiritual one -- the result of a rupture between human beings and the natural world. Orthodoxy, with its mystical depth, offered him a restored sense of the sacred.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Faith as a Response to Inner Emptiness -- and to Islamism

A former Dutch MP, survivor of genital mutilation, and for years a fierce critic of political Islam, Ayaan Hirsi Ali converted to Christianity for two reasons:

• her personal battle with depression
• the West’s inability, in her view, to confront aggressive religious ideologies with purely secular tools

Her conversion is perhaps the most overtly political: she argues that a culturally disarmed Europe needs Christianity as an anchor of identity and resistance.

Richard Dawkins and “Cultural Christianity”

The father of New Atheism has not converted, but he has retreated. Dawkins now describes himself as a “cultural Christian,” openly worried that abandoning the Christian tradition will create a dangerous ideological and religious vacuum.

Jordan Hall: The Anti–Silicon Valley Conversion

A former tech pioneer, Jordan Hall discovered God not in some futuristic spiritual forum but in a small rural church. His diagnosis is sociological before it is mystical: the West is undergoing “cultural termination,” marked by demographic decline, loneliness, and digitized relationships. Religious community, he argues, provides something no technology can replace.

Conversions are Sweeping Through the Young

Across the U.S., conversions among young men are rising, traditional liturgies are making a comeback, and seminaries are seeing increased interest. In a period of economic insecurity, relational instability, and cultural uncertainty, religion reemerges as a form of social capital.

Not a Folkloric Revival -- and Not a Fashion Statement

The return to faith among both intellectuals and the young reflects a deep unease with a cultural model that has lost its normative power. For Europe -- and for the West more broadly -- where debates over identity, welfare, birth rates, and social cohesion are intensifying, these developments deserve close attention.

Religion may be returning not only as a legacy of the past, but as a resource for the future -- a striking challenge to the atheism and agnosticism that once appeared firmly in command.

New York Turns the Tables: the “Socialist” Mayor Who Sounds (Almost) Like Trump

Zohran Mamdani won over the Big Apple not out of love for socialism, but by giving a voice to a new class of the disillusioned — affluent professionals who no longer believe that hard work is enough to “make it.”

Few places on earth embody capitalism quite like New York City. Yet it’s that very city that has just elected Zohran Mamdani — a self-described social democrat — as mayor. The American right, predictably, wasted no time branding him a “communist,” though the label says more about their reflexes than about Mamdani himself.

Beyond the noise and the name-calling, something deeper is happening. Mamdani’s victory is not proof that New York has fallen in love with socialism. It’s the expression of a widespread frustration with a system that many feel has stopped being fair. And that frustration isn’t limited to struggling families or low-income voters. It’s spreading among the very people who, on paper, are supposed to be thriving — the well-educated, ambitious professionals who have done everything right and still feel like they’re running in place.

These are the people who “checked all the boxes”: good schools, long hours, solid jobs — yet they can’t afford the city they helped build. Rents rise faster than salaries, taxes eat into their paychecks, homeownership feels out of reach. They’re not poor; they’re just exhausted. Worst of all, in the supposed land of opportunity, they’ve stopped believing that hard work automatically leads to stability — let alone success.

They don’t want government handouts, as Republicans tend to assume. Nor do they want to burn the system down, as some Democrats fear. What they want is a system that works again — one that rewards effort and merit rather than luck, inherited wealth, or connections. New York used to be that kind of place: a city that lifted those who hustled. Today, it seems to reward only those already at the top. In electing Mamdani, New Yorkers didn’t reject capitalism — they demanded that it deliver on its promises.

Mamdani’s genius was recognizing this disillusionment before anyone else — and having the instincts to speak like a citizen, not a career politician. He didn’t offer a revolution. He offered recognition. And that’s what made him resonate with voters who had stopped trusting the system but hadn’t stopped hoping for it to work.

In a strange way, that makes Mamdani an accidental echo of Donald Trump. Like Trump in 2016, he gave voice to a segment of Americans who felt unseen — in Trump’s case, the working class; in Mamdani’s, the frustrated middle and upper-middle class. Both tapped into empathy and anger to deliver the same essential message: the game is rigged, and I’m the one who will fix it. Trump targeted Washington’s swamp; Mamdani took aim at a city economy where even success feels unstable.

Republicans would be mistaken to dismiss Mamdani’s win as just another far-left aberration. They should study it. As political analyst Lee Hartley Carter put it, “New Yorkers aren’t rejecting capitalism; they’re asking it to keep its promises. They’re not demanding special treatment — they’re asking for a fair game.”

One more striking fact: roughly 20% of New York’s electorate is Jewish — the largest Jewish community in the world outside Israel — and yet the city elected a candidate who has voiced strong criticism of Israeli policies and what he calls the “Zionist establishment.” Still, according to CNN’s exit polls, 33% of Jewish voters supported him, despite open calls from Israel and the mainstream press — including the New York Times — to oppose him. That tells us something about the shifting winds of American politics, where skepticism toward Israel’s government is now emerging not just on the left, but increasingly on the right as well. Figures like Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and Joe Rogan — once considered pillars of the MAGA movement — have become some of its most outspoken critics on the issue, much to the discomfort of traditional Christian Zionists.

Mamdani’s election doesn’t signal a socialist takeover of New York. It signals something more profound — a crisis of faith in a system that once promised upward mobility and now delivers exhaustion. His victory is a warning shot to both parties: people haven’t stopped believing in capitalism. They’ve just stopped believing that it’s still fair.

