Holy Week is upon us once again, the week which starts with little children hitting one another with the palm branches they received at church and culminates eight days later as those same angels sit “in their Easter bonnet(s) with all the frills upon it.”

For many Americans, Holy Week is no more than these outward trappings of palm branches, new spring dresses, and chocolate eggs and jelly beans. But indicators show that Easter and its true meaning – Jesus Christ, his death, burial, resurrection, and victory over sin – may be experiencing more of a revival than many of us realize.

Nowhere is this more evident than in a recent Barna poll showing that the last five years have seen a dramatic increase in those who say they have made a personal commitment to follow Jesus. As the chart below shows, this is particularly true for males in the younger generations, with 67% of Gen Z men and 71% of millennial men affirming this statement, compared to only 52% in both generations in 2019.

What’s driving this massive leap?

The Covid pandemic is one of the most obvious life changes experienced during this timeframe. The isolation, the decline of many social institutions, and even the overreach of government may have caused many men to sit up, take notice, and begin seeking a deeper connection and meaning in their lives than they’d had before.

But for men, the pandemic and its effects were likely just the last straws in a long line of societal changes that negatively affected them, including things like the #MeToo movement and the further alienation and diminishment of the male sex in general thanks to feminism. In other words, is it possible that liberalism and its tenets finally wore men into the ground, causing them to throw in the towel and look for something that offered them hope and encouragement and personal worth as individuals?

If that’s so, then why would they turn to Christianity?

Princeton theologian J. Gresham Machen provides an answer to that question. “Christianity,” Gresham explains in his 1923 work, “Christianity and Liberalism,” “is in conflict at many points with the collectivism of the present day.” Contrary to liberalism, Christianity emphasizes “the worth of the individual soul,” he continues.

It provides for the individual a refuge from all the fluctuating currents of human opinion, a secret place of meditation where a man can come alone into the presence of God. It does give a man courage to stand, if need be, against the world; it resolutely refuses to make of the individual a mere means to an end, a mere element in the composition of society. It rejects altogether any means of salvation which deals with men in a mass; it brings the individual face to face with his God.

These components are the exact opposite of what many men have experienced in recent years. They’re bombarded by people telling them what they can and can’t say – even if it’s just their own opinion. They’re forbidden to think their own thoughts, blackballed if they dare to swim against the current. They are told that they as men are worthless, no longer needed to provide, protect or lead the women and children in their lives. When we sit back and realize that society has taken all these things away from men, is it any wonder that they’re more open and willing to seek things above and accept the redemption of the Savior?

But what about the opposite sex? Why is it that numbers of men seem to be turning to Christianity, but not so the women – at least not in the same dramatic numbers?

I wonder if the same issue isn’t in play. Unlike men, women have been propped up, encouraged, and given a front and center role in just about everything in recent years as the underprivileged sex that must break glass ceilings. But that status may not last much longer. In fact, the last several years have seen that pro-women trend disappearing rapidly as men invade women’s spaces and sports by claiming the female identity.

Such actions toward women, of course, are never a good thing … but there is often a silver lining in even the worst of situations.

It seems plausible that the malignment of men has caused them to seek hope in Christianity. Is it possible that women will eventually follow the same path as they find the harms and hazards of human nature and suffering bear down upon their sex as well?

After all, as Machen says elsewhere, “Christianity is the religion of the broken heart,” going on to clarify, however, that although it “begin[s] with the broken heart,” it “does not end with the broken heart.” Would that the broken hearts, dreams, and desires of humanity lead both sexes to the foot of the cross this Holy Week to find healing, courage, and hope for the future.

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The republication of this article is made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal. 

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