"And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time."
- T. S. Eliot, "Little Gidding," Four Quartets
Most of my adult life, I've been praying for a transformation that I sincerely doubted I would ever see. Call it what you will: revival, a Great Awakening, a return of the West to its Christian foundations. I came of age in a highly secular corner of the US at the turn of the millennium, and there was a palpable sense of anxiety in the air among Christians. It was becoming clear that our society, like Christian Europe before us, was entering a long, downward spiral into the abandonment of faith. The first two decades of this century were rife with bleak news for anyone who cares about Christianity in the West: it was attacked on all sides by both "the New Atheists" and a resurgent global wave of Islam's rising tide, it was swamped out of the cultural consciousness of the young by the advent of addictive, all-consuming technologies, and it was marked by growing movements of "nones" and "exvangelicals" and former Christians intent on "deconstructing" their faith. Much of this was the cultural harvest of decades upon decades of institutional atheism in academic circles, which exercised a serious trickle-down effect on society at large. It was common knowledge in Christian circles that to go to a secular university (unless you lived in a Bible belt) was an act of entering territory that was uniquely hostile to one's faith. Those trends had played out in public life to devastating effect, and with the loss of faith, the fundamental stability of many parts of society began to crumble. In short, it looked like all the momentum was going in one direction, and there was no way out. The West had become "post-Christian." And although I prayed and hoped and longed for a swing of the pendulum back the other way, the signs were all so evident that I dared not really believe it to be possible--I found that my heart couldn't bear the anguish of disappointed expectations.
Despite what I'm about to tell you, all of those worrying signs are still all around us. In much of western Europe, secular people now far outnumber religious believers. The "nones" still hold a significant share of our population here in the US. On my pilgrimage in England last year, the effects of the loss of faith on British society were poignant and painful. While I walked around the unimaginably beautiful heritage of the faith of ages past, there was a touch of sorrow to it. These beautiful churches were mostly empty. Those that still held services were either evangelical (where some life remains) or tiny groups that were simply holding on while deaths of old age gradually reduced their numbers. Many expressed surprise that someone as young as I was (and I'm not young anymore) had such an interest in the faith. Those churches that were full were full of tourists, not worshipers, and several cathedrals had gone a good way toward turning their naves into exhibit halls for community events or the celebration of woke-ist values. There was a painful disenchantment to it all.
But there is a change in the wind. It's discernible now; something is happening. It's still small, still just "the size of a man's hand" (see 1 Kings 18:44), but it's coming. This week, I read the testimony of another major public intellectual who has just announced his conversion to faith in Christ (Larry Sanger, co-founder of Wikipedia). Over the past five years, this has been happening with increasing frequency. Public intellectuals like historian Tom Holland and psychologist/influencer Jordan Peterson sparked open dialogues about their growing appreciation for the Christian faith. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a former Muslim-turned-atheist (author of the book Infidel, published during the days of the New Atheists), has become a Christian. Paul Kingsnorth, a major literary figure, found the end of his religious journey through atheism and Wicca by becoming an Eastern Orthodox Christian. Even the agnostic Elon Musk and the world's leading atheist voice, Richard Dawkins, have recently gone on record that they are essentially "cultural Christians." It's not just intellectuals, either: leading figures in media and the arts are coming to faith, from movie stars like Russell Brand and Shia LaBeouf to Youtubers like Ryan Trahan. The uber-popular podcast host Joe Rogan has begun sprinkling an openness to faith into his shows, catching attention especially for one simple line: "We need Jesus."
And it's not just happening at the upper levels of society; there's also a growing groundswell rising up under the radar of public perception. Some events--like the revival at Asbury University last year--broke out onto the public consciousness. But it wasn't a one-off event; college students are showing a marked new openness to the gospel. In the US, there's a particularly noticeable shift of young people moving toward the traditionally orthodox denominations of ancient-rooted Christianity: Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, high-church Anglicanism. Some Eastern Orthodox churches in the US are seeing new catechumenate classes that are, at times, as large as the rest of the congregation put together. In Catholicism, the young people coming to faith are leaving behind the diluted expressions of worship that came into vogue among the previous generation, and are expressing a longing to go back to the rich heritage of older practices. Whereas my generation--the so-called "Millennials"--is probably the most faithless generation America has ever seen, the generations rising behind us, as they come of age, are starting to look like they're not on the same track. My children's generation is much more open to the Christian faith and much more skeptical of the self-centered secularism that dictated public consciousness in earlier decades.
Every time I come across the evidence of this shift, I still find it surprising. I know I shouldn't; after all, I was writing articles years ago on this blog about how we were already seeing a slow shift back toward theism in academic philosophy. But I am always surprised. I find myself shocked, with wonder and delight, that it might really be happening.
Back in 2019, I felt led of the Lord to commit to a year of praying every day for revival in our society. I initially took it as a personal call, but during an unplanned moment in the middle of a sermon, I let it slip to my congregation, and some of them took up the call with gusto. (At first I regretted that slip, because then all the pressure of public expectations came to bear upon it, as if people were expecting the call to be a prophecy of what would certainly happen if they prayed.) Rather ironically, the end of that year of praying coincided exactly with a major Covid outbreak in our congregation, one of the first in our state. It resulted in us closing down for several months and ending up in the hostile spotlight of regional news media--not exactly a revival. One could say, however, that it was perhaps not a coincidence that God had led us through a year of concerted prayer immediately before what was probably the most difficult period in the long history of our congregation. But on a larger scale, it's now possible to trace out the lines of another connection. That period, beginning around 2019-20, was the beginning of the recent surge of public conversions. Justin Brierly, host of the podcast "The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God," marks the turnaround to right around that time. That's not to say, of course, that it was our prayers that made it happen. But it's heartening to see the connection nonetheless. So, people of God: keep praying. We may find that rather than staring into the darkness of a falling twilight, we are in fact on the threshold of an entirely new dawn, and even now the brilliant colors of a fresh awakening are dancing on the horizon.