The New Radicalization of the Internet
Jihadists and right-wing extremists use remarkably similar social media strategies.
Social media has played a key role in the recent rise of violent right-wing extremism in the United States, including three recent incidents — one in which a man was accused of sending mail bombs to critics of the president, another in which a man shot dead two African-Americans in a Kroger’s grocery store in Kentucky, and a third in which a man is accused of conducting a murderous rampage at a synagogue in Pittsburgh.
Each of these attacks falls under the definition of right-wing extremism by the Global Terrorism Database at the University of Maryland: “violence in support of the belief that personal and/or national way of life is under attack and is either already lost or that the threat is imminent." Antiglobalism, racial or ethnic supremacy, nationalism, suspicion of the federal government, obsessions over individual liberty — these are all hallmarks of this network of ideologies, which is, of course, shot through with conspiracy theories.
Yet, even as the body count of this fanaticism grows, the nation still lacks a coherent strategy for countering the violent extremism made possible through the internet.
Instead, the fundamental design of social media sometimes exacerbates the problem. It rewards loyalty to one’s own group, providing a dopamine rush of engagement that fuels platforms like Facebook and YouTube, as well as more obscure sites like Gab or Voat. The algorithms that underpin these networks also promote engaging content, in a feedback loop that, link by link, guides new audiences to toxic ideas.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/24/opin ... 3053091125
Radicalization in Religions
How ISIS Is Rising in the Philippines as It Dwindles in the Middle East
The Islamic State’s territory in Iraq and Syria, once the size of Britain, has shriveled after four years of American-backed bombing and ground combat by Kurdish and Shiite militia fighters. What is left is a tiny village in southeast Syria that could fall any day.
But far from defeated, the movement has sprouted elsewhere. And here in the Mindanao island group of the southern Philippines, long a haven for insurgents because of dense wilderness and weak policing, the Islamic State has attracted a range of militant jihadists.
“ISIS has a lot of power,” said Motondan Indama, a former child fighter on the island of Basilan and cousin of Furuji Indama, a militant leader who has pledged fealty to the group. “I don’t know why my cousin joined, but it’s happening all over.”
The group first made a big push for southern Philippines recruitment in 2016, circulating videos online beckoning militants who could not travel to its self-proclaimed caliphate in Iraq and Syria. Hundreds of fighters poured in from as far away as Chechnya, Somalia and Yemen, intelligence officials said.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/09/worl ... 3053090310
The Islamic State’s territory in Iraq and Syria, once the size of Britain, has shriveled after four years of American-backed bombing and ground combat by Kurdish and Shiite militia fighters. What is left is a tiny village in southeast Syria that could fall any day.
But far from defeated, the movement has sprouted elsewhere. And here in the Mindanao island group of the southern Philippines, long a haven for insurgents because of dense wilderness and weak policing, the Islamic State has attracted a range of militant jihadists.
“ISIS has a lot of power,” said Motondan Indama, a former child fighter on the island of Basilan and cousin of Furuji Indama, a militant leader who has pledged fealty to the group. “I don’t know why my cousin joined, but it’s happening all over.”
The group first made a big push for southern Philippines recruitment in 2016, circulating videos online beckoning militants who could not travel to its self-proclaimed caliphate in Iraq and Syria. Hundreds of fighters poured in from as far away as Chechnya, Somalia and Yemen, intelligence officials said.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/09/worl ... 3053090310
Reza Aslan: Islam and ISIS
Radicalism and Religious Nationalism
University of Notre Dame
Published on Feb 18, 2016
Amidst the recent terror attacks in the Middle East, Paris and San Bernadino, CA, harmful generalizations regarding the Muslim population's involvement in terrorism have spread rapidly. ISIS's quest for global terror has further exacerbated these misconceptions, allowing the continued proliferation of global Islamophobia and xenophobia towards Middle Eastern individuals. In early February 2016, Reza Aslan spoke and answered questions regarding the actual relationship between radical Islam and terrorism at the University of Notre Dame. This event was presented by the Dean's Fellows of the College of Arts and Letters
Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qV3BBc ... CdLycdqLs6
Radicalism and Religious Nationalism
University of Notre Dame
Published on Feb 18, 2016
Amidst the recent terror attacks in the Middle East, Paris and San Bernadino, CA, harmful generalizations regarding the Muslim population's involvement in terrorism have spread rapidly. ISIS's quest for global terror has further exacerbated these misconceptions, allowing the continued proliferation of global Islamophobia and xenophobia towards Middle Eastern individuals. In early February 2016, Reza Aslan spoke and answered questions regarding the actual relationship between radical Islam and terrorism at the University of Notre Dame. This event was presented by the Dean's Fellows of the College of Arts and Letters
Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qV3BBc ... CdLycdqLs6
Sri Lanka Attacks: Hometown of Accused Mastermind Was Fertile Ground for Extremism
KATTANKUDY, Sri Lanka — When the Wahhabis came, with their austere ideology and abundant coffers, the town of Kattankudy yielded fertile ground.
