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Daily Caller

‘Sign Of Great Hope’: Religious Leaders See A ‘Fourth Great Awakening’ As Americans Flock To Christianity

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Jaryn Crouson

More Americans are leaning into their Christian faith in what some religious leaders and scholars are calling a “fourth Great Awakening.”

Bible sales in the United States have skyrocketed in 2024, religious colleges are seeing enrollment boosts despite overall declines in higher education attendance and several states are pushing for Bible-based curriculum in public schools. Some Bible scholars believe this may mark a significant cultural shift.

“While it has been apparent to a few of us for some time, millions are now realizing that ‘woke’ ideologies are, in fact, destructive attempts to re-found the nation according to a new civic religion which both parodies and persecutes Christianity,” Chad Pecknold, theologian and professor at The Catholic University of America, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Despite overall book sales increasing by only 1% compared to 2023, Bible sales in the U.S. have reached an impressive 22% increase as of October 2024, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The Cardinal Newman Society in October reported that enrollment at Catholic colleges has risen in 2024 despite an overall enrollment decrease at other institutions, with several schools such as Ave Maria University in Florida and Benedictine College in Kansas seeing record growth, increasing attendance by more than 20% over the last 10 years.

“There is a resurgence of Christianity among young people,” Wade Burleson, retired pastor and president of Istoria Ministries, told the DCNF. “I see what is happening [as] more of an Awakening. An Awakening occurs when the irreligious come to faith in Christ.”

Burleson pointed to several instances of young people coming into faith in droves in recent years, with hundreds of students being baptized on campuses across the nation, including several members of the four-time national champion Oklahoma University women’s softball team.

“There have been three Great Awakenings in America, and a few smaller ones,” Burleson continued. “I believe we are in the beginning of a fourth Great Awakening and it is a response to inflation (financial panic), pandemics (Covid), wars (global), and the sudden death of stability in America. There is no anchor in life better than the Anchor of Hope, and when the ship of life is tossed to and fro, faith awakens.”

Pecknold shared this sentiment, arguing that far-left politics have driven Americans towards Christianity.

“Democrats, and the corporations and institutions they controlled, embraced this pseudo-civic religion in their attempt to take total control over the American republic,” Pecknold said. “The American people saw their totalitarian appetites on display in everything from forced vaccinations to extreme racialism to the redefinition of marriage and the denial of sexual difference, all under the ever-evolving banner of ‘the Progress Flag.’”

“This is when the Democrats were defeated so thoroughly on November 5th, it was not only seen as a political victory, but also as a religious victory: it was a repudiation of the ersatz civic religion that Democrats had used to re-found the country.”

Catholic voters played a pivotal role in the 2024 presidential election, making up approximately 25% of the vote and overwhelmingly siding with President-elect Donald Trump, with other Christian voters following suit.

This was a surprising revelation considering tens of millions of Christians were expected to refrain from voting, citing a dislike of both candidates and general uninterest in politics, according to Relevant Magazine. Some religious organizations, however, made efforts to warn voters prior to the election that the Democratic ticket was “patently anti-religious.”

Greg Boyd, theologian and Pastor at Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul, Minnesota is less convinced of this religious revival.

“My concern is that a lot of it seems to be wrapped up with nationalism,” Boyd told the DCNF. “And it concerns me because whenever the Christian faith has gotten too close to political power, it’s been transformed by the political power, and we have Christians trying to control others and conquer others, the same as we’ve had throughout history. And in my opinion, that doesn’t look anything [like] what we find in the Gospel.”

Boyd pointed to examples of states like TexasLouisiana and Oklahoma approving the implementation of Bible lessons into public school lessons. Texas’ law is meant to help “students to better understand the connection of history, art, community, literature, and religion on pivotal events” in history and Oklahoma’s is similarly meant “as an instructional support into the curriculum.”

“Where did Jesus ever impose himself on others?” the pastor asked.

“I mean, I would love to see a revival in the country,” Boyd said. “The evidence of that would be, I would think, people become more Christ-like, they become more loving. They would be trying to turn the other cheek, trying to reach out across the aisle and build bridges instead of walls. And I don’t see any of that happening with the church as a whole. Seems like it’s kind of gone deeply into political polarization.”

