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After decades of decline, faith is making a comeback — driven by young conservatives seeking truth.

A major study released last week reveals that Christianity’s decline in America has ground to a halt — a finding with big implications for how churches engage the secular world.

According to the Religious Landscape Study (RLS), published by Pew Research, 62% of US adults identify as Christians — a percentage that has held basically steady for five years in a row after decades of rapid decline.

This is no small finding. The RLS is the single largest survey conducted by Pew, with the latest one polling almost 37,000 American adults.

The first RLS, published in 2007, found that 78% of US adults identified as Christians. Another one in 2014 showed that number drop to 71%.

By 2019, only 63% of American adults considered themselves Christians. However, in the five years since that time, no further decline has been detected. If anything, Christianity looks to be staging a comeback.

The surprise finding made New York Times headlines last week, with the paper of record opining:

For decades, social scientists, demographers and Christians themselves have told a familiar story about the state of Christianity in the United States: The country was rapidly secularising. The Christian population was shrinking, on its way to becoming a minority religion. America may have been some years behind Europe in the process, but its pews were emptying steadily and inexorably.

Now, that narrative may be changing.

After years of decline, the Christian population in the United States has been stable for several years, a shift fuelled in part by young adults, according to a major new survey from the Pew Research Center. And the number of religiously unaffiliated Americans, which had grown steadily for years, has also levelled off.

While younger Americans are less likely to identify as Christians, the youngest group in the study defied that trend. Even more surprisingly, this shift was driven by a resurgence of Christian identity among young men.

Political scientist Dr David Campbell of the University of Notre Dame attributes this trend to seismic political shifts. Speaking to the Times, he explained, “If you’re a young white male these days and you think of yourself as conservative, then being religious is a part of that.”

In summary, not only have decades of American apostasy ground to a halt — and not only have young men been the cause of this reversal — but conservative politics have played a major role in the shift.

Dr Campbell and the Times are not alone in noticing this conservative turnaround. The newest Harvard Youth Poll reveals that today’s youngest voters (ages 18-24) are more conservative than those who came before them. Gallup has also revealed that Gen Z teens identify as more conservative than their parents at twice the rate millennials did at the same age.

This political realignment was also apparent during the 2024 US election, when President Donald Trump gained a 10 point swing from young voters compared to the 2020 election. The shift was even more pronounced among young men, 56% of whom backed Trump, up from 41% at the previous election.

And in Rasmussen polling data released just this week, a full 60% of people aged 18-39 approve of Trump’s performance, compared to just 46% among older generations.

All said, there is a vital lesson here for churches: Shying away from politics — and conservative viewpoints in particular — is a big mistake if younger generations are to be won for Christ.

Why are Christianity and Conservatism Making a Comeback?

In a world where Christianity and conservatism have been dismissed and even mocked for years, what could explain the resurgence of both?

The benefit of hindsight has given us the answer: The progressive Left’s fatal miscalculation was to not just vilify their opponents but to silence them entirely.

What began as political correctness (1990s) hardened into cancel culture (2010s), which was then institutionalised through DEI initiatives (early 2020s) and is now being codified into law under the guise of fighting “misinformation” and “disinformation”.

But the Leftist hegemony that ransacked Western culture did not merely sideline Christianity — it waged war on truth itself.

Almost overnight, men could become pregnant and compete in women’s sports. Obesity was beautiful. Celebrating sodomy was not optional but mandatory. A climate apocalypse was going to end the world in 12 years. Governments could decide what to inject into their citizens. Feelings trumped facts. Racism was good if it hurt white people. Children could fix their gender confusion by being chemically and surgically castrated.

Almost everything we were told to affirm was a lie, while almost everything we were forbidden from questioning was true.

The more people were forced to believe our culture’s endless contradictions, the more they began to push back. When truth is forbidden, it becomes more desirable — this is the ‘Forbidden Fruit’ or ‘Streisand Effect’ in action.

Gavin Newsom is one of many Democrats who are dealing with the fact that their kids are turning to the political right. The fact that he admits it here is sort of politically stunning but make no mistake, this is happening to a lot of them.pic.twitter.com/i58imSm0Hp

— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) March 6, 2025

As Leftism was tried and found wanting, people began to search for a stronger foundation for their new political outlook. They needed a bedrock that would uphold human dignity, objective truth, commonsense morality and even civilisation itself. For many, that search is leading them directly to Christianity.

In short, the suppression waged by Leftists has become the very catalyst for political and spiritual revival.

Cultural commentator Josh Daws calls this the “conservative to Christian pipeline”.

The conservative to Christian pipeline is a real phenomenon that totally upends evangelical assumptions of winsomeness that have always catered to progressives. https://t.co/D6aHTLE6aX

— Josh Daws (@JoshDaws) February 27, 2025

And while this trend is newly emerging and may take demographers and commentators years to fully unpack, the most important lesson must not be missed: Conservatism is attractive because its Christian foundations anchor it in reality.

Moreover, the conservative appeal of Christianity is a gift to the church that must not be squandered.

The Fatal Flaws of ‘Third Way’ Politics

The emerging status quo will test churches that have learned to survive turbulent political times by steering clear of controversy.

In the evangelical world, third-wayism — also known as winsomeness or public Christianity — has come to dominate the thinking of many Christians who engage in politics.

Popularised by the late New York pastor Timothy Keller (1950–2023), third-wayism urges Christians not to align too closely with either the political Right or Left. Keller argued that the kingdom of God offers us a “third way” that rises above partisan divides, allowing Christians to critique both sides while offering a better alternative.

Keller often emphasised winsomeness and persuasion, encouraging believers to find common ground with their political opponents wherever possible, and to approach politics without being combative or overtly biased.

