Is Christianity Back?

Reflections on the apparent resurgence of Christianity in the West

Photo by Josh Eckstein on Unsplash

(A six-minute read.)

If you haven’t heard, Christianity is back. Or so a lot of people seem to be saying.

After years of recession in the Western world, with declining church attendance and diminishing faith adherence, the Christian world has apparently managed to stem the tides of secularism and made Christianity great again.

Notable intellectuals have converted (or at least flirted with the idea). Gen Z-ers go to church more than Millennials did when they were the same age. And for the first time in a long time, men now go to church more than women do in many Christian traditions.

It seems that church is now cool.

So what’s going on?

Instead of trying to explain why it is that there seems to be a resurgence in religious adherence, I actually want to briefly wrestle with what kind of Christianity it is that’s seemingly making a comeback.

Because here’s my thesis: I have skepticism that Christianity—the type of Christianity that’s characterized by the love of God and love for neighbor—is making much of a comeback at this point. Instead, my suspicion is that Christendom is making a comeback.

Let me explain.

Making Christendom Great Again?

I first need to say that my reflections here are almost entirely anecdotal. I don’t have hard data to support my claims—so I’m sort of shooting from the hip here (and you can therefore take what I say with a grain of salt). What I share here is based mostly on personal conversations I’ve had with people and then general observations from listening to or reading people who’ve expressed a growing interest in a certain type of Christianity.

And this is what I find: it seems that the type of Christianity that people increasingly have interest in is the type of Christianity that can be largely used for social and utilitarian ends. They want something that will give order and structure to their personal lives and order and structure to society. They’re tired of the societal “goalposts” constantly moving, tired of feeling disoriented because they can’t keep up with the latest “woke” expectations, tired of having to keep straight a hundred different pronouns.

They just want things to return to the way they used to be.

Christianity, to them, provides this—offering some social moorings. It provides stability and consistency and structure. It provides a moral and ethical framework with which to raise their children—or, if they don’t have children, with which to raise themselves. It provides strength and power rather than the foolishness and weakness of the cross.

In many ways, what they want is a society—in America, in Europe—where Christianity is the “civil religion” again, where boys are boys and girls are girls, and they aren’t left with the impression that they’re evil just for being White.

I understand the allure—though I don’t completely resonate with their concerns.

Because what seems to be lacking in this version of Christianity is, well, Christ.

To be clear, this isn’t the case with everyone who seems to be experiencing some level of renewed interest in Christianity. There are certainly some people who are turning toward a more Christ-centered version of faith.

But I’m not sure that’s the vast majority.

After all, how much emphasis do you hear, with this renewed interest in Christianity, about the love of God and the teachings of Christ? How much do you hear people praising the benefits of compassion, forgiveness, and love of neighbor—that these are the aspects of Christianity they’re drawn to and searching for?

Instead, these values often seem to be the very things many are running from—because compassion, forgiveness, and love of neighbor are apparently progressive and woke values.

Indeed, as I’ve discussed before, empathy is a sin in the world of modern Christian revival.

But the heart of Christianity, I’d submit, is the truth about God’s love for us—as especially embodied and manifested in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus—and our responsive love for others, which includes compassion, grace, and empathy for all, and justice especially for the poor and marginalized.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying that Christianity doesn’t also provide stability and order—that it’s explicitly or implicitly at odds with traditional views of gender and sexuality, or that it lays siege to any sense of healthy pride about one’s own nation and cultural traditions (so long as this pride doesn’t demonize or vilify other nations and cultures in the process).

But if this is the extent of one’s “Christianity,” and especially if such “Christianity” either ignores or assaults the most important aspects of Jesus’ message and mission, then it’s not “Christianity” at all—but some emaciated, moralistic version of Christianity that doesn’t have the capacity to truly change hearts and lives (or society).

And to the degree that this is the “Christianity” that’s back, true Christianity isn’t really back at all (not that I’m sure true Christianity has ever had its day in the societal sun, since the Christianity of the cross and the Christendom of the state have always been at odds).

Two examples

I’ll give two examples of this—one public and one personal.

First, Richard Dawkins, the most famous and outspoken atheist of the early-2000s, recently shocked people when he proclaimed that he considered himself to be a “cultural Christian.” As the British evolutionary biologist noted, he likes “living in a culturally Christian country although I do not believe a word of the Christian faith.”

He further explained that he enjoys “hymns and Christmas carols and I sort of feel at home in the Christian ethos, and I feel that we are a Christian country in that sense.”

Plenty of Christians celebrated this admission—but I’m left wondering if Dawkins’s sentiment really adds much wind to our sails.

After all, Christianity without Christ has no value—and is, in fact, dangerously harmful.

Second, I recently had a conversation with a new friend who shared with me that he and his wife, though not Christians themselves, have decided to pull their kids out of public school and put them into Christian school.

Why? Because he feels his kids are being reprogrammed at public school, and there’s no accountability and structure in their environment. Religion, he explained, gives them a framework and order—it gives them traditional values and discipline.

And then he said something that arrested me in my tracks: in that regard, even having a school that promoted Muslim values would be better than a public school, he explained. “You need some moral and ethical framework,” he added.

I don’t doubt at all that the Spirit can definitely use the ethical vision—or at least part of the ethical vision—of religion in general and Christianity specifically as the initial draw for people who aren’t already Christians. I believe God will use whatever means he can to draw people to himself—even if the initial “entry point” is something other than the core of the message of Jesus.

And I don’t at all want to discourage people who seem to be leaning into faith, leaving them with the impression that their concerns aren’t legitimate because they don’t initially go as far as I would want them to.

But, at the very least, let’s be a little more restrained in our proclamations that Christianity is back. It’s not time to take a “victory lap” quite yet.

Until and unless the masses are truly drawn into a Christianity rooted firmly in the love of God and love for neighbor—a version of Christianity that celebrates the vulnerability and weakness of the cross—we are accepting a pseudo-Christianity that misses the true heart of Jesus.

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Shawn is a pastor and church planter in Portland, Maine, whose life, ministry, and writing focus on incarnational and embodied expressions of faith. The author of four books and a columnist for Adventist Review, he is also a DPhil (PhD) candidate at the University of Oxford, focusing on nineteenth-century American Christianity. You can follow him on Instagram, and listen to his podcast Mission Lab.