“Resurgence” is not an accurate description of a statistical plateau.
Young men are feeling disenfranchised and are being drawn into a structure that they believe empowers them.
Could be worse… could be the military…
Oh, wait…
“The Defense Department’s armed services branches recruited 12.5% more people in fiscal year 2024 than in the year prior”
“As of last week, the Army had enlisted 51,837 recruits, or 85% of its 61,000 target for fiscal 2025, according service data provided to Military.com. A significant portion of that total – roughly 14,000 – comes from the service’s delayed-entry program, or DEP, which is composed of recruits who signed up last year but are only now shipping out to basic training.”
Many young men want control and power. If they embrace religion and force it on others, they feel control and power.
I will call bullshit on that. Young men want hope and community just like everyone else. In the current socio-economic setting, it’s not possible to find these organically; hence, religion plays a role. There are extremes in everything, and using extremes as a norm to define a group (in this case, young men) does no good.
And please don’t argue with me about why this is only happening to young men.
Then why are they flocking to the military and the church instead of mutual aid organizations and general interest groups?
Plenty of people (including young men) want hope and community, and are finding it through means that don’t involve violence and suppression. If you don’t support violence and suppression on some level, you won’t seek community with people who do.
Does economics play a factor? Sure, but the other commenter said “many” not all or even the majority, and there’s little evidence to the contrary showing that these men are actually interested in patriotism and godliness and not the other aspects of these outlets. They don’t want to give up their vices, they just like that some churches say they should own women. They don’t want to protect their country and its values, they want to commit acts of violence. Maybe they feel this way because of the current economic and social climate, but acting as though they don’t feel this way is naive.
Authoritarianism and religion go hand in hand. Both are rising together in the form of Christian nationalism.
Of course they are. They were already halfway there by spending their free time listening to assholes talk and preach on podcasts. And I’m sure it goes nicely with all of the bigoted, misogynistic content that they consume.
Yeah, you can’t say that a “religious resurgence” is happening by only counting one religion. Are there more Buddhists in the West? More Muslims? More Hindus? More Pastafarians?
Because I think Axios is missing, intentionally or not, the bigger reason: the religious right tells men they should be in control. Young men who feel like they aren’t are receptive to that messaging.
I will agree with assertion but not the reasoning, from my anecdotes it’s happening to all religions.
Edit: *anecdotal evidence
Your anecdotes != data.
Isn’t that what anodects means(personal experience or story but not enough data to form a pattern)?
I would feel so much better about this if they’d had fully funded comprehensive education that required mythology, world and comparitive religion, philosophy, critical reading/thinking and logic classes.
The delusions persist.
The only notable statistic is that Gen Z are more religious than millenials, which isn’t a huge deal. We’ll see if the trend continues.
That’s not a resurgence
There really isn’t any hope for the future, is there
