‘Sign Of Great Hope’: Reli­gious Lead­ers See A ‘Fourth Great Awak­en­ing’ As Amer­i­cans Flock To Chris­tian­i­ty

More Amer­i­cans are lean­ing into their Chris­t­ian faith in what some reli­gious lead­ers and schol­ars are call­ing a “fourth Great Awak­en­ing.”

Bible sales in the Unit­ed States have sky­rock­et­ed in 2024, reli­gious col­leges are see­ing enroll­ment boosts despite over­all declines in high­er edu­ca­tion atten­dance and sev­er­al states are push­ing for Bible-based cur­ricu­lum in pub­lic schools. Some Bible schol­ars believe this may mark a sig­nif­i­cant cul­tur­al shift.

“While it has been appar­ent to a few of us for some time, mil­lions are now real­iz­ing that ‘woke’ ide­olo­gies are, in fact, destruc­tive attempts to re-found the nation accord­ing to a new civic reli­gion which both par­o­dies and per­se­cutes Chris­tian­i­ty,” Chad Pec­knold, the­olo­gian and pro­fes­sor at The Catholic Uni­ver­si­ty of Amer­i­ca, told the Dai­ly Caller News Foun­da­tion.

Despite over­all book sales increas­ing by only 1% com­pared to 2023, Bible sales in the U.S. have reached an impres­sive 22% increase as of Octo­ber 2024, accord­ing to the Wall Street Jour­nal.

The Car­di­nal New­man Soci­ety in Octo­ber report­ed that enroll­ment at Catholic col­leges has risen in 2024 despite an over­all enroll­ment decrease at oth­er insti­tu­tions, with sev­er­al schools such as Ave Maria Uni­ver­si­ty in Flori­da and Bene­dic­tine Col­lege in Kansas see­ing record growth, increas­ing atten­dance by more than 20% over the last 10 years.

“There is a resur­gence of Chris­tian­i­ty among young peo­ple,” Wade Burleson, retired pas­tor and pres­i­dent of Isto­ria Min­istries, told the DCNF. “I see what is hap­pen­ing [as] more of an Awak­en­ing. An Awak­en­ing occurs when the irre­li­gious come to faith in Christ.”

Burleson point­ed to sev­er­al instances of young peo­ple com­ing into faith in doves in recent years, with hun­dreds of stu­dents being bap­tized on cam­pus­es across the nation, includ­ing sev­er­al mem­bers of the four-time nation­al cham­pi­on Okla­homa Uni­ver­si­ty women’s soft­ball team.

“There have been three Great Awak­en­ings in Amer­i­ca, and a few small­er ones,” Burleson con­tin­ued. “I believe we are in the begin­ning of a fourth Great Awak­en­ing and it is a response to infla­tion (finan­cial pan­ic), pan­demics (Covid), wars (glob­al), and the sud­den death of sta­bil­i­ty in Amer­i­ca. There is no anchor in life bet­ter than the Anchor of Hope, and when the ship of life is tossed to and fro, faith awak­ens.”

Pec­knold shared this sen­ti­ment, argu­ing that far-left pol­i­tics have dri­ven Amer­i­cans towards Chris­tian­i­ty.

“Democ­rats, and the cor­po­ra­tions and insti­tu­tions they con­trolled, embraced this pseu­do-civic reli­gion in their attempt to take total con­trol over the Amer­i­can repub­lic,” Pec­knold said. “The Amer­i­can peo­ple saw their total­i­tar­i­an appetites on dis­play in every­thing from forced vac­ci­na­tions to extreme racial­ism to the rede­f­i­n­i­tion of mar­riage and the denial of sex­u­al dif­fer­ence, all under the ever-evolv­ing ban­ner of ‘the Progress Flag.’”

“This is when the Democ­rats were defeat­ed so thor­ough­ly on Novem­ber 5th, it was not only seen as a polit­i­cal vic­to­ry, but also as a reli­gious vic­to­ry: it was a repu­di­a­tion of the ersatz civic reli­gion that Democ­rats had used to re-found the coun­try.”

Catholic vot­ers played a piv­otal role in the 2024 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, mak­ing up approx­i­mate­ly 25% of the vote and over­whelm­ing­ly sid­ing with Pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald Trump, with oth­er Chris­t­ian vot­ers fol­low­ing suit.

This was a sur­pris­ing rev­e­la­tion con­sid­er­ing tens of mil­lions of Chris­tians were expect­ed to refrain from vot­ing, cit­ing a dis­like of both can­di­dates and gen­er­al unin­ter­est in pol­i­tics, accord­ing to Rel­e­vant Mag­a­zine. Some reli­gious orga­ni­za­tions, how­ev­er, made efforts to warn vot­ers pri­or to the elec­tion that the Demo­c­ra­t­ic tick­et was “patent­ly anti-reli­gious.” (RELATED: ‘Why Would Any Chris­t­ian Vote For Her?’: Pro-Life Orgs React To Har­ris’ ‘Anti-Reli­gious Free­dom’ Abor­tion Stance)

Greg Boyd, the­olo­gian and Pas­tor at Wood­land Hills Church in St. Paul, Min­neso­ta is less con­vinced of this reli­gious revival.

