Is there a revival in the United States? The real data says no

By Arnie Cole, Op-ed contributor Monday, August 24, 2026

I have spent 20 years measuring what people actually do with their Christian faith. I also run a Scripture engagement organization, which makes me exactly the person who would truly be thrilled if a revival were taking place in America. Read everything that follows with that in mind.

No, the United States is not in a revival. Not as of the summer of 2026, not by the standard the Christian tradition has historically used and not by any standard the data can support.

But something is happening. The 20-year slide stopped. Young men came back. Interest in faith went up — way up. But spiritual formation did not follow.

Half the public argument about revival is not an argument about evidence at all. It is semantics.

The historic evangelical distinction is three-tiered. Renewal happens in an individual. Revival happens in a community of believers — the Church wakes up. Awakening happens in the wider society — the culture itself is altered.

Theological definitions are correct but not measurable, so I use this operational definition instead: A revival is a durable, population-level increase in the number of people whose lives visibly change because of Christ — and who then help someone else change.

Based on that definition, these are the strongest indicators that America is in the midst of a revival:

The decline stopped

Pew’s Religious Landscape Study put the Christian share of U.S. adults at 62% — down hard from 78% in 2007, but essentially flat since 2019. The religiously unaffiliated plateaued near 29% after decades of growth. The Cooperative Election Study found the nonreligious share falling from 34% in 2024 to 31% in 2025, the lowest since 2016. After 30 years of unbroken secularization, the losing stopped. Of everything in this article, this is the most defensible pro-revival claim available.

Young men came back to church

Gallup, reporting on 2024–25 data, found 42% of men aged 18 to 29 saying religion is very important to them — up from 28% two years earlier. A 14-point jump, returning young men almost exactly to where they stood in 2000. Monthly attendance among them rose seven points to 40%, the highest since 2012. For the first time in roughly 25 years, young men edge young women on the importance measure. Barna’s independent tracking points the same direction. This is the only demographic reversal anywhere in the data.

Congregations grew for the first time in 25 years

The Hartford Institute’s EPIC project found median in-person worship attendance at 70 — up from 65 before the pandemic and 45 in 2021. The researchers were surprised enough that they went back through the data to confirm it. Regular volunteering rose to 40% of congregants, from 15% in 2021.

Interest in Christianity is at a decade high

Bible sales hit a 21-year high in 2025, roughly double 2019 levels. The American Bible Society, working through a probability panel, found the “movable middle” — people open to and curious about Scripture but not deeply engaged — at 28% of U.S. adults, up from 25% in 2024. That is roughly 9 million more people in two years. Crucially, the growth came out of the previously disengaged, a group that shrank by about 5 million. People moved toward Scripture, not away from it.

By contrast, here’s the case against declaring a revival:

The cleanest test we have failed

In 2025, the American Bible Society found roughly 11 million more Americans reading the Bible than the year before. Men up 21%. Millennials up 30%. The largest gains came in the most secular regions of the country. Everyone got excited. In 2026, they measured again. The increase had largely evaporated. Scripture engagement returned to 2024 levels. The Scripture Engaged share sits at about 17% — right back where it started.

That is not a revival. That is a spike.

Credit where it is owed: ABS reported the reversal as plainly as it reported the surge. That is what research integrity looks like, and it is rarer than it should be.

The largest survey in the field finds nothing

PRRI’s Census of American Religion found 66% Christian and 28% unaffiliated — closely mirroring the year before. Weekly attendance sat at 26%, unchanged. PRRI’s language was not hedged: no evidence Americans are returning to church in higher numbers.

The young-men finding is genuinely contested

Pew reads the narrowing gender gap the opposite way from Gallup: The gap narrowed because young women’s religiousness declined, not because young men’s rose.

A movement of the Spirit does not usually sort by voter registration

Some of what we are watching may be young men finding a community that matches their politics rather than young men finding Christ. Some of it is not. Survey data cannot separate the two. Gallup itself flagged something that ought to sober everyone. The attendance gains concentrate among young Republicans — up about seven points among young Republican men, eight among young Republican women, three among young Democratic men and essentially not at all among young Democratic women.

