Article

Community

Creed

Faith

Spiritual formation

8 April 2025

5 min read

The welcome surprise of church growth

Beyond the noise of scandal and politics, a low and steady hum resonates. It’s the sound of a quiet revival.

Lauren Westwood

Lauren writes on faith, community, and anything else that compels her to open the Notes app.

A cover of a book show a cross and the title 'You are loved'.

Rod Long on Unsplash.

‘More young men turned up at church for the first time this morning.’

‘Suddenly our pews are filled with twenty-somethings.’

‘A new family is coming on Sundays. Their teenage daughter has been dragging them along.’

I can believe it.

If you’ve heard similar things about church congregations over the past few years, you’re likely to have heard the same caveat: anecdotally, of course. These conversations have long been coloured with an undertone of confusion and uncertainty.

The Bible Society has released a landmark piece of research that has uncovered the data to back up these anecdotes about growth in churchgoing in England and Wales. The Quiet Revival is based on findings of a survey of adults in England and Wales in 2018 and 2024, undertaken by YouGov.

This set of robust data supports that anecdotal swell around church engagement in recent years, particularly among young men. It evidences a growing Church, the increased positive impact of it in communities, and spiritual openness among the young. It paints a picture of an multi-ethnic and multi-generational Church that is transforming alongside an ever-evolving cultural landscape and a shifting national understanding. This is exciting stuff.

The report identifies a general increase of people who go to church at least once a month and call themselves a Christian from 8 to 12 per cent. It presents a radical shift among young adults between 18-24, all within the Generation Z cohort, as being more likely to fit this definition of churchgoers than any generation except for those over 65. In a further reversal of norms, the research sees men as more likely to attend church than women across most ages, but especially among under-35s. Critically the report outlines that this is ‘not a case of young men joining while young women are leaving’, but of mutual increase in church attendance.

It seems that, just maybe, Christianity is cool.

Gen Z are the most likely to believe in God and to pray regularly. Just under two-thirds would be happy for a Christian friend to pray for them, and 47 per cent of non-churchgoing Gen Z believe it is a good thing for Christians to talk about their faith with non-Christians. This signals a move from attributing growth to the sole influence of cultural commentators or media personalities, and towards confident local Christians sharing faith between friends. Rather than being spurred on by influencers and intellectuals, the greatest impact comes from relationships and in-person invitation.

However, this remarkable openness to religion and experiential spirituality among Gen Z is not straightforward: a third agree that the Bible is a source of harm in the world. This is no longer an anecdotal curiosity; this is real, documented growth exhibited in an emerging spiritual generation, received by a cultural atmosphere that is warming to faith.

Going to church is good for you. In an age of self-help phenomena, The Quiet Revival positions the Church as an antidote to fragmented social lives and mental health crises. Churchgoers of all ages are more likely than non-churchgoers to be happy, to possess hope for the future and to believe that their life is meaningful, as well as being less likely to say they’re feeling anxious or depressed. Critically, these findings are true for young churchgoers, giving further reason behind their flocking to churches. Quite simply, it makes them happier.

It’s a balm to a generation – particularly young men – who are digitally surrounded but socially isolated. Going to church leads to better connection to people in the wider community, with nearly two-thirds of 18–34-year-old churchgoers feeling close to people in their local area, compared to just a quarter of their non-churchgoer peers. Looking specifically at young men in church, this increases to 68 per cent, presenting an incredible opportunity for churches to cut through the loneliness epidemic.

‘The difference is staggering,’ remarks Dr Rob Barward-Symmons, one of the reports authors. ‘It paints a picture of young adults who have found a deep sense of meaning and life satisfaction through attending church regularly, who feel connected to their communities and – in the data we have gathered on their social action – are keen to give back to their local communities as well. This is not the image we typically see of young adults in the media, but it is a powerful one.’

