Americans who think that Generation Z might offer hope for a less divisive, less polarized political future should think again
A close look at Gen Z reveals that today’s deep electoral divisions, ripping at the fabric of our politics, are likely to continue for years. That is particularly because of the role of religion, or its absence, in Gen Z, the people born from the late 1990s to the early 2010s.
About a third of Gen Z-ers are nonreligious. Thirty-eight percent never go to church — a mark of the rise of the Nones, or Americans with no religious affiliation.
But predictions that the Christian right would be moribund with Gen Z-ers have proved false. In the aftermath of Covid — and amid the longing for purpose, community and transcendence that many Gen Z-ers feel — a sizable minority of them have found their answer in conservative Christianity, fueling both a religious and a political revival among these young Americans. They bring a new attitude to the combination of faith and politics, and many see politics as a matter of spiritual warfare.
According to survey data from the Barna Group, a Christian research organization, Gen Z-ers who go to church are more frequent attendees than churchgoers from older generations. Twenty-four percent of Gen Z-ers go to church every week (a slightly higher rate than for millennials and Gen X-ers).
Many of these young Christians have turned to conservative politics — a near-seamless mix of Christian faith and the MAGA message. That mix was best demonstrated in speeches that wove political and religious themes at the memorial service for Charlie Kirk.
Gen Z is clouded by despair. It’s not hard to imagine how young people traumatized by the isolation imposed by Covid and disillusioned by the perceived emptiness of secular liberalism might be drawn to a relationship with God and a purpose in life. Many were attracted by Mr. Kirk’s message of confidence and joyfulness in his conservative Christian faith.
Some believe that they are in a spiritual war against “enemies” and that they can expect to be persecuted for their convictions from a hostile secular state or society.
This belief is closely intertwined with the idea of spiritual warfare against demonic forces, which is especially popular in charismatic churches — that is, churches that encourage the use of miraculous gifts, such as speaking in tongues and faith healing.
The Christian right of Gen Z is different from that of their parents’ or grandparents’ time. Members of those generations largely came of age in the Eisenhower era, when civil religion was so strong that the president led a prayer at his inauguration and signed legislation adding “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance. Schools in many regions started the day with classroom prayer or Bible reading.
Then came the cultural shocks of the 1960s and ’70s. Many conservative evangelicals of didn’t like what they imagined second-wave feminism, the sexual revolution and the gay rights movement would do to their families. They started political campaigns to return America to the civil religion and moral conservatism of the 1950s. Ronald Reagan was their champion.
At first, many Christian right leaders seemed optimistic about their political prospects of success. In the 1980s many such leaders came from the Sun Belt, which was experiencing some of the highest economic and population growth rates in the country.
But Gen Z Christians don’t seem to have a Reaganite confidence in the free market or a Sun Belt-influenced optimism.
While the Christian right of the 1980s was largely led by Baptists, the Gen Z Christian right is much more likely to be charismatic. One study showed that approximately half of Gen Z and millennial churchgoers attended charismatic churches. (By contrast, only 24 percent of older respondents attended charismatic churches.)
The nondenominational or charismatic church option is also appealing to some Black and Hispanic Gen Z Christians, who may shed their family’s traditional Democratic identity when they gravitate toward multiracial megachurches that are more politically conservative.
Young male churchgoers now outpace young female churchgoers in weekly attendance, and for the first time in modern American history, they are more religious than their female peers.
Charismatic and Pentecostal Christians have been particularly attracted to anti-institutional populism and to leaders who are strong and charismatic (in a nonreligious sense). President Trump has enjoyed extraordinarily high support from this group. Members of the Assemblies of God, one of America’s largest Pentecostal denominations, identify as Republicans at a higher rate than even Southern Baptists do. That’s not because they are just white conservatives; 44 percent of Assemblies of God members in the United States are Hispanic or nonwhite. They have found in Mr. Trump a perfect match for their anti-institutional populism.
Charismatic and Pentecostal Christians might also be attracted to the language of spiritual warfare, which fits well with a Manichaean view of politics as a battle between good and evil. They also appear to be stronger culture warriors than other evangelicals. Charismatic evangelicals are more likely than other Evangelicals who are not charismatic to favor rolling back legal protections for L.G.B.T.Q. people.
Today’s young Christian right voters may be less interested in specific matters of policy than in tribal identity. When the Republican Party abandoned its 40-year commitment to a national abortion ban last year, a few conservative Christians complained, but evangelical support for Mr. Trump remained as strong as ever.
Political activism is less about getting a specific policy outcome and more about electing the candidate who is believed to be on God’s side. And in determining who is on God’s side, what counts is not so much a candidate’s faith or moral virtue but rather the person’s willingness to protect those seen as God’s people — that is, conservative Christians.
Ultimately, for many Gen Z conservative Christian political activists, as with earlier generations, politics is a means to create a society that will not only protect the rights of conservative Christians to follow their conscience but also allow conservative Christian values to flourish. But in today’s political context, it is that last aim that has led at least some younger conservative Christians to question liberal democracy and religious pluralism altogether and to entertain the idea of a postliberal framework that might foster family-friendly values without allowing the sort of religious or ideological pluralism that might threaten those values.
Gen Z Christian-right activists may soon face the realization that they will not win if their agenda is subject to a democratic vote — which means they will face a choice between feeling that they are a persecuted minority in a democratic system and fighting to be a victorious minority in a nondemocratic one.
Right now, many Gen Z Christians are signing up to be martyrs in a society they believe will reject their views on sexuality, gender and absolute truth. But for those who grow tired of such sensed persecution, winning by rejecting democracy will be a temptation.
Daniel K. Williams, an associate professor of history at Ashland University, is the author of “Abortion and America’s Churches: A Religious History of Roe v. Wade.”
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