The gender story is being told backward

Thirty-eight percent of Gen Z women aged 18 to 24 identify as atheist, agnostic or of no faith — a higher share than Gen Z men. Only 31% read the Bible in the previous week and 30% attended church, the lowest of any group measured. “Gen Z revival” is the wrong phrase in two directions. It papers over a widening gender divide, and it obscures how concentrated the real movement is.

But one number reconciles nearly everything.

In February 2024, 18% of Americans said religion was gaining influence in American life. By April 2026, 37% said so — the highest reading Pew has recorded going back to 2002. Over that same two-year stretch, affiliation did not move. Attendance did not move. Prayer did not move. The importance of religion did not move. But the perception of revival rose 19 points.

We are not watching a revival. We are watching a story about revival.

Our own 2025 State of Christianity in America administered our SALT Index to 6,037 U.S. adults in November 2025. We found the following:

Belief is broad

Roughly 70% of American adults affirm that Jesus died for our sins. Sixty-four percent affirm the resurrection. Sixty-one percent consider themselves followers of Jesus.

Practice is much narrower

About 60% pray or worship regularly. Only about 35% read the Bible weekly, and 45% to 50% read no Scripture at all in a typical week.

Visibility is narrower still

Fifty-four percent say following Jesus has noticeably changed their attitudes or behavior. Only about 40% say anyone around them has noticed a change.

Reproduction is narrowest of all

Just 31% have ever personally mentored or discipled another person. Nearly seven in 10 American adults have never taken an intentional role in helping someone else grow spiritually.

And here is the finding that stops me every time I present it. People who do not identify as followers of Jesus report mentoring at virtually the same rate as those who do. At national scale, Christian identity is not producing higher multiplication. Believers who are themselves engaged with Scripture do not pass it on, because they have concluded that is somebody else’s job.

Now set that beside the American Bible Society finding — 9 million more curious Americans, in a group that says it would welcome someone to walk them through a complicated book.

In my opinion, what we have is not revival — it’s a thaw.

Nine million people walked toward the door and stopped there. Last year’s spike did not hold. The weather changed before the crop did. A thaw is not a harvest. But you cannot have a harvest without one.

What would be valid positive signs of revival? Three things:

The “movable middle” converts

If the 2027 State of the Bible shows the 28% moving into “Scripture engaged” rather than collapsing back to disengaged, that is the single most decisive indicator available.

The young-men gains survive an election cycle

If the Gallup numbers hold through and past the 2026 midterms, the political-sorting explanation weakens considerably. If they move with the cycle, it strengthens. This one will answer itself.

The formation indicators finally move

Consistent attendance, prioritizing faith in daily life and evangelistic engagement have not rebounded. Openness has risen for four years without pulling spiritual formation along with it.

If all three come back, then yes, we will have earned the word “revival.” If none of them do, then what we lived through from 2024 to 2026 was a cultural mood — and the Church spent it arguing about whether it was a revival instead of using it.

There is hope, however. We did not lose 30 points of devotion in this country. We lost 30 points of social convention. In the same data where the share of Americans saying religion is not at all important doubled, the share saying it is extremely important held steady at 19% to 20%, and private prayer frequency stayed flat. What collapsed was the nominal middle — people culturally attached to Christianity who were never formed in the first place. That is painful, but it is not the same as dying.

In 20-plus years of measuring American faith, I have not seen conditions this favorable. I have also not seen the Church as a whole this unprepared to use them.

A revival is not a rise in interest. A revival is a change in how people live. We have the first. We do not yet have the second.

The constraint is not God’s willingness. It is a belief among ordinary Christians that this is somebody else’s job. When we decide to become the followers of Christ we are meant to be by simply sharing our faith with others; the thaw may quickly become a harvest.