In this part of Sri Lanka, faith was often the sole sustaining force during the civil war that raged for nearly three decades. Wahhabism — a hard-line strain of Islam blamed for breeding militancy — proposed a direct path to God, albeit one that aimed to return the religion to the time of the Prophet Muhammad.
It was here in Kattankudy’s warren of homes decorated with delicate swirls of Arabic calligraphy that Zaharan Hashim, the man accused of masterminding the Easter Sunday attacks in Sri Lanka, grew up. And it was here that he preached his ideology, calling for the killing of nonbelievers in Islam and even other Muslims.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/28/worl ... 3053090429
******
Synagogue Shooting Keeps Religious Leaders on Edge: ‘No One Should Be Gunned Down in Worship’
Excerpt:
Now Rabbi Goldstein and leaders like him in synagogues and other houses of worship are confronting their new reality. Just like school principals across the country, religious leaders now must take measures to prepare for the horrors of mass shootings. As recent attacks have shown, prayer services are increasingly vulnerable.
The shooting in Poway, about 25 miles north of San Diego, coincides with a significant spike in hate crimes, including acts of anti-Semitism. The gunman, whom police identified as John Earnest, 19, wrote a manifesto echoing the same kind of white supremacist views as the shooters in the attacks in the synagogue in Pittsburgh and on mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. The latest attack came one week after mass bombings at churches and hotels in Sri Lanka left hundreds dead.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/28/us/s ... 3053090429
KATTANKUDY, Sri Lanka — When the Wahhabis came, with their austere ideology and abundant coffers, the town of Kattankudy yielded fertile ground.
In this part of Sri Lanka, faith was often the sole sustaining force during the civil war that raged for nearly three decades. Wahhabism — a hard-line strain of Islam blamed for breeding militancy — proposed a direct path to God, albeit one that aimed to return the religion to the time of the Prophet Muhammad.
It was here in Kattankudy’s warren of homes decorated with delicate swirls of Arabic calligraphy that Zaharan Hashim, the man accused of masterminding the Easter Sunday attacks in Sri Lanka, grew up. And it was here that he preached his ideology, calling for the killing of nonbelievers in Islam and even other Muslims.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/28/worl ... 3053090429
******
Synagogue Shooting Keeps Religious Leaders on Edge: ‘No One Should Be Gunned Down in Worship’
Excerpt:
Now Rabbi Goldstein and leaders like him in synagogues and other houses of worship are confronting their new reality. Just like school principals across the country, religious leaders now must take measures to prepare for the horrors of mass shootings. As recent attacks have shown, prayer services are increasingly vulnerable.
The shooting in Poway, about 25 miles north of San Diego, coincides with a significant spike in hate crimes, including acts of anti-Semitism. The gunman, whom police identified as John Earnest, 19, wrote a manifesto echoing the same kind of white supremacist views as the shooters in the attacks in the synagogue in Pittsburgh and on mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. The latest attack came one week after mass bombings at churches and hotels in Sri Lanka left hundreds dead.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/28/us/s ... 3053090429
Fighting for the Soul of Islam in Sri Lanka
After the Easter bombings, I am struggling to understand how violent ideology has taken hold in my Muslim community.
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — Two days after the Easter Sunday bomb attacks in Sri Lanka, I met my greengrocer at the Colpetty market, a symbol of the cosmopolitan city that I call home. I have known Ashraff virtually all my life. He did not have his usual half-smile on his face, and when I went up to him to say goodbye, I could see he was troubled. Eventually, shaking his head in sorrow, with tears in his eyes, he told me that the day before, someone he had known for 35 years, a man from Sri Lanka’s Sinhala majority, had said he could no longer be his friend. I understood his sorrow. The attacks on Easter Sunday have left everyone in Sri Lanka confused and bewildered. Those of us who are Muslim are also trying to understand how this violence could have come from our own community.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/02/opin ... dline&te=1
After the Easter bombings, I am struggling to understand how violent ideology has taken hold in my Muslim community.
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — Two days after the Easter Sunday bomb attacks in Sri Lanka, I met my greengrocer at the Colpetty market, a symbol of the cosmopolitan city that I call home. I have known Ashraff virtually all my life. He did not have his usual half-smile on his face, and when I went up to him to say goodbye, I could see he was troubled. Eventually, shaking his head in sorrow, with tears in his eyes, he told me that the day before, someone he had known for 35 years, a man from Sri Lanka’s Sinhala majority, had said he could no longer be his friend. I understood his sorrow. The attacks on Easter Sunday have left everyone in Sri Lanka confused and bewildered. Those of us who are Muslim are also trying to understand how this violence could have come from our own community.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/02/opin ... dline&te=1
After Synagogue Attack, Some Evangelicals Finally Owning Their Part in White Christian Nationalism
Over the past few months, several of us at Religion Dispatches have tried to spark a conversation about the threat of white Christian nationalism, and why discussions about white nationalism must include its religious roots.
