Editor's note: All opinions, columns and letters reflect the views of the individual writer and not necessarily those of the IDS or its staffers.
On weeknights at Indiana University, one of the country’s “top party schools,” a growing segment of students gather off campus for worship services and prayer rather than another night hitting the bars.
Earlier this month, the Indiana Daily Student reported the university may be experiencing a Christian revival. But up close, the picture is more disparate: What appears to be a single revival is really two religious currents running side by side.
One current is evangelical. The story opened with a distinctly evangelical scene: a room packed with students swaying to contemporary praise music and declaring their faith. This snapshot resembles the revival meetings led by evangelical preacher Billy Graham a generation ago, just updated to Generation Z’s tastes. For decades, Graham drew crowds to hear his preaching and sing hymns together before inviting people forward to profess their faith.
It can be hard to say who exactly counts as an evangelical. Over the decades, estimates have ranged from 7 to 47% of adults in the United States, depending on pollsters’ criteria. The religious historian George Marsden has joked that in the 1950s and ‘60s, an evangelical was anyone who liked Billy Graham. But the National Association of Evangelicals accepts four defining traits, including emphasis on personal conversion and an active effort to convert others.
When you encounter Christian groups outside Ballantine Hall or along campus sidewalks, there is a good chance they are evangelical.
The other current is Catholic. The story did not describe a Catholic scene in the same way. Visually and audibly, it is quite another experience. Weeknights at St. Paul Catholic Center, students gather in pews and recite Latin while robed priests orbit an altar with incense, then present bread and wine, believed to be Jesus’ body and blood, to God. I see the same ceremony every time. Here, ritual is a stronger force. It is easier to say who is Catholic: someone who has undergone another ritual, baptism, in order to participate in this one, the mass.
Ministers at IU’s Christian Student Fellowship noted rising membership to the IDS. Yet, our present moment is uniquely Catholic. St. Paul’s leadership told the IDS that the class of students entering the Catholic Church this spring is nearly five times larger than a year ago.
This Catholic boom extends beyond Bloomington. In 2024, Catholic baptisms in France and Britain jumped 21% and 31%, respectively, from the previous year. In 2025, French baptisms sprang another 45%, while some dioceses in the United Kingdom noted a 100% increase.
So, a revival is taking place at IU, but it is not producing a single Christian voice. This is significant for campus and broader society. The difference between these movements is not confined to theological disputes. In U.S. history, evangelicals and Catholics have often stood on opposite sides of political and cultural divides. In the 1920s, evangelical activists pushed for Prohibition, while many Catholics combated it.
Today, evangelicals — specifically, white evangelicals — represent the Republican Party’s strongest base. Among them, 85% are or lean Republican, compared to 61% of white Catholics and 52% of all Catholics. Across issues, from gay marriage to economics, Catholics and evangelicals harbor different political beliefs: 29% of evangelicals and 69% of Catholics favor legal gay marriage, while 67% of evangelicals, but 41% of Catholics, support tariff hikes.
This is to say IU’s Christian revival is not equivalent to a Republican renaissance. The situation is more mixed — theologically, politically, culturally.
Another point to observe is that evangelical churches and the evangelical experience by extension are more particular. This begins with evangelicalism’s emphasis on personal conversion and ends with its structure of disunited, independent churches. Evangelicals in college may not find a community resembling their own at Bloomington after college.
By contrast, Catholics after college can be certain of finding an identical mass throughout the world. While a professor speaking to the IDS suggested Gen Z is looking for community in turning to Christianity in larger numbers than millennials at the same age, Gen Z’s specifically Catholic hints the appeal is not merely finding a community. More than that, it is anchoring oneself in the firmness of an institution.
To the point, tradition is key to Catholicism. Yet, tradition also counters the professor’s suggestion: “People are defining Christianity for themselves in new ways.”
Today, the certainties we all used to share, like the 5 o’clock news, featuring the “most trusted man in America,” have been replaced by more subversive, individualized alternatives, like our social media feeds. Strongmen, who follow the rule of defining things in new ways for themselves, are reshaping our institutions for themselves.
In such an age, could it be that members of Gen Z turning to religion are not seeking their own version of religion, but a version that defines itself on its own terms, on a body of tradition and authority?
Eric Cannon (he/him) is a sophomore studying philosophy and political science and currently serves as a member of IU Student Government.