Criticizing Israel Is not Antisemitism — and Heritage’s Kevin Roberts Just Said So

Kevin Roberts draws a crucial line between policy critique and bigotry, restoring clarity to conservative discourse on Israel

In recent weeks, former Fox News host and now hugely popular conservative podcaster Tucker Carlson has been relentless in denouncing what he sees as the intolerable influence of foreign lobbies — most notably the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) — in shaping U.S. policy. A few days ago, he was sharply criticized for interviewing Nick Fuentes, founder of the so-called “Groyper” movement, which promotes an ethnonationalist vision of American identity — a figure whose views on Jews and the Holocaust have, rightly, provoked outrage and condemnation.

There has been speculation that @Heritage is distancing itself from @TuckerCarlson over the past 24 hours.

I want to put that to rest right now—here are my thoughts: pic.twitter.com/F8bcxBIqKI

— Kevin Roberts (@KevinRobertsTX) October 30, 2025

That is why it caused such a stir in conservative circles when Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, publicly defended Carlson in a video posted on X last Thursday. Roberts did more than lend support to a friend under attack: he may have initiated a long-awaited turning point in how the American conservative movement talks about Israel and antisemitism.

Roberts drew the outlines of a crucial distinction: “Christians can criticize the State of Israel without being antisemitic. And of course, antisemitism should be condemned.” A brief, understated remark — but an eloquent one. For decades, American conservatives have been expected to treat unconditional support for the Israeli government as a moral litmus test. Any questioning of Israeli policies or of Washington’s automatic alignment with them risked being branded “antisemitic.” That accusation has often shut down honest debate and, ironically, trivialized genuine antisemitism by confusing it with political disagreement.

Roberts’s statement matters not only because of who said it — the head of the most influential conservative think tank in America — but because it signals a return to reason and common sense at a crucial moment. On one hand, Roberts clearly rejects Fuentes’s vile statements, affirming that antisemitism has no place in public life. On the other, he refuses to join the mob calling for Tucker Carlson to be “canceled.” It’s a combination — moral clarity without hysteria — that conservatism once prided itself on.

You may agree or disagree with Tucker Carlson, with his tone or his questions, but his opinions deserve debate, not excommunication. The idea that Congress or the White House might be “too deferential” toward any foreign state — Israel included — is not antisemitic; it’s a legitimate concern for national sovereignty. The Founding Fathers themselves warned against “foreign entanglements.” Is it now forbidden to echo their wisdom?

Let’s be clear: defending Israel’s right to exist and to defend itself is one thing; equating that defense with blind approval of every action taken by its government is another. A mature alliance, like a mature friendship, can withstand disagreement. In fact, it thrives on intellectual honesty.

That’s why Roberts’s statement may well mark a watershed moment. It reminds us that love for Israel, like love for any nation, should be grounded in truth, not fear or idolatry. Unfortunately, some prominent conservatives have blurred that golden rule. Senator Ted Cruz, for instance, recently told Tucker Carlson, “As a Christian, I was taught by the Bible that those who bless Israel will be blessed, and those who curse Israel will be cursed” — adding that, of course, he would rather “be on the side of blessing.”

There is no doubt that Senator Cruz spoke with sincere faith, yet his interpretation — loosely (and poorly) drawn from Genesis 12:3 — has too often been elevated to a general rule: that Christians are biblically commanded to support the modern State of Israel. Theologically speaking, however, this confuses the spiritual Israel of Scripture with the modern nation-state. God’s covenant is not a mutual defense pact, and divine blessing cannot be reduced to foreign policy. To suggest otherwise risks turning faith into geopolitics — and elevating earthly governments above divine truth.

Carlson and others have rightly pushed back against this quasi-religious absolutism. It’s not about rejecting Israel; it’s about rejecting the notion that criticizing Israel amounts to apostasy. There is a profound difference between loving the Jewish people — as every Christian is called to do — and suspending moral judgment over the political actions of a nation-state. Confusing the two serves neither side.

Roberts’s Project Esther, launched to combat genuine antisemitism, demonstrates that moral vigilance need not come at the expense of free expression. Precisely because antisemitism is abhorrent, we must preserve the integrity of the term — not dilute it by applying it to anyone who dares to question Benjamin Netanyahu or the IDF. When everything becomes “antisemitism,” nothing truly is.

Moreover, uncritical alignment with any foreign capital — be it Jerusalem, Kyiv, or Brussels — undermines the very sovereignty conservatives claim to defend. America’s friendship with Israel should rest on shared values and mutual respect, not on emotional blackmail or theological confusion. That friendship is strongest when both nations can speak honestly, as equals.

Roberts’s unexpected defense of Tucker Carlson has reopened a door that, in America, had long been sealed by fear — fear of being misunderstood, misquoted, or smeared. True courage today lies not only in denouncing hatred of Israel (which is real and deeply rooted in some quarters), but also in defending the right to dissent.

If conservatives cannot have an honest conversation about Israel without being accused of antisemitism, then they have already surrendered the intellectual high ground they claim over progressives. Roberts refuses to do so. In doing that, he reaffirms a conservative tradition grounded not in conformity, but in the courage of conviction.

By standing with Tucker, Kevin Roberts reminded conservatives of something they should never forget: that truth and friendship with Israel do not require silence — they require integrity. And integrity, especially in times like these, demands clarity.