While some Christian leaders have pushed back on this, others are finally coming around to this reality, particularly in the wake of the synagogue attack last week in which a woman was killed by a white Christian nationalist who opened fire during Passover service. As the Washington Post reported, the shooter, John Earnest appears to have written a seven-page letter spelling out his core beliefs: that Jewish people, guilty in his view of faults ranging from killing Jesus to controlling the media, deserved to die. That his intention to kill Jews would “glorify God.”
Earnest’s manifesto mirrors other white Christian nationalists who have couched their hatred in theology or symbolism. His actions further underscore how white Christian nationalists see their only option to restore an imagined past glory is through violence.
It’s difficult for any religious group to acknowledge or own the extremists within their broader community. But for white Christians, understanding—and acknowledging—how racial and religious privilege in the West have manifested into backlash and violence against Others (see South Carolina church massacre, New Zealand mosque attack, and synagogue shootings) is an important first step.
Taking ownership of an ideology that has spawned—and will continue to spawn—extremist groups or lone wolves might be the best to way to eradicate it. Otherwise, white Christian leaders will continue to exist in denial about the way their racial and religious identities have contributed to an ideology bent on preserving privilege through violence.
More...
https://rewire.news/religion-dispatches ... tionalism/
Over the past few months, several of us at Religion Dispatches have tried to spark a conversation about the threat of white Christian nationalism, and why discussions about white nationalism must include its religious roots.
While some Christian leaders have pushed back on this, others are finally coming around to this reality, particularly in the wake of the synagogue attack last week in which a woman was killed by a white Christian nationalist who opened fire during Passover service. As the Washington Post reported, the shooter, John Earnest appears to have written a seven-page letter spelling out his core beliefs: that Jewish people, guilty in his view of faults ranging from killing Jesus to controlling the media, deserved to die. That his intention to kill Jews would “glorify God.”
Earnest’s manifesto mirrors other white Christian nationalists who have couched their hatred in theology or symbolism. His actions further underscore how white Christian nationalists see their only option to restore an imagined past glory is through violence.
It’s difficult for any religious group to acknowledge or own the extremists within their broader community. But for white Christians, understanding—and acknowledging—how racial and religious privilege in the West have manifested into backlash and violence against Others (see South Carolina church massacre, New Zealand mosque attack, and synagogue shootings) is an important first step.
Taking ownership of an ideology that has spawned—and will continue to spawn—extremist groups or lone wolves might be the best to way to eradicate it. Otherwise, white Christian leaders will continue to exist in denial about the way their racial and religious identities have contributed to an ideology bent on preserving privilege through violence.
More...
https://rewire.news/religion-dispatches ... tionalism/
The Theology That Inspired the Poway Synagogue Shooting (and New Zealand) Remains Strikingly Commonplace
Excerpt:
So however sincere the Earnest family may have been in absolving their religious community of any connection to the Poway attack, the flood of all that “replacement” theology makes one wonder. When and how can one disaffiliate young John T. Earnest’s attempts actually to “replace” Jews and Muslims by physically eliminating them, on the one side, from the theological vision of their “replacement” incessantly preached in his church, on the other? Is someone going to argue that everyday behavior and religious formation occupy different universes of discourse and practice? If so, why bother with preaching, teaching or theologizing at all?
More....
https://rewire.news/religion-dispatches ... mmonplace/
Excerpt:
So however sincere the Earnest family may have been in absolving their religious community of any connection to the Poway attack, the flood of all that “replacement” theology makes one wonder. When and how can one disaffiliate young John T. Earnest’s attempts actually to “replace” Jews and Muslims by physically eliminating them, on the one side, from the theological vision of their “replacement” incessantly preached in his church, on the other? Is someone going to argue that everyday behavior and religious formation occupy different universes of discourse and practice? If so, why bother with preaching, teaching or theologizing at all?
More....
https://rewire.news/religion-dispatches ... mmonplace/
The Myth of the ‘Lone Wolf’ Shooter Blinds Us to the Reality of White Supremacy
Thinking of these killers as “lone wolf” actors makes it easier to dismiss them as demented individuals, hapless victims of bad parenting, self-destructive misfits, or erratic evil doers. But we need to see these “lone wolf” white supremacists for what they are—members of “wolf packs.”
.......
Excerpt:
But how can we even be sure the individual domestic terrorists in El Paso or Pittsburgh represent a “pack”? And how can we act while protecting our First Amendment right to free speech? Leaving aside spectacles of wolf-pack frenzy like Charlottesville’s torchlight parade, we don’t routinely see these wolf packs rallying at the local VFW hall. Yet, we know these shooters run with a “pack” of their own kind. We know who gives them aid and comfort.
