Religion could be on the rise among young adults. Some are seeing it in Sask.

It's chapel night in the Regina Thunder football team's weight room. It's a weekly prayer session the team started this season. 22-year-old defensive back Lauren LeBlanc helped get it going. He was raised in the Catholic Church, but it wasn't until after he graduated high school that he craved a deeper faith connection. I did some diving into the Bible, seeing stuff on social media and that stuff, and I kind of learned a little more about Christianity than I had originally thought in the first place. Data from Angus Reid and Christian think tank Cardus from late last year shows nearly a quarter of 18 to 24-year-olds in Canada, or Gen Z, consider themselves committed to a religion, the most of any age group. Shanae Weyers runs a young adults group at a Regina church. She says its members are increasingly inviting their non-religious peers to give church a chance. where there used to be kind of like a, I'm not interested, I'm an atheist, I don't care about God. There's a real sense of openness and hunger for there to be something more, and so they're more willing to engage in those deeper conversations and say, hey, yeah, maybe there is something else out there. And so that's what we're seeing the real growth in. So what is it that so many young people are searching for that they think religion can provide? For Ishtiaq Rahman, it's about hope. The 18-year-old is one of many young Muslims who attend mosques across Saskatchewan. He's so committed to his faith, he's now helping to lead prayers. It's given me that sense of there is a light at the end of the road. There is like, after all this darkness that we see all around us, that there is a bright side to this. There is a silver lining that we can find, and I think that's truly what holds me to my religion so deeply. But experts caution it is too early to say if this is an unprecedented wave of religiosity among Gen Z. Sam Reimer studies the sociology of religion. He says a religious revival would, among other things, mean high numbers of religious conversion and lasting commitment. So at minimum, if my definition holds, we would want to wait to see what kind of lasting effects we would have here. And the research is, at least I would say, not completely convincing that we're seeing this en masse. But Lauren LeBlanc knows even if his teammates slip away from religion down the road, he'll still be able to find a community to worship with. You see empires fall all the time, but religion's outlasted time itself pretty much almost. So that goes to show, I guess. Ethan Williams, CBC News, Regina.