The Barna Group's 2025 data, now circulating widely as Easter weekend ends, shows Gen Z churchgoers attending 1.9 times per month on average — more than Millennials at 1.8, Gen X at 1.6, or Boomers at 1.4. [1] The finding reverses a 25-year trend and has produced two irreconcilable narratives: a spiritual revival among young Americans, or a statistical artifact of a small and committed cohort being compared to a larger but more lapsed base.

The Atlantic's March investigation found that pastors and politicians claiming a Christian revival among young Americans are looking at the wrong data. The American Time Use Survey, which tracks actual behavior rather than self-reported frequency, showed no increase in church attendance among young adults between 2021 and 2024. [2] Sociologist Ryan Burge, writing for the New York Times in January, put the case bluntly: the Barna "resurgence" describes 1.8 to 1.9 monthly visits — less than half of available Sundays. [3]

What is genuinely happening, and harder to dispute, is that a subset of Gen Z men has moved toward organized religion in ways that correlate with the broader right-ward shift in young male political identity. Fairfield Sun Times reported in March that men now report higher church attendance than women for the first time in 25 years, driven primarily by Gen Z. [4] Whether this is revival or realignment — and whether the war, which has produced its own forms of catastrophe-seeking spirituality, is accelerating it — is the question the Barna numbers cannot answer.

-- MAYA CALLOWAY, New York