Anyone who can surf the web knows white supremacists have a tendency to broadcast their views far and wide. As a social media community, the wolf packs may lack the tight organization and strategic command centers of organized crime or classic terrorist groups. But online, the wolf pack becomes real in the circulation and exchange of manifestos; the constant back and forth conversation reinforcing a sense of “us”; and the articulation of common language, where coded phrases like “high scores” mean lots and lots of killing. As virtual as these digital associations may be, they nonetheless effectively form real communities—common minds for the like-minded. Online sites must, thus, be taken seriously as the new venues where digital Klans gather, preparing for the next ride—even if they perform the actual ride alone.
More...
https://rewire.news/religion-dispatches ... supremacy/
Thinking of these killers as “lone wolf” actors makes it easier to dismiss them as demented individuals, hapless victims of bad parenting, self-destructive misfits, or erratic evil doers. But we need to see these “lone wolf” white supremacists for what they are—members of “wolf packs.”
.......
Excerpt:
But how can we even be sure the individual domestic terrorists in El Paso or Pittsburgh represent a “pack”? And how can we act while protecting our First Amendment right to free speech? Leaving aside spectacles of wolf-pack frenzy like Charlottesville’s torchlight parade, we don’t routinely see these wolf packs rallying at the local VFW hall. Yet, we know these shooters run with a “pack” of their own kind. We know who gives them aid and comfort.
Anyone who can surf the web knows white supremacists have a tendency to broadcast their views far and wide. As a social media community, the wolf packs may lack the tight organization and strategic command centers of organized crime or classic terrorist groups. But online, the wolf pack becomes real in the circulation and exchange of manifestos; the constant back and forth conversation reinforcing a sense of “us”; and the articulation of common language, where coded phrases like “high scores” mean lots and lots of killing. As virtual as these digital associations may be, they nonetheless effectively form real communities—common minds for the like-minded. Online sites must, thus, be taken seriously as the new venues where digital Klans gather, preparing for the next ride—even if they perform the actual ride alone.
More...
https://rewire.news/religion-dispatches ... supremacy/
Retracing a Young Man’s Path to Extremism
He was 21 years old. And then he left to join the insurgency.
What drives a young man to leave the safety of his country and move to the Middle East? I never thought I’d have to consider this question in a personal way. But then in 2013 my young friend abruptly disappeared from his home in Germany.
Six weeks later, he emailed his mother from Syria. He had joined a group of Salafist extremists there. He tried to reassure her: “I didn’t leave to get away from you, remember that,” he said. We later learned that he had died.
The boy was like a little brother to me. Our families lived in the same small town, and I met him when he was just 8. My family and I spent a lot of time with him until I went away to college. He disappeared right after he turned 21.
His mother still lives in my old town today. I see her angry, sad and full of self-doubt. She futilely searched for answers.
Then one day, she got a letter from a lawyer. The lawyer’s client had fought with my friend in the same group in Syria, and then was arrested on terrorism charges on a trip home to Germany. Now he was in prison and wanted to meet my friend’s mother. He wrote to her: “One thing you have to believe: We went with good intentions.” We went to visit him in prison.
In this film, through original interviews with my friend’s mother, archival footage, including cell phone videos, emails, and photographs, and recreated interviews with the prisoner, I try to retrace what happened to my friend, whose young life ended in the early stages of the Syrian civil war. I knew I would have to tell this deeply personal story in a different way.
Ultimately, many questions remain unanswered. But perhaps this film paints a clearer picture of what might drive someone to leave his home and family behind to answer the call of fundamentalism.
Film at:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/03/opin ... y_20190904
He was 21 years old. And then he left to join the insurgency.
What drives a young man to leave the safety of his country and move to the Middle East? I never thought I’d have to consider this question in a personal way. But then in 2013 my young friend abruptly disappeared from his home in Germany.
Six weeks later, he emailed his mother from Syria. He had joined a group of Salafist extremists there. He tried to reassure her: “I didn’t leave to get away from you, remember that,” he said. We later learned that he had died.
The boy was like a little brother to me. Our families lived in the same small town, and I met him when he was just 8. My family and I spent a lot of time with him until I went away to college. He disappeared right after he turned 21.
His mother still lives in my old town today. I see her angry, sad and full of self-doubt. She futilely searched for answers.
Then one day, she got a letter from a lawyer. The lawyer’s client had fought with my friend in the same group in Syria, and then was arrested on terrorism charges on a trip home to Germany. Now he was in prison and wanted to meet my friend’s mother. He wrote to her: “One thing you have to believe: We went with good intentions.” We went to visit him in prison.