Boyd agreed that many issues in politics have driven people to view current affairs through a religious lens.

Cultural issues such as abortion, gender ideology and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) have been hot topics dividing Americans’ opinions, especially religious Americans. The ongoing war in Gaza, as well as the hundreds of protests that spanned the U.S. in response, also impacted Christians’ perspective, with many viewing the apparent prosecution of Jews on college campuses as an infringement on religious freedom as a whole.

Church attendance among Christians remains relatively low in the United States, with only 30% of Protestants and 23% of Catholics attending church every week, according to a March Gallup poll. However, more Americans than ever are consuming religious content, with the Hallow prayer app becoming the first religious app to top Apple’s App Store in 2024 and Fr. Mike Schmitz’s Bible In A Year podcast consistently topping charts in recent years, according to National Review.

Young men in particular are maintaining their devotion to faith, with more Gen Z men identifying as Christian than women for the first time, according to the New York Times.

“We are currently seeing a kind of clarity about the civilizational conflict that ‘woke’ ideologies provoked,” Pecknold told the DCNF. “In brief, the people are fed up with this fake religion, and even if they aren’t Christian themselves, they’re realizing that Christianity provides a far better ‘unwritten constitution’ for the nation than anti-Christian wokeism can supply. There’s a simple realization at work here.”

“Christianity is an ordering principle which elevates and ennobles souls, families, and societies — it’s inherently public, and cannot be ‘privatized,’ relegated to the margins, or separated from questions of education, heritage, public morality, family policy, law, or the aspirations of nations,” Pecknold said. “We still date time by the Incarnation because, deep down, everyone knows that Christianity is objectively true and good for all people — it roots us in reality, it helps us to promote the truly good, and avoid those evils which cause so much suffering — it elevates us by the Light of Christ. Public Christianity is literally what makes civilizational renewal possible. The fact that Americans are remembering this, and having the courage to state it, is a sign of great hope for the nation.”

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‘Drill, Baby, Drill’ Or $50 Oil — Trump Can’t Have Both

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By David Blackmon

President Donald Trump has often made clear his goal of cutting prices for energy as part of his overall agenda to break the back of chronic inflation left behind by the Biden presidency. When talking about this goal, the president has placed special emphasis on lowering the price of crude oil, given its integral relationship to gas prices at the pump and transportation-related costs which go into the price of food, clothing and other consumer goods. 

“A very big thing that I’m very happy with is oil is down,” Trump said in remarks in the Oval Office on Wednesday. “We’re getting that down. When energy comes down, prices are going to be coming down with it. So, in a very short period of time, we’ve done a very good job.” 

White House advisor Peter Navarro has been quoted by The New York Times and other media outlets as saying that an average oil price of $50 per barrel would help tame inflation and set the stage for a return to a healthier economy. If that is indeed the goal, this week’s confluence of events, featuring a bigger-than-expected increase in oil production quotas from the OPEC+ oil cartel preceded less than 24 hours earlier by the president’s announced reciprocal tariffs on a wide array of countries went a long way to doing the trick. 

Just prior to Trump’s tariff announcement Wednesday afternoon, the price for West Texas Intermediate crude stood at $70/bbl. Less than 48 hours later, the price had fallen below $61, a drop of about 15%. It was the largest 2-day decline in crude prices since 2021. How much of the price decrease is due to the tariffs as opposed to the OPEC+ agreement to pour another 137,000 barrels per day onto the international market is hard to know, but there is no doubt both actions had an impact.  

As I’ve noted previously, this action to force lower prices for oil and natural gas lies directly at odds with the concurrent Trump “drill, baby, drill” objective which he sees as a key part of his American Energy Dominance agenda. The White House gave a nod to the oil refining segment in the Wednesday tariff announcement by exempting energy imports, another action at least in part aimed at lowering prices for gasoline and diesel fuel.  

But that nod to the downstream segment does little for upstream companies who have seen supply chain muck-ups and Biden-era inflation raise break-even prices above Friday’s levels. The Q1 2025 Energy Survey Report published March 26 by the Dallas Federal Reserve estimates that drillers in the Permian Basin require a $61 oil price just to break even on drilling new shale wells. The needed breakeven price rises higher in other, less prolific basins. CNN quoted independent oil analyst Andy Lipow as saying that many upstream companies require prices closer to Monday’s $71/bbl level for new shale wells. It almost goes without saying that operators will have little incentive to “drill, baby, drill” if they stand to lose money doing it. 

