Tag: Christianity

On the Revival of Religion in the West

During his recent visit to Rome, Chicago Mayor Johnson shared the following, “As far as reaching young people and even church attendance, the real encouraging thing right now is what we’re experiencing with Pope Leo the XIV, is that there are folks who are coming back into the faith.” He also stated, “I’m hopeful that as the church continues to emerge, as our communities continue to cry out for justice, that you’ll see a revival of sorts.”

I think that Mayor Johnson is correct and that the trend towards secularization in the West will eventually begin to reverse itself. In fact some recent data suggests that it already has. I offer the following reasons why we will see a resurgence of religiosity in the West in our lifetimes:

  1. Ecological uncertainty: As climate change continues to upend people’s lives, religion will be increasingly seen as an anchor of stability in a chaotic and uncertain world.
  2. Political conflict: Religion will both provide a social-emotional salve to some in relation to political upheaval. However, it will also be a source of conflict and division, that is, a way of aggregating humanity along partisan lines.
  3. Social justice: In contrast to the above, discourses pertaining to justice will also be a draw for many, bringing back into the fold of religion. The politics of the current and previous pope (to say nothing of certain Islamic scholars, practitioners of indigenous traditions, Buddhist exponents, and so on) will play no small part in the growth of religion in the West, especially among younger adherents.
  4. Moral reversion: Many will consider aspects of the progressivism of the last decades as indicative of amorality, if not immorality, leading to an embrace of religion as a source of moral authority.
  5. The search for meaning: Religion (along with philosophy) remains one of the most potent tools for finding meaning and addressing existential questions about the nature and meaning of existence. This capacity remains potent despite science’s profoundly useful explanatory power pertaining to the material universe.

Source: Yin, Alice. 2026. “Mayor Brandon Johnson predicts revival of faith in Chicago following Vatican trip.” Chicago Tribune, May 31, 2026. https://www.chicagotribune.com/2026/05/31/chicago-mayor-brandon-johnson-vatican-trip/.

Radical theologies

I was thinking about Iran’s rhetorical and military response to the assassination of Gen. Qasem Soleimani. The Iranian political leadership and civilians called for vengeance. This is quite a contrast to the penchant of American Negroes to forgive, almost reflexively, those who do ill to us.

I have wondered about the conceptual underpinnings of these differences. Many say that Christianity is at fault here. That Black people have been sedated by a very powerful opiate–a religion that compels fixation on the hereafter rather than the present world. Often we know better than this, that is that African Americans’ relationship with Christianity has been more complex than this, but nonetheless, such rhetoric persists–especially in the context of asymmetrical and racialized violence in America.

Then I was in a bookstore tonight and saw a book titled, “Black Religion and Black Radicalism: An Interpretation of the Religious History of African Americans” by Gayraud S. Wilmore. I glanced over it, didn’t buy it, but it stimulated a necessary reevaluation of some of these premises.

I recalled Nat Turner and Bishop Henry McNeal Turner, who though Christian, were advocates of armed insurrection or armed self-defense. Turner, for his part, reportedly said that his rebellion began with a sign for God. Bishop McNeal Turner famously declared that “God is a Negro”. He would go on to argue in favor of armed self-defense. He stated: “We have had it in our mind to say this for over seven years, but on account of our Episcopal status we hesitated to express ourselves thus, fearing it would meet the disapproval of the House of Bishops. But their approval or disapproval has done nothing to stop the fiendish murderers who stalk abroad and are exterminating my race, so we have now said it, and hereafter we shall speak it, preach it, tell it, and write it. Again we say, Get guns, negroes! get guns, and may God give you good aim when you shoot.” Turner’s instruction is a historical echo of the 20th Century group, the Deacons for Defense and Justice, whose commitment to armed self-defense, reminds us that Christianity has also been an idiom of armed struggle or armed self-defense.

At a certain level I think that this suggests that African people have been sufficiently ingenious so as marshal a range of conceptual vehicles as mediums of radical thought. Hence we find that the idiom of revolutionary or insurrectionary struggle has variously been that of “New World” African spiritualities (as in the case of Haiti), Christianity (as in the case of Nat Turner), Islam (as in the case of Malcolm X), to say nothing of non-religious voices. The imperative for resistance has, at times, been of greater import than the medium of its articulation, which has variously become malleable in the hands and minds of those who see its utility for radical ends.