In this film, through original interviews with my friend’s mother, archival footage, including cell phone videos, emails, and photographs, and recreated interviews with the prisoner, I try to retrace what happened to my friend, whose young life ended in the early stages of the Syrian civil war. I knew I would have to tell this deeply personal story in a different way.
Ultimately, many questions remain unanswered. But perhaps this film paints a clearer picture of what might drive someone to leave his home and family behind to answer the call of fundamentalism.
Film at:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/03/opin ... y_20190904
What I Learned From Scanning the Brains of Potential Terrorists
How understanding the mind of a radical Islamist can prevent the next white-nationalist attack.
Video:
https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/1 ... 0920200302
How understanding the mind of a radical Islamist can prevent the next white-nationalist attack.
Video:
https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/1 ... 0920200302
Re: Radicalization in Religions
Something Is Stirring in Christian America, and It’s Making Me Nervous
Oct. 16, 2025
A small circle of hands in prayer is surrounded by a larger circle of red pointing fingers.
Credit...Illustration by George Douglas; source photographs by imagenavi and amana productions inc/Getty Images
David French
By David French
Opinion Columnist
Despite what you may have heard about the renewal of interest in religion in America, we are not experiencing a true revival, at least not yet. Instead, America is closer to a religious revolution, and the difference between revolution and revival is immensely important for the health of our country — and of the Christian church in America.
At this point it’s almost beyond debate that something important is stirring in American religion. There is too much data — and too many anecdotes — to ignore. The steady decline of Christianity in America seems to have slowed, perhaps even paused. There’s evidence that Gen Z men in particular are returning to church and younger generations of Americans are now attending church slightly more regularly than older generations.
Americans just witnessed an immense stadium filled to the brim with people mourning Charlie Kirk, in a memorial service that was one part worship service, one part political rally. And that service was replicated at a smaller scale at vigils across America. Fox News reported that an average of 5.2 million people watched its coverage of Kirk’s memorial service, with the audience spiking to 6.6 million viewers during Erika Kirk’s remarks.
I can sense the change myself. When I speak on college campuses, students seem more curious about faith than they were even five years ago. When I write about faith, I get a larger — and more personal — response than I get when I write about any other topic. My inbox fills with heartfelt personal testimonies, including stories about how people both found and lost God.
As a Christian who has long lamented the decline of church attendance in the United States, I should be very happy about all these developments. After all, if people feel a God-shaped hole in their lives, shouldn’t we rejoice when they find, in the words of scripture, the “peace of God, which surpasses all understanding”?
Make no mistake, there are marvelous stories of religious renewal and devotion in the United States. In February 2024, I spoke at a chapel service at Asbury University in Wilmore, Ky., the site of an extended and remarkable revival in 2023 that brought at least 50,000 people to that small town to experience what my newsroom colleague Ruth Graham called “the nation’s first major spiritual revival in decades.”
This revival had filled the students there with zeal, but that zeal manifested itself in humility and compassion. It was inspiring. It made me search my own heart to see more clearly my own faults and failings.
But that is hardly the universal experience people are having with America’s religious surge. There is darkness right alongside the light. Christians stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Christians have believed and applauded dark prophecies that compare Donald Trump to Jehu, a murderous Old Testament king who commanded the slaughter of the previous queen, Jezebel, and had the severed heads of the previous king’s sons brought to him in baskets.
Incredibly, Christians are attacking what they call the “sin of empathy,” warning fellow believers against identifying too much with, say, illegal immigrants, gay people or women who seek abortions. Empathy, in this formulation, can block moral and theological clarity. What’s wrong is wrong, and too much empathy will cloud your soul.
There was the ReAwaken America tour that crisscrossed America during Joe Biden’s presidency, during which angry Christians called for vengeance at sold-out venues from coast to coast. And, as I wrote last month, the Kirk memorial itself mixed calls for love (most notably Erika Kirk’s decision to forgive her husband’s killer) with the Trump administration’s explicit hate.
Trump — to the laughter and cheers of the crowd — said that he hated his opponents. Stephen Miller, the president’s top domestic policy adviser, declared that his perceived political enemies were “nothing.”
“You are nothing,” he said, “You are wickedness. You are jealousy. You are envy. You are hatred.”
Is that what a revival looks like? And if our nation isn’t yet experiencing a genuine national revival — something like the Second Great Awakening, which swept through the United States in the early 19th century — then what is actually going on?
As a lifelong evangelical, I’ve been taught to hope, pray and work for revival. I’ve even experienced small-scale revivals — in my law school Christian fellowship and at a small church in Georgetown, Ky., where my wife and I served as volunteer youth pastors for a short period.
I love the succinct description of revivals by my friend Russell Moore, an editor at large and columnist for Christianity Today magazine. “Revival,” he wrote in The Atlantic, “is a concept with a long history in American evangelicalism, rooted in the Bible, that says a people who have grown cold and lifeless can be renewed in their faith. It is a kind of resurrection from the dead.”
