The Atlantic: What the Fastest-Growing Christian Group Reveals About America, by Molly Worthen (North Carolina; Author, Spellbound: How Charisma Shaped American History from the Puritans to Donald Trump (2025)):
In Durham, North Carolina, just a few miles from major universities, teaching hospitals, and other temples of science, the Holy Spirit remains formidable. When I attended a gathering at Catch the Fire Church one Friday evening last year, a petite blond woman made her way down the aisle, laying her hand on heads and shoulders, calling on the Holy Spirit. Her magenta tunic glowed under the can lights. She breathed hard into her microphone. Here and there, the woman, a Toronto-based evangelist named Carol Arnott, paused to point a finger down a row of worshippers and shout, “Fire on them, Lord!” Knees buckled; people collapsed back into their seats.
As Arnott continued her circuit, a man in a hoodie—the “catcher”—followed closely behind, ready to help any person “slain in the Spirit.” One touch from her hand sent more supplicants falling to the floor. “Don’t get up too soon,” Arnott urged one dazed individual lying on the carpet. “You’re like a steak, marinating.” She preached as she walked, describing a vision in which Jesus gave her a bouquet of lilies of the valley and adorned her with a flowered crown and wedding veil. “The bridegroom is coming. Are you ready?” Arnott asked. It was hard to hear her over the moans and guffaws, the bursts of holy laughter.
Catch the Fire belongs to the fastest-growing group of Christians on the planet—charismatic Christians, who believe that the Holy Spirit empowers them to speak in tongues, heal, and prophesy, just as Jesus’s first apostles did 2,000 years ago. By some measures, they represent more than half of the roughly 60 million U.S. adults who call themselves “born-again.” This flourishing and vigorously supernatural faith points to the paradox of the secular age: The modern era of declining church attendance has nurtured some of religion’s most dramatic manifestations. Instead of killing off religion, secularism has supercharged its extraordinary elements.
Charismatic Christians aren’t the only ones embracing a spirituality that might seem out of place in our modern, rationalist age. Eighty-seven percent of Americans subscribe to at least one New Age belief, such as karma, reincarnation, or telepathy. During my time researching charismatic Christianity for my new book, Spellbound, I also interviewed podcast bros who hawk ayahuasca in Silicon Valley and self-described spiritual coaches who offer treatments ranging from Reiki to reviewing their clients’ past lives. …
Both Christianity and Islam are exploding outside the West. Worldwide, the proportion of people who identify as atheists—about 7 percent, according to some studies—will likely decrease in coming years. Nicky Gumbel, the Anglican priest who works with Alpha, told me that the program has found some of its greatest success in Chinese-speaking communities that are reckoning with a history of communism. “Pure secularism doesn’t satisfy,” he says. In a globalized society such as the United States, prophecies of the long-term collapse of religious faith and practice seem premature.
Humans are fundamentally religious, in the sense that we yearn to impose order on the chaos of existence and worship some source of ultimate meaning. As the Catholic philosopher Charles Taylor wrote in his 1989 book, Sources of the Self, everyone aspires to a sense of fullness—a “pattern of higher action” that connects their lives “with some greater reality or story.” He warned that “it would be a mistake to think that this kind of formulation has disappeared even for unbelievers in our world.” Secularization may reshape how we act on these instincts, but it has not eliminated them: Unbelievers will always have more in common with the Holy Rollers than they realize.
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