Humans have a tendency to react to social and cultural chaos by looking back for things that are lost, just as humans have a tendency to be captured by new, dangerous ideas. While any rejection of the foolishness of the last decade is welcome, indulging nostalgia is no more of a strategy than claiming “progress.” What matters is what is true.

According to the Catholic News Agency, over 10,000 people were baptized in France on Easter, a 45% jump over last year, and especially notable given France’s historically skeptical and secular society. This report is in line with others from other parts of Europe, where especially men are returning to a faith that has been until now largely rejected. In the U.S. there is a renewed interest as well, again largely among young men, in Eastern Orthodoxy.

Some are calling this a “quiet revival” without the fanfare often associated with revivalism. Glen Scrivener and Justin Brierley in the U.K. and Gavin Ortlund in the U.S. have been carefully chronicling the subtle growth. They all seem to agree that something is happening, though it’s not clear whether it is genuine revival or just part of a wider “vibe shift,” as the cultural pendulum swings away from an overplayed “woke” moment.

Twenty years ago, the vibe was a New Atheism with Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Richard Dawkins. At the same time, there was a New Calvinism ushered in by Tim Keller, John Piper, and The Gospel Coalition. As different as the movements were, they provided an intellectual structure for a world that seemed unhinged by 9/11 and the threats of global terrorism.

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