Is the Western World Witnessing a Resurgence of Religion in the Post-Liberal Era?
Abstract
This article examines competing empirical, theoretical, and normative claims about whether the Western world is experiencing a revival of religion — with special attention to young people and to the apparent attraction to Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy — and evaluates the likely socioeconomic consequences, the durability of secularism, and the normative policy choices states face, including the role of libertarian ideas about individual freedom. I synthesize the latest survey data, peer-reviewed scholarship, and prominent legal and political developments through December 2025 to argue that the answer is: partly. Evidence shows pockets of renewed religious engagement among younger cohorts in several Western settings, concentrated around certain traditions and mediated by immigration, institutional entrepreneurship, identity politics, and post-liberal cultural dynamics. Yet this resurgence is uneven, institutionally fragile, and coexists with a larger, long-run pattern of secularization in many places. The policy stakes are significant: changing patterns of religiosity will affect family formation, social capital, political behaviour, and law; they will also revive friction between liberal neutralist state frameworks and the claims of religious communities. Below I develop a conceptual framework, review the evidence, analyze socioeconomic effects, and conclude with policy implications, including the distinctive challenges posed to libertarian and liberal theories of state neutrality and free association.
I. Conceptual framing: resurgence, reconfiguration, or episodic mobilization?
Scholarly debates about “religious resurgence” have long distinguished three phenomena that are easily conflated in public discourse: (1) numerical growth (rising membership or attendance); (2) intensity or salience (greater devotion among adherents); and (3) political-organizational visibility (religion playing a more prominent role in public life). Contemporary observers sometimes use “resurgence” to encompass all three, but they are analytically distinct and driven by different mechanisms. Recent literature emphasizes reconfiguration rather than a simple reversal of secularization: religion is reorganizing—becoming more globalized, digitally mediated, and often more socially and politically robust in particular subpopulations—even while broad measures of affiliation and ritual participation continue to decline in other segments of Western societies.
Two clarifying corollaries follow. First, youth trends matter, because cohort effects determine long-run religious demography (a resilient attachment among young adults predicts future institutional vitality). Second, context matters: migration, institutional entrepreneurship (e.g., dynamic parishes and movement networks), cultural backlash to perceived failures of liberal modernity, and geopolitical events can all produce localized upticks that do not necessarily translate to universal revival. These distinctions guide the empirical review below.
II. Empirical evidence through December 2025
II.i. Large-scale survey evidence: the Pew Religious Landscape Study and allied sources
The most authoritative baseline for the United States is the Pew Research Center’s 2023–24 Religious Landscape Study (RLS). Pew’s headline finding for the U.S. is that the long-running decline in Christian identification slowed markedly and may have plateaued: the decline in Christian identification that dominated earlier decades “has slowed, and may have leveled off” according to Pew’s analysis of the RLS. That study also documents considerable religious switching and cohort heterogeneity (younger adults remain less likely to identify as Christian than older cohorts, but trends for attitudes and certain behaviours have shifted modestly toward greater religiosity in the mid-2020s).
Complementary polling from faith-sector research organizations shows that in some Anglophone contexts younger adults now attend worship at higher rates than older cohorts did at the same age. For example, Barna and other church-research organizations reported that Gen Z and younger Millennials lead increases in weekly in-person church attendance in the U.S. and that this pattern is visible in the 2024–25 reporting window. But Barna’s measures are attendance-based and should be read alongside affiliation measures (which remain mixed).
II.ii. The United Kingdom and Western Europe: Catholic revival among some young Britons
Reporting from multiple outlets and survey evidence indicates a notable uptick in Catholic engagement among some young people in the United Kingdom. Journalistic accounts and surveys (e.g., Reuters’ coverage of 2025 reporting) document that Catholicism has become prominent among certain cohorts—especially men aged roughly 18–34—whereby Catholic practice and communities (including small charismatic or orthodox groups) have attracted young adherents seeking ritual, moral clarity, and community after the social dislocations of the pandemic era. These trends, while real, coexist with overall long-term declines in nominal Christian affiliation in census data; the growth is concentrated and not yet large enough to reverse macro-secularization.
