Those noticing more people — especially younger faces — filling the pews at church lately, aren’t imagining things.
Generation Z, or Gen Z, those born between 1997 and 2012, has recently been leading an upswing of churchgoers in North Carolina.
In the Diocese of Charlotte, it is estimated that over 1,200 people entered the Church at Easter, with the vast majority being between the ages of 25 and 40.
Bishop Michael Martin of the Diocese of Charlotte told Carolina Journal in a recent phone interview that there are many reasons for the increase in younger Catholic converts.
“I think what we’re seeing is the fallout from a number of dynamics that are present in our culture, where I think young people are beginning to see that the hopes that they were given about self-actualization and being able to find your own path that a lot of that, while it sounds good, can be can be quite challenging when you’re not rooted to something greater than yourself,” he said. “The human person is so created for relationship.”
Andrew Hopper, lead pastor at Mercy Hill Church in Greensboro, agrees that young people just aren’t finding what they are looking for in today’s secular culture.
“Secularism has failed,” he told CJ in a recent phone interview. “It’s becoming more and more of a failed ideology, and these kids are looking for something that is actually concrete in terms of truth. They’re learning by their own experience that truth isn’t just whatever you want it to be. They’re looking for things that are rooted and established, and they are finding that in Christ and in the Bible. An example of this is how progressive, liberal churches are not experiencing the things that biblically conservative churches are for that exact idea.”
The opposite trend, which Hopper referenced, is equally present, with “mainline” churches — like the Episcopal Church, Presbyterian Church USA, and United Methodist Church — seeing quickly aging congregations.
Hopper said Mercy Hill sees hundreds of Gen Z students come, get connected, get baptized, and join the church.
“Last year, our church grew by 30%, and a lot of those were Gen Z students,” he told CJ. “Our college ministry met over 550 new students this year (who were first-time guests to our church) and baptized 56 college students in the last three weeks of the semester.”
As for the pandemic’s role in increasing young parishioners to the Catholic Church, Bishop Martin said he thinks it only added to the anxiety and uncertainty already present in the human experience.
“I think witnessing that on such a worldwide scale, where no one knew what to do, so to speak, I think that was jarring,” he said. “I’m 63. It was jarring for me. I can only imagine what it must have been like to be 14 at that time.”
The Diocese of Charlotte has been taking steps to make young people and anyone feel welcomed, and at home, starting with making sure that parishes are open to going out into the community instead of waiting for people to come to them. An example of this is having a small faith community of seven to eight people get together at a local coffee shop and discuss the faith or the readings for the week ahead. They grow deeper in their faith while growing together as a community.
There is also a Young Professional Catholics group in the diocese where young people get together for social events like baseball games or just meet up and discuss their faith.
Hopper said the belief in God has always held the same importance throughout history.
“Belief in God is almost a universal norm for all humanity,” he said. “Almost every human that has ever been born in the world believes in God.”
And that belief has only become stronger for those seeking a deeper meaning, especially among those in Gen Z.
“If all the connections are only for the here and now, again, there’s that level of this content or that level of anxiety that says, well then, what happens next?” Martin told CJ. “I think it’s asking those questions that has been what has brought more young people to a realization that there’s got to be something else greater than this, that the human person was made for.
Pandemic, rebelling against secular culture, among the reasons for the uptick
In a study titled “The Quiet Revival: Gen Z leads rise in church attendance” from biblesociety.org.uk, it mentions that young people in particular are looking for meaning in their lives and that church attendance has led to a greater sense of well-being for those who attend than those who don’t. Also, those who attend a church were less likely to feel anxious or depressed, which especially developed among this age group during the COVID-19 shutdowns.
A 2023 report by the North Carolina Child Fatality Task Force shows how serious the problem with children committing suicide was in North Carolina during the early days of the pandemic. The suicide rate for youths between the ages of 10- and 17-years-old reached the highest in two decades in 2021 in North Carolina, according to the report.
“A more normie, middle-class form of Christianity might be fine when the culture is basically stable,” Rod Dreher, a former New York Post writer and author of religion-focused books such as “The Benedict Option,” told the New York Post. “But the insanity that began in 2020 — COVID, the Summer of Floyd, the normalization of transgenderism — made a lot of people think hard about their religious commitments.”
The Rev. Raymond Maria La Grange of the Church of St. Vincent Ferrer on Lexington Avenue, New York City, also told the New York Post that at least three-quarters of his new converts are in their 20s or early 30s and that “it was really after [the pandemic] that the parish in general started to grow.”
Christianity on the rise for Gen Z more broadly
Christianity is also growing among Gen Z outside the state.
In an article for City Journal, “Gen Z is rebelling – by Getting Religion,” John Hirschauer said Americans identifying as Christian have stabilized. One major reason is the “unexpected religiosity of Generation Z,” who they say are not abandoning religion at the rate their parents did. For some, “faith has become a form of rebellion against a culture that rejects traditional values.”
In an article on the-independent.com titled “Make Christianity cool again: Why Gen Z is flocking to the church,” they profile non-denominational Harbour Church, Folkestone, Kent, in southeast England. Twenty-five years ago, only 15 people would attend a Sunday service. Today, that number has grown between 150 and 180, with most being teenagers, young adults, and families with children.
The Quiet Revival: Gen Z study states that even though only 39% of the British public identify as Christian, the number of young adults, including young men, is rapidly growing in membership in Christian churches. Monthly attendance has risen from 8% in 2018 to 12% in 2024, quadrupling from 4% to 16% during that same timeframe among 18 to 24-year-olds, with young men growing from 4% to 21%.
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