When I was a young evangelical Christian — having inherited faith more than I had accepted it — I was often baffled by optimistic talk of “revival”. Ours was the “Revival Generation”, preachers would declare, which seemed difficult to believe when The God Delusion was selling almost as many copies as The Bible.
But has the moment come? “Gen Z is flocking to church,” declares the Independent. “Gen Z are turning to faith,” trumpets the Financial Times. Christian groups are whispering that young people will represent a “prodigal generation”.
What’s going on?
According to a new report from the Bible Society, “The Quiet Revival”, Christianity is making a comeback. This, it seems, is especially true when it comes to younger adults. In 2018, just 4 per cent of 18-24-year-olds claimed to attend church at least monthly. Now, their numbers have risen to 16 per cent — with young men increasing from 4 per cent to 21 per cent. In 2018, 28 per cent of these young adults thought that there was probably or definitely a god/gods or a “higher power”. Now, this number has risen to 45 per cent.
This is certainly interesting, and good news for Christians. At the risk of being a killjoy, though, I think that it could represent a far quieter revival than the headlines are suggesting.
Firstly, there is a significant extent to which the rise has been influenced by immigration. True, the authors of the report observe that there has been “substantial growth from the White population”. But the fact that growth has been concentrated among (a) men and (b) Pentecostal churches points to the importance of migration from Africa.
Secondly, reported church attendance is not the same as recorded church attendance. That someone claims to go to church at least monthly, in other words, does not mean that they do. If, as the Bible Society suggests, Catholicism has “risen sharply” since 2018, why are recorded numbers of attendees at Catholic churches still far lower than they were pre-COVID? The numbers don’t add up.
“While it is possible participants may not be answering truthfully, or have misunderstood our questions,” the authors write, “We would need to question in turn why these effects have only become observed in 2024.” True. There has certainly been some sort of tilt towards spirituality from young people. But its implications are less than coherent. “More young adults are believing in God”, claims the report. This might be true, but the fact that the question also encompassed a “higher power” means that the 45 per cent of young people who agreed includes everyone from a classical theist to someone who thinks that there “must be something out there, man”. That meditation is the most popular “spiritual practice … outside of formal services” also suggests that there has been significant growth among people who consider themselves “spiritual but not religious”.
Excitable commentary on Gen Z’s “return to faith” has also tended to ignore the extent to which the report reveals hostility towards traditional religion. Young people, as the report admits, are the least likely age demographic to agree that “society is better when it’s shaped by Christian values”, the most likely to agree that “the Bible is a source of harm in the world” and the least likely to agree that “it is good for children to know at least some Bible stories”.
Religious triumphalism would be premature
This is not to dismiss the research of the Bible Society. It is interesting that younger people seem more spiritually inclined than older people — no doubt driven by dissatisfaction with the materialistic narratives, and material realities, of their age. Research elsewhere backs this up. For example, according to a 2023 Policy Institute study, younger Britons are a lot likelier than older Britons to believe in life after death.
Yet religious triumphalism would be premature. After all, the same Policy Institute study found that younger people were far likelier than older people to say that God was “not important in their life”. It seems undeniable that there is a new openness to religious and otherwise spiritual beliefs among young people. But whether these young people’s beliefs will crystallise into a lasting substantive religious form remains to be seen.
