There is historical precedent to correlate an embrace of more conservative conceptions of political authority with an accompanying an increase in piety, and vice versa. A symbiosis between conservative politics and more substantive Christian piety typified the Réveil, a religious and in some ways political revival movement that swept France, the Low Countries, Switzerland, and parts of Germany in the second and third decades of the 19^th Century. Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer, a rising Dutch politician, became a passionate devotee of orthodox Dutch Reformed Protestantism after being exposed to the preaching of Swiss divine Jean-Henri Merle d’Aubigné, who served as court preacher to King William I of the Netherlands. 

Donald Trump won reelection this week. A major facet of his electoral coalition was a shift towards the Republican presidential ticket among young men between the ages of 18 and 29, of all races. Statistics on the religious commitments of voters are nigh impossible to render accurately—one thinks of the impossibly fluid definition of “evangelical” used to describe conservative white voters in the Republican coalition—but it is likely that many of these new young men fall in to the category of Barstool Conservatives popularized by commentator and Spectator editor Ben Domenech. “Stuck-up old visions of rich conservative white men as representative of conservatives are being replaced by a more economically and racially diverse working and middle class.” Left unsaid, but just as significant, is the fact that these young men are considerably less religious than previous generations of conservatives. [1]

Religious conservatives accustomed to dominating conservative politics find the prospect of learning to politically coexist with irreligious (and to many Evangelicals, immoral) young men daunting and even distasteful. Rev. Dr. James R. Wood, professor of religion and theology at Redeemer University, sees a unique opportunity for Protestants like himself in the conservative turn in young men. Many are for the first time exploring Christianity, even if only for the cultural and social treasury Western Christianity has stewarded for nearly two millennia. This phenomena isn’t limited to Barstool conservatives. Intellectuals are undertaking similar journeys. Wood notes that British historian Tom Holland “became convinced that most of our cherished values in the West are indebted to Christianity” as he researched his bestselling Dominion. Holland recognized “that in his ‘morals and ethics’ he is ‘thoroughly and proudly Christian.’” Wood argues that there is real potential for proselytizing these newfound cultural Christians. Young men taking up conservative politics “recognize that the cultural revolutionaries’ projects to rewrite reality are destroying civilization. These refugees crave clarity about basic moral realities because of how much confusion the negative world has produced.

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