Revival? New springtime? Or just a vibe shift?

By Peter Wolfgang ( bio - articles - email ) | Nov 29, 2025

If you are an Evangelical Protestant of a certain age, you have likely been praying for many years for Revival, another “Great Awakening” of the kind that has marked key turning points in American history. If you are a Catholic of a certain age, you may still be holding out hope for the New Evangelization, a “New Springtime” of faith prophesied by Pope St. John Paul II at the turn of the Millennium. If you are a right-leaning political activist, even one with no interest in American Christianity, you will have at least noted with appreciation a “vibe shift” away from the competing religion of Wokeness.

I first noticed the vibe shift in 2023. Around the time of Bud Light’s dalliance with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney and Target department stores selling “LGBTQ-friendly gear for infants and children,” it was clear that the “normies”—the normal folks—had had enough. Friends from adolescence and childhood—who thought I was nuts to fight gay marriage twenty years ago—started reaching out. “You should feel vindicated,” one of them told me. They could not stand what had become of our country as Wokeness continued its seemingly unstoppable advance.

You know what happened next. President Trump won re-election in a historic political comeback in 2024. But the country went blue in the 2025 off-year elections. And, unless something changes, Republicans seem headed for significant defeat in the 2026 midterms.

So where does that leave us at the end of November, 2025? No less than five articles in the secular press, all of them published just this month, suggests that the “vibe shift” is still very much with us. Indeed, that it may be picking up steam.

A November 3rd article in the Hartford Courant reports that “Attendance surges at Catholic churches in Connecticut.” That’s right. Connecticut. According to the Courant:

People are returning in droves to the Catholic Church in Connecticut, reversing a decades-long decline as particularly younger people search for deeper meaning and peace in a divisive world, priests in the state say.

Overall, attendance in the Archdiocese of Hartford has increased since 2021, with 76,428 families attending, up from 9,834 families, Archdiocese officials say. The number of men seeking the priesthood in the Archdiocese of Hartford has risen from five in 2024 to 18 projected in 2026, Archdiocese officials say.

Archdiocese officials note that while they have primarily seen an increase in young men attending Mass, they also are seeing more young families and others attending.

My own pastor, the Rev. Jim Sullivan, is cited in the article saying that our church, the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Waterbury, “has seen an increase of 500 families in his church in the last three years.”

A Nov. 8th article in the Wall Street Journal informs us that “[Contemporary] Christian Music Is Everywhere Now“:

“I’ve been in it since 1997, and in all my years, I can’t remember a time like this,” said Holly Zabka, president of Provident Entertainment, a faith-based music label owned by Sony Music...In the first half of the year, Luminate reported that streams of recently released Christian tracks increased more than streams of new songs from any other genre except country....And faith-based artists appear increasingly able to score “major cultural moments with songs that are explicitly Christian,” said Brad O’Donnell, co-president of Capitol Christian Music Group.

Closer to home, a “News 8 Special Report” declares that there is a “New wave of spirituality across”—here it is again—Connecticut. Justin Kendrick, the lead pastor at Vox church, says his goal is “to see New England changed from the least-churched region to the most spiritually vibrant place on earth.” He held his first church service at Toad’s Place in New Haven in 2011 and his church now has 13 locations.

It’s a trend seen across denominations—from [Protestant] congregations to Catholic parishes—pews are also filling up. “They’re coming back to something that feels like home, something sacred,” Archbishop Christopher Coyne said. He said attendance in Connecticut is up 6% since 2021, with nearly 10,000 families joining the Catholic Church...

On Nov. 16th, the New York Post told of “New Yorkers turning to the church, number of Catholic converts soaring...”

[St. Joseph’s Church in Greenwich Village’s] Order of Christian Initiation of Adults—the process in which adults convert to Catholicism—had tripled since last year, with roughly 130 people signing up. There’s a similar story at St. Vincent Ferrer on the Upper East Side, where their OCIA numbers have doubled since last year, swelling to nearly 90 people. At the Basilica of St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral, they’ve also doubled their head count with about 100 people...In the Diocese of Brooklyn, they’ve also seen a surge. In 2024, they had 538 adults enter the church, nearly twice the amount of 2023.

Finally, on Nov. 19th, the New York Times reported the “Orthodox Church” is “Overflowing With Converts”:

Across the country, the ancient tradition of Orthodox Christianity is attracting energetic new adherents, especially among conservative young men. They are drawn to what they describe as a more demanding, even difficult, practice of Christianity. Echoing some of the rhetoric of the so-called manosphere, new waves of young converts say Orthodoxy offers them hard truths and affirms their masculinity.

So what does it all mean? I am struck by the last two articles cited above—the New York Post story on converts to Catholicism and the New York Times story on converts to Eastern Orthodoxy—both citing the assassination of Charlie Kirk as being a factor. The first quarter of the 21st century has seen any number of disasters for the United States that could have—should have—sparked a national turning toward God. 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, the Great Crash of 2008, and the Covid pandemic come immediately to mind. And there are others.

But of all those things, it seems as if Charlie Kirk’s assassination may have been the catalyst to a long-awaited—well, a long-awaited what? Is this a Revival? A New Springtime? Or merely a vibe shift?

I would argue that it is something in-between. It may become a Revival, a New Springtime, and I pray that it does. I don’t think we are there yet. But it is something more than a vibe shift. As I said above, we have been in a vibe shift for a few years now. No, this is something more.

Call it the Charlie Kirk Effect.