II.iii. Eastern Orthodoxy in the West: conversion, immigration, and campus presence
Evidence about Eastern Orthodoxy is more complex. Orthodox Christian populations in the United States and Western Europe remain demographically distinctive: a large portion of Orthodoxy’s congregants are immigrants or children of immigrants, making its institutional vitality heavily dependent on migration and diasporic networks. Recent field reports and a 2025 briefing on American Orthodoxy highlight that Orthodoxy’s share on some college campuses and in specific localities has increased relative to a small baseline, and some parishes report growth driven by conversion and intentional outreach. Yet the scale is modest relative to major Western denominations; Orthodoxy’s resurgence, where it occurs, is often local and shaped by migration and organizational capacity.
II.iv. Global and comparative perspectives
Globally, religion remains a powerful social force. Pew’s long-range demographic analyses indicate that religious populations will shift in composition worldwide, with growth concentrated in parts of the Global South; in the West the picture is variegated. A close reading of recent comparative research (including work published or summarized in 2024–25) indicates that some countries—especially those experiencing political disillusionment with liberal institutions, migration-driven demographic change, or traumatic national events—see increases in religious salience among particular cohorts. Conversely, many Western states continue to see intergenerational declines in nominal affiliation; the apparent revival is therefore patchy and contingent.
III. Why might young people be attracted to Catholicism or Orthodoxy now?
Several mutually reinforcing mechanisms help explain why Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy are among the traditions enjoying heightened interest in particular Western subpopulations.
III.i. Search for meaning, ritual, and stability
Younger adults report high rates of anxiety, loneliness, and desire for meaning; qualitative studies and surveys (e.g., Springtide Research) show that many young people say they are drawn to religious practices that offer community, ritual, and frameworks for meaning-making. The COVID-19 pandemia and its social aftershocks accelerated such searches for some cohorts. Catholicism and Orthodoxy offer dense ritual and narrative resources—sacraments, liturgy, liturgical calendars, and sacramental theology—that can be attractive to those seeking depth and embodied practices. Empirical work links religious participation to resilience and coping in pandemic contexts.
III.ii. Institutional entrepreneurship and social media
Both traditions have seen energetic institutional entrepreneurs—networked priests, monastic influencers, campus ministries, and digital producers—who curate accessible pathways to tradition. Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok have become conversion channels: short videos showcasing rituals, testimony, and community life perform well among younger audiences. The Catholic revival in parts of Britain and the U.S. has been catalyzed by charismatic priests and lay movements that combine traditional liturgy with modern outreach.
III.iii. Identity politics and cultural critique of liberal modernity
A post-liberal critique—rooted in anxieties about atomization, the perceived moral incoherence of progressive modernity, and backlash against certain cultural trends—has made traditions that emphasize communal norms and moral frameworks attractive to some young people. These dynamics operate unevenly across the political spectrum: for some recruits, the draw to traditional religion is explicitly conservative; for others it is a form of spiritual anti-consumerism or a search for depth that does not map neatly onto conventional political labels. Academic analyses emphasize that the “resurgence” sometimes reflects a repositioning of religious identity in reaction to perceived liberal failures rather than a wholesale repudiation of liberal values.
III.iv. Migration and diaspora dynamics
Orthodoxy’s modest growth in Western countries is heavily shaped by immigration and the reproduction of diasporic communities — new arrivals and their children—often supplemented by local converts. This structural effect is distinct from conversions among native populations and explains why Orthodoxy’s institutional profile looks different from that of Catholicism or Protestantism.
IV. Socioeconomic consequences: demography, civic life, and political economy
If pockets of youth religiosity consolidate and persist, the socioeconomic effects will be tangible across several domains. Below I outline the most salient channels, drawing on empirical studies and demographic projections.
IV.i. Fertility and family formation
Religiosity is a strong predictor of fertility and family formation. Comparisons across time and between religious and nonreligious cohorts show persistent fertility differentials: more religious groups tend to have higher fertility, earlier marriage, and different household formation patterns. If younger cohorts who embrace traditional Christian commitments form families earlier and have higher fertility than their secular counterparts, this can have measurable demographic effects over decades, influencing age-structure and dependency ratios in regions where the effect is concentrated. (However, these impacts will be limited if the revival remains numerically small or geographically uneven.)
IV.ii. Social capital, civic engagement, and local governance
Religion can generate social capital—networks of trust, voluntary associations, and mutual assistance—that support local public goods, volunteering, and civic engagement. Recent studies confirm that religious participation remains correlated with higher levels of associational life and local charitable activity. The reactivation of congregation-centred networks among younger people could strengthen local civic infrastructures (schools, charities, mutual aid), with positive spillovers for social cohesion and local governance. Yet the direction of these effects depends on the inclusiveness of the religious networks; exclusive or sectarian bonding can bolster intra-group solidarity while reducing bridging ties with broader society.