Going to church isn’t just good for you, it’s also good for your community. Perhaps The Quiet Revival’s deepest encouragement lies in its glimpse of a faith-in-action Christianity. The research shows a picture of churchgoers who are not just concerned for their own wellbeing, but who want to improve the lives of others - 78 per cent of all churchgoers agreeing that making a difference in the world is important.

In particular, the churches' younger generations desire social change, possess confidence and investment in effecting positive change, and a responsibility to contribute to their communities. Acts such as regularly donating to charity, supporting a local food bank, and participating in environmental improvement activities are seen as the outworkings of Christian faith in action. It indicates the consequences of churchgoing through a deep embodying of God’s love and the passing of this love to others.

‘These are the markers of whether you’re a true believer or not,’ adds Dr Krish Kandiah, sharing his own encouragement in the findings. ‘It’s not whether you turn up at church, have signed a confession or sing the songs. Jesus expounds on how to tell whether you’re in the Kingdom or not: “I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink.”’

Now we’ve got the numbers, we’re left with questions. How can we respond? Where will this lead us? Are we witnessing the death of nominal Christianity? To say the findings have caught the Church off-guard may be an understatement. The 2024 survey happened to go to field on the day that news broke of Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby’s resignation. We are living in times of political unrest. Religion and just about everything else is weaponised. The poverty gap is increasing, and not just in material poverty.

The reality is that we all have a part to play. The report is inclusive in its approach and recommendations. The first call is for an increased recognition of the scale and impact of churchgoers, something that can be adopted by social influencers and decision-makers. The following recommendations are more directed to those within the Church, to prioritise discipleship and Bible teaching, to cultivate intentional intergenerational spaces where each churchgoer is empowered to tell their story, and to put emphasis on building interpersonal relationships.

Beyond the noise of scandal and political Christianity, a soft, low and steady hum resonates. It doesn’t dictate; it shares. It doesn’t drown others out; it listens. It doesn’t withhold; it invites. It prizes action over words. This is the sound of quiet revival.

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Article

Belief

Christmas culture

Creed

Wisdom

16 December 2024

5 min read

How to have a philosophically happy Christmas

Raise a glass to the invasion of history by the author of history.

Charles Foster

Professor Charles Foster is a Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford, and a member of the Oxford Law Faculty.

A fish eye lens view of a person standing silhouetted, looking up to a colourful night sky with the Milky Way across it

Greg Rakozy on Unsplash.

A few years ago, I had dinner with a well-known philosopher. Knowing that he is no friend of religion, and curious how he’d respond, I set about mocking the credulity of Christians and parroting the lines I’d so often heard: superstition degrades and obfuscates; let’s act and think like grown-ups, not craven children; we’re free to write our own rules, and we can write better rules than barbarous Levantine goat-herders; we’re brave enough to say that when we die we rot. And so on. The standard fare.

He looked at me over the top of his glass. ‘Have you never been taught’, he said acidly, ‘that if you destroy the premises of an argument, the argument collapses? The same is true of history.’

I’ve slowly learned that he was right.

‘What have the Romans ever done for us?’, asked John Cleese, as the leader of the People’s Front of Judea. He’s famously answered by his troops. The modern version of the question, which is just as embarrassing, is ‘What have the Christians ever done for us?’ The historian Tom Holland, not (as far as we know) himself a professed Christian, has made a good living by providing a long and meticulously documented list. I’m not going to review it here. My own personal list would include Chartres Cathedral, Paul’s tectonic notion that there is ‘neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female’ (and hence universal human dignity and suffrage), and Christmas.

The Christians say that Christmas is the commemoration of a historical fact: an invasion of history by the author of history; of creation by the creator.

This is too much for many to swallow. If that’s true for you, is it dishonest to celebrate Christmas?