“My con­cern is that a lot of it seems to be wrapped up with nation­al­ism,” Boyd told the DCNF. “And it con­cerns me because when­ev­er the Chris­t­ian faith has got­ten too close to polit­i­cal pow­er, it’s been trans­formed by the polit­i­cal pow­er, and we have Chris­tians try­ing to con­trol oth­ers and con­quer oth­ers, the same as we’ve had through­out his­to­ry. And in my opin­ion, that doesn’t look any­thing [like] what we find in the Gospel.”

Boyd point­ed to exam­ples of states like Texas, Louisiana and Okla­homa approv­ing the imple­men­ta­tion of Bible lessons into pub­lic school lessons. Texas’ law is meant to help “stu­dents to bet­ter under­stand the con­nec­tion of his­to­ry, art, com­mu­ni­ty, lit­er­a­ture, and reli­gion on piv­otal events” in his­to­ry and Oklahoma’s is sim­i­lar­ly meant “as an instruc­tion­al sup­port into the cur­ricu­lum.”

“Where did Jesus ever impose him­self on oth­ers?” the pas­tor asked.

“I mean, I would love to see a revival in the coun­try,” Boyd said. “The evi­dence of that would be, I would think, peo­ple become more Christ-like, they become more lov­ing. They would be try­ing to turn the oth­er cheek, try­ing to reach out across the aisle and build bridges instead of walls. And I don’t see any of that hap­pen­ing with the church as a whole. Seems like it’s kind of gone deeply into polit­i­cal polar­iza­tion.”

Boyd agreed that many issues in pol­i­tics have dri­ven peo­ple to view cur­rent affairs through a reli­gious lens.

Cul­tur­al issues such as abor­tion, gen­der ide­ol­o­gy and diver­si­ty, equi­ty and inclu­sion (DEI) have been hot top­ics divid­ing Amer­i­cans’ opin­ions, espe­cial­ly reli­gious Amer­i­cans. The ongo­ing war in Gaza, as well as the hun­dreds of protests that spanned the U.S. in response, also impact­ed Chris­tians’ per­spec­tive, with many view­ing the appar­ent pros­e­cu­tion of Jews on col­lege cam­pus­es as an infringe­ment on reli­gious free­dom as a whole.

Church atten­dance among Chris­tians remains rel­a­tive­ly low in the Unit­ed States, with only 30% of Protes­tants and 23% of Catholics attend­ing church every week, accord­ing to a March Gallup poll. How­ev­er, more Amer­i­cans than ever are con­sum­ing reli­gious con­tent, with the Hal­low prayer app becom­ing the first reli­gious app to top Apple’s App Store in 2024 and Fr. Mike Schmitz’s Bible In A Year pod­cast con­sis­tent­ly top­ping charts in recent years, accord­ing to Nation­al Review.

Young men in par­tic­u­lar are main­tain­ing their devo­tion to faith, with more Gen Z men iden­ti­fy­ing as Chris­t­ian than women for the first time, accord­ing to the New York Times.

“We are cur­rent­ly see­ing a kind of clar­i­ty about the civ­i­liza­tion­al con­flict that ‘woke’ ide­olo­gies pro­voked,” Pec­knold told the DCNF. “In brief, the peo­ple are fed up with this fake reli­gion, and even if they aren’t Chris­t­ian them­selves, they’re real­iz­ing that Chris­tian­i­ty pro­vides a far bet­ter ‘unwrit­ten con­sti­tu­tion’ for the nation than anti-Chris­t­ian wok­ism can sup­ply. There’s a sim­ple real­iza­tion at work here.”

“Chris­tian­i­ty is an order­ing prin­ci­ple which ele­vates and enno­bles souls, fam­i­lies, and soci­eties — it’s inher­ent­ly pub­lic, and can­not be ‘pri­va­tized,’ rel­e­gat­ed to the mar­gins, or sep­a­rat­ed from ques­tions of edu­ca­tion, her­itage, pub­lic moral­i­ty, fam­i­ly pol­i­cy, law, or the aspi­ra­tions of nations,” Pec­knold said. “We still date time by the Incar­na­tion because, deep down, every­one knows that Chris­tian­i­ty is objec­tive­ly true and good for all peo­ple — it roots us in real­i­ty, it helps us to pro­mote the tru­ly good, and avoid those evils which cause so much suf­fer­ing — it ele­vates us by the Light of Christ. Pub­lic Chris­tian­i­ty is lit­er­al­ly what makes civ­i­liza­tion­al renew­al pos­si­ble. The fact that Amer­i­cans are remem­ber­ing this, and hav­ing the courage to state it, is a sign of great hope for the nation.”

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