IV.iii. Political realignment and polarization
Religious re-engagement among young people may have uneven political consequences. Historically, religiosity in the United States and parts of Europe has correlated with conservative policy preferences on social issues, but the relationship is not mechanistic: many religious young adults endorse progressive economic or environmental positions while seeking traditional moral frameworks on questions of family and identity. The net political effect will depend on whether new religious adherents align organizationally and electorally (e.g., through church-based mobilization) or remain atomized. If religious communities become more politically active, they will shape debates over education, bioethics, and public morality—triggering conflicts between religious claims and liberal public policies. Recent case law and policy disputes (discussed below) show this friction is already salient.
IV.iv. Labour, welfare, and economic growth
At the macro level religion influences economic behaviour through fertility (affecting labour supply), educational choices, and social capital channels that modulate human capital accumulation and productivity. Some economic work documents both positive and negative channels—religious networks can enable entrepreneurship and mutual insurance but might also reduce female labour force participation in more traditionalist subgroups. The aggregate economic effect is therefore ambiguous and contingent on the scale and orientation of religious revival.
V. Does secularism still have a future in the 21st century?
Severe declarations of secularism’s death are premature. The data through 2025 show an uneven landscape: large swathes of Western societies continue to exhibit declining nominal affiliation and low ritual participation; yet pockets of renewed engagement and a stronger public role for religion in politics and law have reemerged in certain contexts.
Three points are crucial.
Secularism (as a normative political order) and secularization (as sociological decline of religious adherence) are distinct. Even if religious salience grows in some cohorts, robust constitutional secularism can and often does manage pluralism by protecting both religion and nonreligion through neutral legal frameworks. The future of secularism thus depends on the political strength of institutions that enforce equal protection, freedom of conscience, and the separation of institutions rather than solely on aggregate religiosity.
The resilience of secularism will be tested by legal and political disputes. Recent judicial decisions in the United States (e.g., the 2025 Supreme Court term decisions such as Mahmoud v. Taylor and other freedom-of-religion rulings) show the judiciary is a pivotal arena where the boundaries between religious liberty and other constitutional commitments are being negotiated. The outcomes of such litigation shape whether secularism is maintained as a framework that protects individual conscience and pluralism or becomes a vehicle for privileging particular religious claims.
Secularism’s endurance will depend on adaptation. Secular institutions that adapt—by ensuring inclusive civic rituals, supporting nonreligious forms of community, and regulating public spaces in ways that respect plural belief—stand a better chance of shepherding plural societies. Where secularism becomes rigid or appears to marginalize sincere religious expression, it is vulnerable to backlash that strengthens confessional politics. Scholarly accounts of the “post-secular” suggest that modern states will increasingly manage complex mixes of belief rather than preside over clear secular majorities.
VI. The role of libertarianism and the protection of individual freedom
VI.i. Libertarian principles: minimal state, maximal individual liberty
Libertarian political thought prioritizes individual autonomy, minimal coercive interference by the state, and robust protections for voluntary association and conscience. From a libertarian standpoint, a resurgence of religion should be accommodated so long as participation is voluntary and does not violate others’ rights. This implies formal protection for religious expression and the right of religious institutions to organize and associate without onerous state interference. However, libertarianism is agnostic about the social value of religion per se; it focuses on protecting choice.
VI.ii.Tensions and trade-offs in practice
Three normative tensions complicate a pure libertarian approach in plural societies:
Externalities and public goods. Religious practices sometimes generate third-party effects (e.g., discrimination in services, education policy outcomes) that libertarian noninterference might not address adequately. Democracies must sometimes regulate conduct with spillovers. Recent policy debates—ranging from school curricula and vaccine exemptions to employment and social service delivery—illustrate how voluntary religious practice intersects with public health, equality, and children's rights. The West Virginia vaccination litigation and debates over educational opt-outs illustrate these tensions in practice. (AP News)
Group rights vs. individual rights. Libertarianism's emphasis on individual rights sometimes struggles to adjudicate claims when religious groups assert collective exemptions (e.g., from nondiscrimination laws). U.S. jurisprudence in 2024–25 reveals contested lines on exemptions for religiously affiliated organizations (e.g., Catholic Charities litigation) and parental claims against school curricular policies (Mahmoud v. Taylor). Courts are central in balancing group conscience and the rights of third parties. (supremecourt.gov)
Inequalities in bargaining power. Unregulated deference to religious communities may entrench internal hierarchies that conflict with other liberal commitments (gender equality, child protection). Democracies often justify modest regulation to protect vulnerable persons; libertarian minimalism must be reconciled with liberal commitments to protect individuals from harm even when those harms are internal to a voluntary community.
