The mission of Issues in Perspective is to provide thoughtful, historical and biblically-centered perspectives on current ethical and cultural issues.

In past editions of “Issues,” I have referred to this summary of American religious history I wrote in one of my books: To fully understand the development of American civilization, one must come to terms with the strategic role revivals have played.  Colonial America was shaped and transformed by the First Great Awakening of the 1740s and the Methodist revival that followed.  America of the early national period (1815-1850) was impacted by the Second Great Awakening.  You cannot understand the energy for the abolition of slavery, the passion for women’s rights, the temperance movement and other social reform movements without coming to terms with this revival.  The Laymen’s Prayer revival of the late 1850s began to transform America’s urban/commercial centers and the southern states of what would become the Confederacy.  D.L. Moody led a spiritual awakening in the urban centers of America through his preaching and social reform work in the 1880-1890s.  Billy Graham was the face of the awakening after World War II through his mass evangelism campaigns, which affected not only America but the entire world.  Smaller awakening’s occurred in America that did not necessarily have a national impact (e.g., the Jesus Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, the Brownsville, Florida revival of the late 1990s).  Finally, the 1906 Azusa Street revival laid the foundation for Pentecostalism and later the Charismatic Renewal movement, both of which continue to influence American Christianity today.

In the last several months, I have read in numerous places the observation that we are witnessing a religious awakening in America and in the broader western civilization.  Wall Street Journal writer Barton Swaim observes that “A generation ago, the New Atheists were all the rage. Sam Harris in “The End of Faith” (2004) and Christopher Hitchens in various essays drew a direct link between religious belief and the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Richard Dawkins’s international bestseller “The God Delusion” (2006) baldly asserted that religion was responsible for most if not all of the world’s man-made evil. (The book was based on his documentary of the same year, “The Root of All Evil?”) Daniel Dennett’s “Breaking the Spell” (2006) purported to explain religion in terms of evolutionary biology. Hitchens’s “God Is Not Great” (2007) made the same claim, its unsubtle subtitle, “How Religion Poisons Everything.”  The New Atheists have since all but disappeared. Hitchens died of esophageal cancer in 2011. The other disbelieving intellectuals continued to write and publish but seemed to make less news by their pronouncements.”

“I put the turning point in the spring of 2009, when A.N. Wilson said he’d returned to Christianity. The British journalist and biographer had by this time been a thorn in the side of Anglophone Christianity for two decades. In 1990 he’d published a biography of C.S. Lewis that all but laughed at Lewis’s faith. “Against Religion” appeared the following year. Subsequent books included “Jesus: A Life” (1992) and “Paul: The Mind of the Apostle” (1997). So imperious was Mr. Wilson’s tone and so arrogant was his attitude toward Christianity, the joke circulated that his next book would be titled “God: An Autobiography.” Yet here he was, writing in the left-wing magazine New Statesman, declaring himself a reconverted Christian . . . Meanwhile, a succession of well-known authors and intellectuals, formerly cold to religion, have either returned to Christianity, as Wilson did, or embraced it anew.”

• In 2016 the British classicist and historian Tom Holland, then writing a book about how the West became irrevocably Christian in its habits and outlook—the book, published in 2019, would be titled “Dominion”—announced he’d been wrong about Christianity. That religion, he said, is the reason “most of us who live in post-Christian societies still take for granted that it is nobler to suffer than to inflict suffering. It is why we generally assume that every human life is of equal value.” Mr. Holland has since said he attends Christian worship.
• Ayaan Hirsi Ali, having rejected the Islam of her youth and proclaimed her disbelief in God—she published “Infidel” in 2006—was for a time thought to be the next New Atheist. She announced her conversion to Christianity in 2023. Soon after, her husband, the British historian Niall Ferguson, said he’d done the same.
• Jordan Peterson, the Canadian psychologist and intellectual, speaks as if he is on the verge of Christian belief; see his “We Who Wrestle With God.”
• In 2024 Richard Dawkins himself, while in no way confessing religious belief, deplored the increasing influence of Islam in British life and said he counted himself a “cultural Christian.”
• Paul Kingsnorth, the British journalist, novelist and sometime radical environmentalist, has recently converted to Orthodox Christianity.

