Bill Bennett Encouraged by Young Men Looking to Faith
William J. Bennett, an influential author and former U.S. secretary of education, is one of the nation’s most influential and respected voices on cultural, political and educational issues. In his youth, however, he wanted nothing to do with Christian values.
“Like so many rebellious kids in the early 60s, I was seduced by the idea of breaking the chains of religion to live a self-indulgent life,” he said, according to Fox News. “For a time, the questions of the age seemed more compelling than the answers I had been given. I recall the headmaster of my Catholic high school, Father Anthony McHale, telling me, `We will get you in the end.’ And he was right. I returned to Catholicism by my mid-20s, largely, I suspect, for the same reason as today’s young men.”
Bennett similarly sees today’s young men turning to Christianity in search of answers to life’s questions.
“The past decade was not so different from the 1960s, marked by progressive overreach, cultural secularism, moral bankruptcy and political turmoil,” he said. “Like my generation, today’s young people came to believe that meaning could be found in self-expression and political activism alone. But it left them rootless and empty. Many began asking the same question I had asked: `Is this all there is?’ And in their search, they found the answer.
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“My prayer today is that this is the stirring of a new Great Awakening in America. If it takes hold, it may lead us back to the politics my own generation discovered in the Reagan years — one that exchanges progressive relativism for the pursuit of a moral society rooted in tradition and shared conviction.”
After the assassination of Charlie Kirk last September, Bible sales jumped 36 percent in a single month. Sales reached a 21-year high in 2025, double what they were in 2019.
“I am encouraged by these signs,” Bennett said. “I believe today’s young people might not merely match the faithfulness of my generation but exceed it. Because the dark clouds of their time — AI, democratic socialism, gender ideology and more — are even more ominous than those that hovered over the 1960s.
“The greater the darkness, the brighter the light can shine. History shows that the hunger for God never fully disappears. It can only be suppressed for a season. When it reawakens, the political and cultural consequences can be profound and, with God’s help, profoundly hopeful.”
–Lee Hartman
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