Is There a ‘Religious Revival’ Happening Among Gen Z?

Pastors and priests from across the country have said that they’ve observed more young people attending their services, but researchers and political scientists have cast doubt on whether those anecdotes are reflective of a widespread trend. —Photo-Illustration by Chloe Dowling for TIME (Source Images: shutterjack/Getty Images; Bryan Anselm—The Washington Post/Getty Images) A couple months after Anthony Gross moved to New York, he came up with an idea for a new TikTok series: He decided to visit and rank different Catholic churches in the city.

“As someone who just moved there from out of state, Midwest, I don’t know anything about New York,” the 23-year-old recalls thinking.

“I don’t really have that many friends.

I don’t have community.

And I definitely don’t know where to go to mass.

I would just look it up on ChatGPT.

Like I would want to go at night, I’d say, ‘What’s a 5 p.m. mass near me?’” Some of those videos garnered tens of thousands of likes on TikTok.

And, at some of the services he went to, he noticed a lot of other Gen Zers; one Sunday, Gross attended mass at St.

Joseph’s Church in Greenwich Village at the recommendation of another content creator, and he recalls that he was “blown away.” “The place was packed,” he says.

“You had to show up 10 minutes early.

You could barely get a seat.

Everybody was under the age of 30.” Gross says this is part of a broader religious revival among young people in the U.S.—a sentiment echoed by many people in the Christian community.

Pastors and priests from across the country have said that they’ve observed more young people attending their services: Bishop John Dolan of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Phoenix, for instance, says his diocese saw hundreds of people baptized over Easter weekend, most of them Gen Z.

Young Christian influencers have also gone viral online .