Attorney and evangelical Christian David French writes that “At this point it’s almost beyond debate that something important is stirring in American religion. There is too much data—and too many anecdotes—to ignore. The steady decline of Christianity in America seems to have slowed, perhaps even paused. There’s evidence that Gen Z men in particular are returning to church and younger generations of Americans are now attending church slightly more regularly than older generations.  Americans just witnessed an immense stadium filled to the brim with people mourning Charlie Kirk, in a memorial service that was one part worship service, one part political rally. And that service was replicated at a smaller scale at vigils across America. Fox News reported that an average of 5.2 million people watched its coverage of Kirk’s memorial service, with the audience spiking to 6.6 million viewers during Erika Kirk’s remarks.”

He goes on: “I can sense the change myself. When I speak on college campuses, students seem more curious about faith than they were even five years ago. When I write about faith, I get a larger—and more personal—response than I get when I write about any other topic. My inbox fills with heartfelt personal testimonies, including stories about how people both found and lost God . . . there are marvelous stories of religious renewal and devotion in the United States. In February 2024, I spoke at a chapel service at Asbury University in Wilmore, Ky., the site of an extended and remarkable revival in 2023 that brought at least 50,000 people to that small town to experience what my newsroom colleague Ruth Graham called “the nation’s first major spiritual revival in decades. This revival had filled the students there with zeal, but that zeal manifested itself in humility and compassion. It was inspiring. It made me search my own heart to see more clearly my own faults and failings.”

So, how do we evaluate what is happening? Historian Michael McClymond argues that “The English word revival denotes a period of time in which a Christian community undergoes revitalization. It has been defined as ‘a period of religious awakening: renewed interest in religion,’ with ‘meetings often characterized by emotional excitement.’  To call a gathering a revival suggests that an intensification of experience has occurred. A gathered multitude does not constitute a revival. What distinguishes a revival is a deepening of spiritual feeling and expression.  Revivals are corporate, experiential events. There is often a spiritual contagion, causing one person’s experiences to cascade onto others. The term renewal is not as well defined as revival, yet it suggests a return of zeal or vitality to a group of Christian believers who have declined in their devotion.”

In 2023, shortly before he died, Tim Keller, the founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York, wrote that genuine revival has three characteristics: It wakes up “sleepy” Christians, it converts nominal Christians into a more vital and genuine faith, and it brings non-Christians to Christ. Keller noted that revival begins with repentance. “Ordinary Christians aren’t usually sad enough or happy enough,” Keller wrote. “We’re not convicted enough about our sin. We’re not experiencing deep repentance and therefore we don’t experience high assurance” — by which Keller meant the high assurance of God’s love . . . In other words, revival begins with the people proclaiming, by word and deed, “I have sinned.” I am not certain I see this key aspect of revival in America right now.

As a historian, I have studied the various revivals throughout history, but especially those within the American context.  One conclusion is certain from my study: Revivals are the sovereign work of God’s Spirit and it is impossible to put a rigid template over them and arrive at a neat set of bullet points.  It is too early to draw any significant conclusions from what is occurring in America as we near the end of 2025.  “Wait and see” seems wise counsel to me.

See Barton Swaim in the Wall Street Journal (18-19 October 2025); David French in the New York Times (16 October 2025);  Thomas Lyons, “When a Christian Revival Goes Viral” in The Atlantic (23 February 2023); Ruth Graham in the New York Times (24 February 2023); Mike Cosper in www.christianitytoday.com (24 February 2023); and Michael McClymond, “What Revivals Can Teach Us” in www.christianitytoday.com (24 February 2023).