VI.iii. A mixed liberal-libertarian prescription
A defensible policy stance for liberal democracies is pluralist and rights-protective: protect individual freedom robustly (freedom of conscience, ability to change or leave religion), permit religious self-organization and voluntary association, but limit collective exemptions when they harm third parties or contravene basic rights. This approach is consistent with European human-rights frameworks and much contemporary constitutional doctrine that protects freedom of belief but also enforces limits to protect public order and third-party rights. The balance will be politically contested; recent European moves toward stronger state secularism (e.g., Quebec’s Bill 9 developments) and court battles in multiple jurisdictions reveal that states are actively re-negotiating these boundaries.
VII. Policy implications and recommendations
If policymakers accept that pockets of religious revival among young people are plausible and consequential, several practical implications follow.
Protect individual religious freedom while upholding universal rights. Governments should sustain constitutional protections for belief and conscience (freedom to worship, to change religion, and to decline). But protections must be calibrated to prevent rights infringements (e.g., discrimination, harm to minors) that can occur under cover of religious autonomy. Courts can play a mediating role, but legislative clarity and procedural safeguards (transparent exemption processes, narrow tailoring) are necessary.
Invest in civic institutions that offer nonreligious community goods. Secular states should not treat community and meaning as exclusively religious goods. Public investment in arts, youth organisations, volunteering infrastructure, and civic rituals can reduce the social demand that draws people solely to religious institutions for communal goods. Ensuring that secular alternatives are available is a pragmatic complement to rights protections.
Monitor demographic effects and social capital outcomes. Governments and researchers should track how changing religiosity affects fertility, education, and labour market outcomes—data necessary to design family policy, labour policy, and social safety nets that respect plural preferences while maintaining equality of opportunity. Recent demographic and fertility studies suggest religion matters for family formation and will therefore have fiscal and political implications.
Engage religious actors as partners in social provision—but insist on public accountability. Where religious groups deliver social services, states should partner with them but require minimal public-policy accountability standards (non-discrimination rules in publicly funded services, adherence to child-protection norms). This preserves the dynamism of faith-based civil society while protecting citizens’ rights.
Design neutral but robust educational policies. Controversies over school curricula will increase as newly religious cohorts seek to reconfigure cultural norms. Neutral curriculum standards that present religious and nonreligious worldviews fairly—while protecting pedagogical integrity and children’s rights—will reduce politicization and litigation. The Mahmoud v. Taylor litigation and similar cases show the fragility of educational governance in this realm.
VIII. Conclusion: cautious pluralism in a post-liberal moment
By December 2025 the empirical record does not support a simple assertion that the West as a whole is undergoing a broad, sustained numerical revival of religion that will reverse secularization across the board. Rather, the data point to a more complex reality: localized and tradition-specific increases in religious salience among segments of youth—especially in contexts marked by migration, organised outreach, pandemic aftershocks, and cultural reaction to liberal modernity. Catholicism and certain manifestations of Orthodoxy have, in specific Anglophone and European settings, attracted young adherents seeking ritual, community, and moral frameworks. These developments matter: they alter family formation incentives, civic networks, and political mobilization in ways that will shape public policy debates.
Secularism as a political project retains powerful institutional resources and normative purchase, but it cannot be complacent. A durable liberal order will combine strong protections for individual conscience (a libertarian-compatible baseline) with a pragmatic willingness to regulate group practices when they produce clear harms to third parties or violate baseline rights. Managing this pluralism well requires public institutions that are adaptive, rights-protective, and capable of delivering alternative sources of meaning and community.
Finally, scholars and policymakers should avoid teleological claims about “the end of secularism” or “the complete return of religion.” The more accurate description is one of reconfiguration: religion remains a significant axis of social life, but its expression in the 21st century is more variegated, networked, and contested than in earlier eras. The policy task for liberal democracies is to sustain an equitable public order in which religious and nonreligious worldviews can coexist — a constitutional pluralism that protects freedom while defending equality.
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