Tucker Carlson was at the Heritage Foundation (a Washington D.C. think-tank) recently and gave a brief talk followed by a Q&A moderated by Heritage president Kevin Roberts. The whole talk is excellent and worth watching.
Tucker noted that it was just after a similar talk two years ago, in April of 2023, that Fox News fired him. In that appearance, Tucker stated that the struggles of today are not political, they are good versus evil. For example, no one can make a rational case for chemical castration of children, for cutting off the breasts of 15 year-old girls; that is just pure evil. He counseled daily prayer. (By the way, Carlson stated that he and his wife have never been happier than during the two years since Fox News sacked him, and his long-form interviews are must see events, reaching an audience of millions.)
The final questioner, at the 44 minute mark, noted that the American Revolution was preceded by the Great Awakening of the 1740s, and asked whether we are in a similar revival in America today. Tucker’s answer surprised me; he stated that we are definitely in such a revival.
To give some background, Tucker has frequently joked that his denomination, Episcopalian or Anglican, is the about the least religious a person can be and still claim to have any religion, and states that he was raised never to mention religion in public, or even in private family gatherings. But he states that almost every day, someone approaches him to talk about the Bible and their spirituality.
He states that, “now I find every single day, someone will come up to me telling about God,” not in the polished, highly indoctrinated and biblically literate way those raised in a conservative Christian tradition might do, but “in the slightly stilted way that people who haven’t grown up talking about God talk.” He states that people who have not been raised thinking about God are responding to something inside themselves, and such people, again, approach Tucker every day and talk to him about God.
His example from that morning was that he was approached by a groundskeeper who wanted to talk about reading the Bible and to console Tucker on the recent death of his father, saying his (the groundskeeper’s) father had also recently passed away, so he could relate to what Tucker was going through.
“I’m not exactly sure what I’m saying, other than to say that that happens to me every single day. And it never happened to me in the first 53 years of my life. What is going on?”
The Quiet Revival in Great Britain
According to this article, there is a “quiet” revival going on in Great Britain, especially in England and Wales:
But the shift in the spiritual atmosphere described in Bible Society’s new research suggests a quieter revival; a very British one – not showy, not loud, but steady and understated. The findings conducted by YouGov are significant, however. It suggests that the decline in church attendance in England and Wales has now stopped – there were around two million more people attending church in 2024 than there had been in 2018.
But the shift in the spiritual atmosphere described in Bible Society’s new research suggests a quieter revival; a very British one – not showy, not loud, but steady and understated. The findings conducted by YouGov are significant, however. It suggests that the decline in church attendance in England and Wales has now stopped – there were around two million more people attending church in 2024 than there had been in 2018.
The Church is now in a period of growth, with Gen Z leading the charge. The report – titled The Quiet Revival - shows that the most dramatic church growth is among young adults, particularly young men. In 2018, around four per cent of 18-24 year-olds said that they attended church at least monthly. Now this has gone up to 16 per cent, with young men increasing from four per cent to 21 per cent, and young women from 3 to 12 per cent.
. . . something seems to have shifted over the past two years, in particular. We hear of young people queuing to enter Catholic mass, we hear of teenagers turning up to church unannounced, then dragging their parents along, we hear of Bible sales going up, we hear of online meetings run by the Orthodox Church being attended by hundreds, we hear of university mission organisations seeing sparks in interest among students. A drip-drip of change.
Another article states this about the “quiet revival” in England:
What we’ve sensed anecdotally has now been confirmed by a major report published by the Bible Society, “The Quiet Revival.” They surveyed more than 13,000 people, repeating similar research undertaken in 2018. The results reveal a significant increase in church attendance over the past six years, especially among those aged 18 to 24 (and particularly among men in that group). The data puts a lie to the common assumption that churches will continue to decline and that each successive generation will be less religious than the last. It turns out Gen X is the least religious generation.
The fastest growth has been in Roman Catholicism, but evangelical churches are also growing in Great Britain:
The growing churches fall into two broad categories. On the one hand, some young people are turning to Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. They’re attracted by the solemnity and historical rootedness of formal ritualism. The more sacramental style fits with the zeitgeist of nebulous spirituality and the desire for transcendence that rises above the mundane. On the other hand, many growing churches faithfully preach the apostolic gospel in all its depth and provide a warm and welcoming community to all.
In decline are the mainstream churches that have abandoned the biblical gospel in favor of a liberalism that reflects the progressive culture, or those shallow, seeker-sensitive evangelical churches that seemed trendy in the 1990s but now feel like a tired and insubstantial chat show. The lesson is that people want substance, not superficiality.
