Fewer believers, but louder and more conscious

In recent months, the same story has appeared more and more frequently in my feed: Gen Z would be massively returning to faith. Videos, articles, opinion pieces, all with the same undertone: after decades of secularization, a religious revival would now be underway. I was curious if that was true, and especially: whether it also means something here, in Belgium and the rest of Europe. The answer is more nuanced than the newspapers and videos suggest, and that is precisely what makes it interesting.

What is happening in America

The story usually begins in the United States. Pew Research showed last year that the percentage of Americans who believe that religion is gaining influence has risen in one year from 18% to 31%, the highest figure in fifteen years. At the same time, a majority, 68%, continues to say that the social role of religion is decreasing, although a year earlier it was still 80%. In other words: the decline seems to be leveling off, but there is no real turnaround.

What is striking: religions that are small on paper can gain a much larger online platform than their membership numbers suggest. Large, older church communities lose young people, but those who remain are often very active and visible online. A small, highly involved group of young believers can thus leave an enlarged cultural footprint. This partly explains why it feels like 'something' is going on, even though the hard figures do not confirm a broad revival.

And with us?

For Belgium and Flanders, the picture is more cautious. The Youth Research Platform (JOP), which surveys young people in Antwerp, Brussels, and Ghent about religion every five years, came this year with a clear conclusion: there is no real religious revival here. Secularization simply continues. Young people who call themselves religious generally attach less importance to their faith than before and adhere less strictly to its rules.

But within this, there is an interesting contradiction. Within the smaller group that does remain religious, especially Catholic and Muslim youth, researchers see an increase in church or mosque attendance. They also feel more social pressure, from parents or peers, to visibly practice their faith. So fewer people believe, but those who do believe, do so more actively and louder.

Religious sociologist Wim Vandewiele (KU Leuven) sums it up aptly: ‘We are not living in a time of revival, but of reinterpretation.’ Young people distance themselves from religion as a fixed, imposed structure and make it more of a personal, free choice. You could call it the individualization of faith: a development that takes place alongside secularization, not against it. Religion does not disappear, it changes form: less collective and obligatory, more individual and consciously chosen. And precisely because that choice is more consciousit also becomes more visible: on social media, via ‘godfluencers’, testimonies, retreats, monastery weeks.

Elsewhere in Europe, the signals are mixed. In the United Kingdom, it is clearest: research by YouGov and the Bible Society shows that 45% of 18- to 24-year-olds say they believe in God, compared to barely 16% in 2021, almost a threefold increase in four years. France saw a 45% increase in adult baptisms in 2025, the highest figure in twenty years, although this concerns a relatively small group of converts. For Belgium or Flanders, such hard statistical material does not yet exist. Researchers from KU Leuvenfrankly state themselves: the trend reversal visible in the US or the UK has not yet been demonstrated here.

Why I still think something is starting to change

Figures don't tell the whole story. Perhaps we are not so much experiencing the return of religion, but rather the return of religion to public discourse. What strikes me, and what I believe remains underexposed in this debate, is that faith is gradually becoming discussable again. In other words, faith seems to be becoming somewhat more normal to speak openly about again, regardless of whether more people are actually starting to believe. For a long time, it was something you tucked away in a corner, something you spoke about cautiously at best.That is changing. More and more people, including young people, dare to openly state that faith has a place in their lives, and no longer make a secret of it. I recognize this pattern, of a smaller but more visible group of believers, also in my own environment, in the daily practice of my own faith community.

What I as a bishop myself observe

I also speak here from my own experience as a bishop within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I notice that it is becoming increasingly challenging for our church, just like for other faith communities, to bind young people with the structures of the past. They need something different. But different does not mean that their faith is less deeply felt: they take it just as seriously and approach it in their own way. Our young people simply need a different way of experiencing, and that is for a church likeours a real challenge: on the one hand, holding on to what truly matters and to traditions that remain important, on the other hand, finding a form that works for everyone, including this generation.

What I also observe: our young people are not outside society; they are fully involved in it and want to be a full part of it. They study, play sports, work, go out, have religious and non-religious friends, and naturally move within the wider society. Much less than previous generations, they live in a separate ecclesiastical world. They simply take their faith with them. They do not want to isolate themselves as a group because of their faith, and the great advantage of this is that they no longer hide it as soon as they are inthat society. This does change the question that matters for us as a church. No longer: how do we get young people to our activities? Rather: how do we help them to experience their faith within the life they actually lead? As an institution, we can no longer do so much outside society; we must give them the space to participate in their daily activities from their faith, instead of expecting them to detach themselves from it.

And that doesn't gnaw at their faith in the least, on the contrary. Remarkably, our church today counts the highest number of missionaries ever, young people aged 18, 19, 20 who give two years of their lives for their faith community. You don't do that without a deeply experienced faith. Not every young person makes that choice, and not every mission goes as hoped beforehand, but it does show how important faith remains for many of them. Just because you don't see them at every church activity, it doesn't mean they are not willing to commit themselves to their faith into commit themselves.

I think this offers opportunities, especially for our church. We are a church that dares to change, and I am convinced that our prophet and the apostles are intensively thinking about how we can continue to reach future generations. I see that willingness to look for new forms, for example, also in the changes that will be implemented in our study and teaching program from September, where more space will be created for young people and families to shape their faith in their own, personal way. Changes are often difficultto accept, but I realize that they are necessary to give the next generations the opportunity to experience their faith in their own way.

Small ripples, large circle

I like to compare it to a stone falling into a pond. The first ripples are small and seem almost insignificant. But they spread out, circle after circle, further and further. That's how I see this movement: the first ripples don't mean that suddenly masses of people become believers again, but rather that faith becomes step by step more visible, more conscious, and more discussable. And precisely therein lies, in my opinion, the power of those first ripples: they normalize the subject and give other young people the space to also speak out. I think we are herewitnessing the early beginning of a cultural shift that will continue to develop over the coming decades, not as a return to the mass church of the past, but as a slow, undulating shift in how openly we dare to talk about faith.

So it's not a revival in the sense of masses of people flocking back to the church pews. It's something more fundamental: a reinterpretation of faith and of the place faith occupies in a largely secular society. And that reinterpretation is, I think, precisely because it's more visible than before, the beginning of a real shift. The first ripples are there. It remains to be seen how far the circle will still reach.