Atheist sees global faith revival

By Julia Duin
October 22, 2009

Although I think religion is the queen of beats, it's not often I hear journalists from other disciplines admit how important covering God really is.

Which is why I was glad to see two editors from the Economist magazine release "God is Back: How the Global Revival of Faith is Changing the World" earlier this year. Co-author Adrian Wooldridge said he and John Micklethwait got the idea while compiling their 2004 book "The Right Nation," about America's conservatives. It struck them that religious observance is increasing worldwide and that irreligious Europe, not America, is the exception.

"Religion now goes hand in hand with modernity," he said. "Something happened from the 1970s onward that put that [into action] and now the world is going in the American direction."

I told him that the Jesus movement and Pentecostal/charismatic revivals of the 1960s and '70s, which originated in the United States, may have had something to do with that. the rest