In 2023, shortly before he died, Tim Keller, the founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York and one of the leading evangelical pastors and theologians in the nation, wrote that genuine revival has three characteristics: It wakes up “sleepy” Christians, it converts nominal Christians into a more vital and genuine faith, and it brings non-Christians to Christ.
Keller noted that revival begins with repentance. “Ordinary Christians aren’t usually sad enough or happy enough,” Keller wrote. “We’re not convicted enough about our sin. We’re not experiencing deep repentance and therefore we don’t experience high assurance” — by which Keller meant the high assurance of God’s love.
That’s exactly the biblical model. Time after time in scripture, revival and renewal begins with repentance. In the Book of Acts, when Peter spoke to a crowd in Jerusalem about the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, listeners were “cut to the heart” and cried out to Peter and the apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?”
In the Old Testament, when a king of ancient Judah, Josiah, heard the book of the law for the first time, “he tore his robes” in grief. When Jonah called on the people of ancient Nineveh to repent, scripture records that the people of the city declared a fast and put on sackcloth, a sign of mourning for their sin.
In other words, revival begins with the people proclaiming, by word and deed, “I have sinned.”
MAGA Christianity has a different message. It looks at American culture and declares, “You have sinned.”
And it doesn’t stop there. It also says, “We will defeat you.” In its most extreme forms, it also says, “We will rule over you.” That’s not revival; it’s revolution, a religious revolution that seeks to overthrow one political order and replace it with another — one that has echoes of the religious kingdoms of ages past.
And don’t be fooled when these revolutionaries call themselves “conservative.” All too many conservative Christians are actually quite proudly radical. They want to demolish the existing order, including America’s commitment to pluralism and individual liberty, and put their version of Christianity at the center of American political life.
A revolution can look like a revival, at least for a time. A revolution can fill stadiums. A revolution can even attract converts — converts to the revolutionary cause, if not the Christian faith. A revolution can make you feel alive with purpose, and when the revolution has religious elements, it can flood you with the burning conviction that you are doing God’s will.
Look closer, however, and you can see that religious revolution is usually antithetical to religious revival. Yes, there are people who enter the church because of politics and then find their way to genuine Christianity, but the revolution is a roadblock to genuine Christian growth.
Revolutionaries will conceal sin. They can’t permit any cracks in their righteous facade. Any weakness undermines their claim to the national throne. The other side is wicked. We are not.
The revolutionary’s ferocious ideological purity can masquerade as religious devotion. But unless it’s tempered by mercy, the revolutionary spirit is a fundamentalist spirit — and heaven help the person who stands in the way.
In his piece about revivals, Moore writes, “Denominations that are glacially slow to recognize documented sexual-abuse cover-ups are lightning quick to expel congregations they find to be too affirming of women’s leadership.”
The reason is obvious: Exposing sexual abuse can lead to public anger and contempt. If an institution can’t protect vulnerable people from harm, then what gives it the right to rule?
In a revival, however, exposing sin is necessary. Transparency and honesty trigger repentance. Repentance facilitates justice, and it leads to forgiveness. In the revivals I’ve experienced, politics was the last thing on our minds. Instead, our focus was on becoming more like Christ — and that meant turning from my own sin, not focusing on the faults of others.
For all the talk of religious revival in American evangelicalism, there is an odd disconnect. Evangelicals might be growing in political power, but there is not much evidence that they are growing in devotion.
For example, Ryan Burge, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis’s John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics, analyzed data from the Cooperative Election Study and found that the percentage of self-identified American evangelicals who “seldom” or “never” attend church has been increasing since 2008. In 2024, half of all evangelicals attended church once per month, or less.
Political evangelicalism can look quite godless. In the past 10 years, Donald Trump has influenced the culture of the church far more than the church has influenced Trump. When a pastor declares at a ReAwaken America rally that he has “come ready to declare war on Satan and every race-baiting Democrat that tries to destroy our way of life here in the United States of America,” he is imitating Trump, not Christ.
When a right-wing radio host takes to the stage on the same tour and taunts Fani Willis, the Fulton County, Ga., district attorney who filed criminal charges against Trump, by shouting, “Big Fani. Big fat Fani. Big fat Black Fani Willis,” he is imitating Trump, not Christ.
Similarly, when a pastor named Doug Wilson calls transgender Americans “trannies,” or gay Americans “gaytards,” or women he doesn’t like “lumberjack dykes” and “small-breasted biddies,” he is imitating Trump, not Christ.
In the Book of Galatians, Paul contrasts the fruit of the spirit with what he called the “acts of the flesh,” the sins that can destroy the soul. Those sins include the very characteristics that mark America’s religious revolution: “hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions.”
The fruit of the spirit — “love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” — in contrast, is present when Christ is present. This is the fruit of a real revival.
