Members of Generation Z who read the Bible are more likely to have robust mental health than others in their age cohort, according to a recent survey from the American Bible Society.

The nonprofit organization, which surveys Americans annually about their level of interaction with Scripture, has found over the last five years that the number of adults actively engaged with the Bible has rapidly decreased. Members of Generation Z, defined as those between eighteen and twenty-seven years old, are the least likely to be engaged with Scripture, but those who are engaged with the Bible are less likely to have the mental health issues seen by peers.

Generation Z was more likely than any other age cohort to report fears related to grief and loss, family stress or trauma, and other hardships to the American Bible Society, while they also reported higher levels of anxiety. But those in Generation Z who are meaningfully engaged with the Bible are far less likely to report anxiety relative to members of their cohort, as well as members of the Millennial and Generation X cohorts who are similarly engaged with Scripture.

“We affirm the value of wise counsel from mental health professionals, pastors, and trusted friends, but our statistics consistently show that Scripture engagement makes a huge difference,” the survey remarked. “Not only do Bible-engaged churchgoers have regular affirmations from God about who they are becoming, but they also have a community of faith.”

Members of Generation Z are also reporting more rapid increases in Scripture engagement than any other generation, with roughly one in five saying they have increased their Bible use in the last year, more than double the number of those who say they have decreased their Bible use.

Matthew Pearson, himself a member of Generation Z as well as a podcast host and a student at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, Florida, has likewise observed a subset of his generation reengaging with the historic Christian faith amid a variety of societal pressures.

Pearson commented in an interview with The Sentinel that he has witnessed young men in particular becoming interested in Christianity, referencing a study which shows that roughly one-quarter of men born around the year 2000 attend church weekly, a level higher than other men born twenty-five years earlier and even higher than young women in the same cohort.

“I believe this largely to be the case due to a lack of identity among Zoomers with respect to ethnicity, race, nationality, and religion. Zoomers have grown up in the aftermath of a collapse rather than being those to bring it about,” he said. “Because the heroes of their ancestors are denounced in the school system and their history is characterized as evil, they feel compelled to cling to something in order to avoid the nihilism that comes from lacking a sense of identity.”

Pearson observed that members of Generation Z who are “raised in an evangelical church often find this lack of identity reinforced due to the lack of emphasis on historical rootedness or continuity with the historic universal church,” meaning that many in Generation Z who reengage with the Christian faith eventually convert to Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, or a classical Protestant tradition such as Anglicanism, Lutheranism, or Presbyterianism.

Pearson noted that attempts to call young white men “guilty for the various ‘crimes’ committed in America since the settling of the continent” as well as to identify young nonwhite men with “an eternal victim status of blame which inculcates weakness” sometimes enhances their interest in Christianity.

“The draw to Christianity is reactionary to that which is promulgated and pushed in the current broader culture,” Pearson noted to The Sentinel. “The move to Christianity is not because the culture is positively moving them toward the faith, but is rather a reaction to the nature of the culture acting as a longhouse to chastise young men for things they feel they have not done.”

Beyond the rootedness which the Christian faith offers young people in a turbulent culture, Pearson noted that the faith proclaims “an eternal God who upholds and sustains all things by the word of his power, who offers one not mere temporal and carnal success, but eternal life.”