In an interview with Fox Business host Stu Varney on Tuesday, Energy Secretary Chris Wright, himself a former oil industry executive, said, “If your state has expensive energy, it’s because of choices made by politicians in those states to virtue signal somehow they’re on some global mission. They’re going to solve climate change by making your utility bills more expensive and your businesses want to relocate out of the states. That’s just nonsense.” He added that Trump was pursuing energy policies based on common sense, saying, “common sense will deliver more investment in our country and lower energy prices.” 

No doubt, few executives in the industry would agree that a pursuit of $50 oil prices has anything to do with common sense for their companies. If prices should drop that far and linger there for any length of time, layoffs and idled drilling rigs will become the prevailing topic of the day in oil and gas.  

So, while the White House might continue touting its “drill, baby, drill” slogan for the time being, we won’t hear it echoing through the barbecue and Tex-Mex joints in Midland, Texas, for the time being. 

David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.

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Business

Will Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ Tariffs End In Disaster Or Prosperity?

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By J.D. Foster

“Liberation Day” has come. So what does it mean? Beats the hell out of me.

What we know is that President Trump’s avalanche of tariffs was to hit a peak on April 2; not end, mind you; not necessarily “the” peak, as more could be on the way; but a peak.

No Trump policy more completely breaks with America’s past than his “beautiful” tariffs on just about everything coming into the United States from just about anywhere.

Will this new policy liberate American manufacturing from foreign shackles? Will it usher in a new era of prosperity, keeping in mind the United States had for many years the consistently best-performing economy in the industrialized world, even overcoming the many inane obstacles erected by the Biden-Harris Administration?

Or will it leave the United States isolated, friendless, and weakened?

The correct answer at this point is no one knows, not even the bloviating talking heads on TV confidently predicting demise or Shangri-la.

Think of it this way. Suppose you’re a restaurant chef and a woman hands you a new recipe. Her father turns 75 soon and they want to have a party at the restaurant. The recipe is for the father’s favorite dish, one her mother made for years.

The recipe looks old, with odd ingredients and processes you’ve not seen before. Now judge it as a chef.

You can’t. Even as you start chopping and dicing, mixing ingredients as instructed, you’re not too sure how this is going to turn out. You have to wait until the dish is on the plate and taste it.

That’s the case with Trump’s tariffs. How will this all turn out? It’s too soon to tell.

The stock market sure doesn’t like it, but why should it? The investor class doesn’t understand this any better than you do. What they do understand is this new policy has upended assumptions and created enormous new uncertainties. We know that dish as those ingredients are always good for a big pullback.

Much of the confusion arises because we don’t know the underlying policy and likely this uncertainty is intentional. Trump likes keeping his counterparts, in this case our trading partners, guessing. If it means Americans are confused for a bit, Trump’s cool with that. Breaking eggs to make an omelette. It will pass and America will be great again afterward. Bon appetite.

If the core policy is to erect massive and mostly permanent tariff walls behind which American firms can hide, then we know how this will turn out: America, meet the dustbin of history.

If the core policy is to force our trading partners to deal with America fairly by reducing their trade barriers after which Trump will remove his tariffs, then this could turn out very well. Tariffs (and non-tariff barriers) in the U.S. and those of our trading partners would fall, reinvigorating the free trade that has energized prosperity for decades.

Which is it? Walls and doom or freedom and prosperity? Again, too early to tell.

Whatever else Trump does in his second term, these tariffs will define his presidency, akin in consequence to Ronald Reagan’s pro-growth tax cuts and Joe Biden’s inflation.

Trump in his second term clearly lives by the saying, “go bold or go home.” He’s got “bold” down pat. We will see over the next year or so whether he and the Republicans go home. Has he liberated Democrats from any fear of Republicans in the mid-terms or in 2028, or he’s liberated America from any fear of Democratic socialism and wokism returning in our lifetimes. The chips are all-in. Soon we will see the cards. Uncertainty, indeed.

JD Foster is the former chief economist at the Office of Management and Budget and former chief economist and senior vice president at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He now resides in relative freedom in the hills of Idaho.

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