On the surface, this sounds biblical enough. But baked into third-wayism are at least three fatal flaws.

First, it assumes that Christian political engagement is merely an extension of evangelism, rather than a force for real change.

As James Wood explains, though Keller was a great evangelist, he made the mistake of thinking about politics “through the lens of evangelism, in the sense of making sure that political judgments do not prevent people in today’s world from coming to Christ”.

But this doesn’t work in real life. Take the issue of abortion. Every year, more than 70 million unborn babies are killed globally. Yet, under Keller’s framework, this silent holocaust is treated as a discussion to navigate winsomely rather than a moral evil to be abolished.

By treating politics as just another evangelism strategy, third-wayism strips Christians of the clarity and courage needed to stand against atrocities like abortion, and abandons millions more babies to destruction.

Second — related to this — third-wayism imagines a moral equivalence between the Right and the Left that simply doesn’t exist.

While conservatives may at times deserve criticism for lacking grace towards immigrants, love for sinners, openness to other cultures, or sympathy for the poor, there are sound biblical and practical reasons for upholding secure borders, public decency, national traditions, and responsible welfare policies.

The same cannot be said for the standard policy platform of a modern Leftist party — which includes abortion on demand, mass illegal immigration, sex-change surgery for children, assisted suicide, forced wealth redistribution, transgenderism, racism against majorities, eco-socialism, porn and drag queens in public libraries, and the jailing of political dissidents.

These evils are condemned in Scripture — and they are even an affront to most secular people, once all the euphemisms and propaganda are stripped away.

Third-wayism urges Christians to rebuke the Left and the Right equally. But there is no equivalence between the Right’s lack of compassion and the Left’s outright rebellion against God’s created order. Any attempt to confront both equally will inevitably mean nitpicking conservatives while excusing progressives — a pattern aptly described as “punch right, coddle left”.

In the Trump era, for instance, third-way Christians loudly and performatively condemn Trump’s minor missteps, while rarely acknowledging the significant good he has accomplished in office. Worse still, their critiques of the Left’s glaring evils are scarce, muted and hesitant.

As highlighted by cultural commentator Megan Basham, third-wayism serves as a net benefit to the Left, providing a permission structure for Christians to support politicians and parties that openly oppose biblical morality. The end result is an acceleration of the culture’s leftward drift.

Third and finally, third-wayism misreads the extent of anti-Christian bias in the culture.

Writer and urban analyst Aaron Renn has provided a helpful framework for understanding how secular culture has perceived Christianity over recent decades. He argues that Christians have lived through ‘Three Worlds’ without even realising it — Positive World (pre-1994), where faith was a social asset; Neutral World (1994-2014), where it was one eccentric lifestyle option among many; and Negative World (2014-present), where being Christian is a liability. Of the latter, he writes:

In this world, being a Christian is now a social negative, especially in high status positions. Christianity in many ways is seen as undermining the social good. Christian morality is expressly repudiated.

Renn argues that to reach the culture, we need to account for the profound shifts that have taken place around is. Instead of doing this, many Christians continue operating as if they were still living in Positive or Neutral World, clinging to ideas and strategies that no longer fit in a culture that views their faith with contempt.

Third-wayism makes precisely this error. When third-way Christians are faced with hostility from the culture, they generally conclude the problem lies with their own conduct rather than the culture’s distorted values. It is a fatal misdiagnosis, leading Christians to be ever more accommodating, and causing churches to weaken their witness and forsake their prophetic voice.

Thus, what began as a mission to transform the culture ends with the culture transforming the church.

Indeed, Josh Daws argues that, not only is conservatism an on-ramp to the Christian faith but

The corollary is also true: progressive politics is an off-ramp from the Christian faith. Everywhere it’s embraced in the church, deconstruction follows. Third-way politics doesn’t preserve our witness—it lays the groundwork for losing it entirely.

The corollary is also true: progressive politics is an off-ramp from the Christian faith. Everywhere it’s embraced in the church, deconstruction follows. Third-way politics doesn’t preserve our witness—it lays the groundwork for losing it entirely. https://t.co/jyaEIDpsid

— Josh Daws (@JoshDaws) March 3, 2025

Ironically, after so many years spent appeasing the secular Left, third-way Christians are uniquely unprepared for the incredible opportunity now before them: fields of Christless conservatives white for harvest.

Preparing for Prodigal World

Aaron Renn composed his Three Worlds framework in 2022, several years before the conservative resurgence began. In the years to come, perhaps a fourth will need to be added: Prodigal World — where returning to the Christian faith is the only sensible option in a culture gone mad.

Responding to the great conservative mission field doesn’t mean Christian leaders need to cozy up to the secular Right just as third-way Christians did with the secular Left. It simply means that when it comes to politics, we should assess everything through a biblical lens.

It means letting politics be politics and evangelism be evangelism. It means conceding that, as Christians, we’ll almost always be viewed as “conservative” — even “far right” — by worldly standards. It means correcting the flaws on the Right while standing firmly against the monumental evils of the Left. It means submitting our politics to the lordship of Christ, irrespective of what the world thinks.

Given what God is stirring among younger generations in our day, the result will be counterintuitive. Watch this space: Untold numbers of young people disillusioned by Leftist lies will buy Bibles, start praying, and darken the doors of their local church. Instead of encountering hate, as they were told to expect, they’ll be overwhelmed by truth and love — but only if we have the courage to confront our culture’s madness with the truth of Christ.

Young people aren’t interested in churches that compromise with the culture. They are searching for faith communities that stand firm — and for foundations strong enough to sustain both their lives and a restored civilisation.

The only question is — are we ready?

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Image courtesy of Pexels.