For many months, Catholic pastors across the country have been reporting that young adults have been flocking to their churches, leading some to conclude that a religious revival of Gen Z is underway. Higher numbers of participants this year in the Order of Christian Initiation of Adults in many dioceses seem to confirm the trend. So far, however, the national data tells a more restrained story: Religious affiliation and church attendance among young adults is low, with little evidence of a broad rebound.

A combination of data analysis and on-the-ground observation suggests that both perspectives are accurate—and together they reveal something more nuanced than either decline or revival alone. What is happening today can be best understood as the collision of two opposing forces—a long-term decline in religious practice offset by a newer, more localized surge of interest.

The first force is well-established. Many statistics confirm that the practice of faith during childhood is a significant factor contributing to adult faith participation, but for many years now, each successive generation has grown up with less of it. For example, the Pew Research Center’s most recent Religious Landscape Survey, conducted in 2023 and 2024, found that 68 percent of adults born in the 1940s reported attending weekly religious services as children, compared with only 48 percent of those born in the 2000s. This trend has continued to play out even within the young adult population. The Pew study found that adults ages 18 to 24 grew up with less religious affiliation, less regular worship and less formal religious education than even those just a few years older. On its own, this pattern would predict continued ongoing erosion in religious participation among adults.

Instead of the expected decline, there is early evidence of a flattening of the trends among young adults. The Pew study found that reported monthly worship rates among young adults has remained stable over the past few years, at about 25 percent. The youngest adults also resemble those in their later 20s and early 30s in both affiliation and practice—an unexpected result, given their weaker religious upbringing.

If religious participation rates are holding steady overall despite declining religious upbringing, then something must be counteracting the downward pull: the growing participation in faith among this group. 

These opposing forces are likely playing out differently across the country. The first force, the underlying negative trend, is playing out quietly and broadly as, on average, each new group of young adults emerges with lower rates of faith practice than the previous year’s group. On the other hand, our experience in the Archdiocese of Chicago suggests that the positive force is playing out in more concentrated demographic pockets with higher concentrations of adults in their 20s. Chicago area parishes located in these neighborhoods, such as Old Town, Lincoln Park and Lakeview, reported total growth in Mass attendance during 2025 of more than 12 percent, a rate significantly higher than in areas with lower young adult populations. Many of our parishes in these communities reported growth of more than 20 percent. These are surprising and very hopeful jumps.

This news is encouraging but early. Even a significant increase in the religious participation of Gen Z will not offset the magnitude of the downward shift from prior generations. Any revival might play out over a long period of time just as the decline did, as current young adults grow in faith and seed the next generations. Our emphasis should be on recognizing the emerging trend and intentionally feeding it. 

Feeding the trend will require changing our mindset from “welcoming back” to “welcoming anew,” as these days the majority of young adults raised Catholic grew up with low faith practice to begin with. This also means new practices and habits for most of our parishes. Young adults will need opportunities to explore questions of faith, to encounter the person of Jesus Christ, to become immersed in the richness and depth of the 2,000-year-old church and to be accompanied through the journey.

The Holy Spirit seems to be on the move. Our job is to join the wave by accompanying a new generation of young adults who may not know much about faith but are hungry and interested.

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Betsy Bohlen is the chief operating officer of the Archdiocese of Chicago. 

This article appears in May 2026.

Betsy Bohlen is the chief operating officer of the Archdiocese of Chicago.