A mathematician friend works on imaginary numbers. An imaginary number is a real number multiplied by the ‘imaginary unit’, i. i2 = -1, and so i = √-1. Think about it. It’s an impossibility. It’s absurd. Descartes talked about ‘imaginary numbers’ only to laugh at the idea. But they are enormously useful in real life. You are reading this on a phone or computer screen courtesy of imaginary numbers. Sometimes it’s worth suppressing, or at least muting, a contemptuous laugh. Tom Holland’s list, and mine, depend on theological and historical numbers that might (or might not) be imaginary. You don’t have to stop dubbing the numbers ‘imaginary’ – don’t stop having to call them ludicrous – to carry on reading your screen.

Christmas, for me, is a celebration not only of family, gluttony and intoxication, but of four facts (if the Christians are historically correct) and four principles which are generated by those facts - whether the facts are real or imaginary. The principles work, just as my computer screen does.

First: human agency is cosmically colossal. The invasion I mentioned above was invited (so preventing it from being rape) by a Palestinian Jewish girl. She could have said ‘No’, and so scuppered the whole project.

Second: Christmas drafts a completely new account of power. In the Christian story of Easter, all the powers of darkness are disarmed by one broken man dying on a piece of wood between dying criminals. It was a continuation of the story that began at Christmas: the birth, in a shitty stable, to a teenage mother accused of fornication, of a child soon to be a refugee, driven to another country to escape the murderous authorities. It’s all about the subversion of political and military power by the irresistible power of the powerless.

Third: the universe is surprising. Nobody predicted the invasion. Yes, I know the Christians say, with the confidence given by the retrospectocope, that there were hints in the Hebrew scriptures, but they weren’t seen at the time, and the most learned Jews today, even with the retrospectoscope, still don’t see them. Yes, I know that the ancient world was awash with tales of the impregnation of mortals by gods, and with virgin births (think of Dionysos, Attis, Romulus and Remus and many others). But they didn’t look remotely like this. Those tales were told to prop up conventional claims to power, not explode them. Bethlehem burst onto the blind side of history, injecting unforeseen possibility. The virgin conception smashed pre-conceptions. A new way of being had gestated. If that was possible, what wasn’t?

Fourth: The most revolutionary thing about Christmas, perhaps, is that it shows that mythos is real – part of the web and weave of reality.

After dinner at Magdalen College, Oxford, on 20 September 1931, J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis and Hugo Dyson walked together along Addison’s Walk, part of Magdalen’s grounds. They were discussing the resurrection of Jesus. Lewis knew all about the ubiquitous tales of dying and rising gods. The Christian resurrection stories were no different, he said. They were poetically resonant, no doubt, but essentially ‘lies and therefore worthless, even though breathed through silver.’

‘No’, said Tolkien. ‘They are not lies,’ There was a sudden rush of wind in the still night. In Lewis’s rooms the conversation continued into the early hours. The stories were indeed myths, Tolkien contended, but true myths.

This conversation propelled Lewis finally into Christianity.

The Christmas story suggests that Tolkien was right (and those notoriously mystical quantum physicists – some of the most adept handlers of imaginary numbers, by the way - are right): there is no robust boundary between history and legend, between physics and metaphysics, between matter and spirit. This, in fact, is our working assumption, whether we’re explicitly religious or not. However icy our reductionism, we think that we matter, that there is more than matter, and that whatever that ‘more’ is, it is heavier and more enduring than matter, and matters more than matter. We love our children far more than reciprocal altruism or kin selection suggests we should. However sturdy our atheism we dab our eyes at the St Matthew Passion and put flowers on our parents’ graves.

It is reassuring to have a festival which enjoins us to lift our glasses and toast the way we live when we’re being the kind of people we urge our children, our friends and our politicians to be. It commands us to admit mystery to the dining table, and to celebrate being as mysterious as we know we are.

Christmas, authentically celebrated, is part of the foundation on which rest Chartres cathedral, freedom, suffrage, dignity and many things we innocently and dangerously take for granted. Like it or not, that foundation, as the austere philosopher observed, is the premise of the argument for the civilization that until recently succoured us before we replaced it with – well, with what?