How will we know when revival sweeps America? It won’t necessarily be when the stadiums fill or even when the churches burst at the seams. The will to religious power can draw a crowd, at least for a time.
We will know when revival comes because we will see believers humble themselves, repent of their sins, and then arise, full of genuine virtue, to love their neighbors — to help them, not hurt them — and in so doing to heal our nation.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/16/opin ... e9677ea768
Oct. 16, 2025
A small circle of hands in prayer is surrounded by a larger circle of red pointing fingers.
Credit...Illustration by George Douglas; source photographs by imagenavi and amana productions inc/Getty Images
David French
By David French
Opinion Columnist
Despite what you may have heard about the renewal of interest in religion in America, we are not experiencing a true revival, at least not yet. Instead, America is closer to a religious revolution, and the difference between revolution and revival is immensely important for the health of our country — and of the Christian church in America.
At this point it’s almost beyond debate that something important is stirring in American religion. There is too much data — and too many anecdotes — to ignore. The steady decline of Christianity in America seems to have slowed, perhaps even paused. There’s evidence that Gen Z men in particular are returning to church and younger generations of Americans are now attending church slightly more regularly than older generations.
Americans just witnessed an immense stadium filled to the brim with people mourning Charlie Kirk, in a memorial service that was one part worship service, one part political rally. And that service was replicated at a smaller scale at vigils across America. Fox News reported that an average of 5.2 million people watched its coverage of Kirk’s memorial service, with the audience spiking to 6.6 million viewers during Erika Kirk’s remarks.
I can sense the change myself. When I speak on college campuses, students seem more curious about faith than they were even five years ago. When I write about faith, I get a larger — and more personal — response than I get when I write about any other topic. My inbox fills with heartfelt personal testimonies, including stories about how people both found and lost God.
As a Christian who has long lamented the decline of church attendance in the United States, I should be very happy about all these developments. After all, if people feel a God-shaped hole in their lives, shouldn’t we rejoice when they find, in the words of scripture, the “peace of God, which surpasses all understanding”?
Make no mistake, there are marvelous stories of religious renewal and devotion in the United States. In February 2024, I spoke at a chapel service at Asbury University in Wilmore, Ky., the site of an extended and remarkable revival in 2023 that brought at least 50,000 people to that small town to experience what my newsroom colleague Ruth Graham called “the nation’s first major spiritual revival in decades.”
This revival had filled the students there with zeal, but that zeal manifested itself in humility and compassion. It was inspiring. It made me search my own heart to see more clearly my own faults and failings.
But that is hardly the universal experience people are having with America’s religious surge. There is darkness right alongside the light. Christians stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Christians have believed and applauded dark prophecies that compare Donald Trump to Jehu, a murderous Old Testament king who commanded the slaughter of the previous queen, Jezebel, and had the severed heads of the previous king’s sons brought to him in baskets.
Incredibly, Christians are attacking what they call the “sin of empathy,” warning fellow believers against identifying too much with, say, illegal immigrants, gay people or women who seek abortions. Empathy, in this formulation, can block moral and theological clarity. What’s wrong is wrong, and too much empathy will cloud your soul.
There was the ReAwaken America tour that crisscrossed America during Joe Biden’s presidency, during which angry Christians called for vengeance at sold-out venues from coast to coast. And, as I wrote last month, the Kirk memorial itself mixed calls for love (most notably Erika Kirk’s decision to forgive her husband’s killer) with the Trump administration’s explicit hate.
Trump — to the laughter and cheers of the crowd — said that he hated his opponents. Stephen Miller, the president’s top domestic policy adviser, declared that his perceived political enemies were “nothing.”
“You are nothing,” he said, “You are wickedness. You are jealousy. You are envy. You are hatred.”
Is that what a revival looks like? And if our nation isn’t yet experiencing a genuine national revival — something like the Second Great Awakening, which swept through the United States in the early 19th century — then what is actually going on?
As a lifelong evangelical, I’ve been taught to hope, pray and work for revival. I’ve even experienced small-scale revivals — in my law school Christian fellowship and at a small church in Georgetown, Ky., where my wife and I served as volunteer youth pastors for a short period.
I love the succinct description of revivals by my friend Russell Moore, an editor at large and columnist for Christianity Today magazine. “Revival,” he wrote in The Atlantic, “is a concept with a long history in American evangelicalism, rooted in the Bible, that says a people who have grown cold and lifeless can be renewed in their faith. It is a kind of resurrection from the dead.”
In 2023, shortly before he died, Tim Keller, the founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York and one of the leading evangelical pastors and theologians in the nation, wrote that genuine revival has three characteristics: It wakes up “sleepy” Christians, it converts nominal Christians into a more vital and genuine faith, and it brings non-Christians to Christ.
Keller noted that revival begins with repentance. “Ordinary Christians aren’t usually sad enough or happy enough,” Keller wrote. “We’re not convicted enough about our sin. We’re not experiencing deep repentance and therefore we don’t experience high assurance” — by which Keller meant the high assurance of God’s love.
That’s exactly the biblical model. Time after time in scripture, revival and renewal begins with repentance. In the Book of Acts, when Peter spoke to a crowd in Jerusalem about the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, listeners were “cut to the heart” and cried out to Peter and the apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?”
In the Old Testament, when a king of ancient Judah, Josiah, heard the book of the law for the first time, “he tore his robes” in grief. When Jonah called on the people of ancient Nineveh to repent, scripture records that the people of the city declared a fast and put on sackcloth, a sign of mourning for their sin.
In other words, revival begins with the people proclaiming, by word and deed, “I have sinned.”
MAGA Christianity has a different message. It looks at American culture and declares, “You have sinned.”
And it doesn’t stop there. It also says, “We will defeat you.” In its most extreme forms, it also says, “We will rule over you.” That’s not revival; it’s revolution, a religious revolution that seeks to overthrow one political order and replace it with another — one that has echoes of the religious kingdoms of ages past.
And don’t be fooled when these revolutionaries call themselves “conservative.” All too many conservative Christians are actually quite proudly radical. They want to demolish the existing order, including America’s commitment to pluralism and individual liberty, and put their version of Christianity at the center of American political life.
A revolution can look like a revival, at least for a time. A revolution can fill stadiums. A revolution can even attract converts — converts to the revolutionary cause, if not the Christian faith. A revolution can make you feel alive with purpose, and when the revolution has religious elements, it can flood you with the burning conviction that you are doing God’s will.
Look closer, however, and you can see that religious revolution is usually antithetical to religious revival. Yes, there are people who enter the church because of politics and then find their way to genuine Christianity, but the revolution is a roadblock to genuine Christian growth.
Revolutionaries will conceal sin. They can’t permit any cracks in their righteous facade. Any weakness undermines their claim to the national throne. The other side is wicked. We are not.
The revolutionary’s ferocious ideological purity can masquerade as religious devotion. But unless it’s tempered by mercy, the revolutionary spirit is a fundamentalist spirit — and heaven help the person who stands in the way.
In his piece about revivals, Moore writes, “Denominations that are glacially slow to recognize documented sexual-abuse cover-ups are lightning quick to expel congregations they find to be too affirming of women’s leadership.”
The reason is obvious: Exposing sexual abuse can lead to public anger and contempt. If an institution can’t protect vulnerable people from harm, then what gives it the right to rule?
In a revival, however, exposing sin is necessary. Transparency and honesty trigger repentance. Repentance facilitates justice, and it leads to forgiveness. In the revivals I’ve experienced, politics was the last thing on our minds. Instead, our focus was on becoming more like Christ — and that meant turning from my own sin, not focusing on the faults of others.
For all the talk of religious revival in American evangelicalism, there is an odd disconnect. Evangelicals might be growing in political power, but there is not much evidence that they are growing in devotion.
For example, Ryan Burge, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis’s John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics, analyzed data from the Cooperative Election Study and found that the percentage of self-identified American evangelicals who “seldom” or “never” attend church has been increasing since 2008. In 2024, half of all evangelicals attended church once per month, or less.
Political evangelicalism can look quite godless. In the past 10 years, Donald Trump has influenced the culture of the church far more than the church has influenced Trump. When a pastor declares at a ReAwaken America rally that he has “come ready to declare war on Satan and every race-baiting Democrat that tries to destroy our way of life here in the United States of America,” he is imitating Trump, not Christ.
When a right-wing radio host takes to the stage on the same tour and taunts Fani Willis, the Fulton County, Ga., district attorney who filed criminal charges against Trump, by shouting, “Big Fani. Big fat Fani. Big fat Black Fani Willis,” he is imitating Trump, not Christ.
Similarly, when a pastor named Doug Wilson calls transgender Americans “trannies,” or gay Americans “gaytards,” or women he doesn’t like “lumberjack dykes” and “small-breasted biddies,” he is imitating Trump, not Christ.
In the Book of Galatians, Paul contrasts the fruit of the spirit with what he called the “acts of the flesh,” the sins that can destroy the soul. Those sins include the very characteristics that mark America’s religious revolution: “hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions.”
The fruit of the spirit — “love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” — in contrast, is present when Christ is present. This is the fruit of a real revival.
How will we know when revival sweeps America? It won’t necessarily be when the stadiums fill or even when the churches burst at the seams. The will to religious power can draw a crowd, at least for a time.
We will know when revival comes because we will see believers humble themselves, repent of their sins, and then arise, full of genuine virtue, to love their neighbors — to help them, not hurt them — and in so doing to heal our nation.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/16/opin ... e9677ea768