Gen Z ‘religious revival’? The evidence is incomplete

Series: Humanist perspectives Author: Richy Thompson

In this article, Director of Public Affairs and Policy Richy Thompson considers bold claims in the media that Christian churches are growing rapidly and that this is particularly so among young adults.

On Tuesday the Bible Society released a report called The Quiet Revival. It claims that ‘the Church is in a period of rapid growth, driven by young adults and in particular young men’. It argues that, although the share of people identifying as Christian has fallen to 39%, the share going to church at least monthly has risen, from 8% in 2018 to 12% in 2024, and among 18-24 year olds this has gone from 4% to 16%. It referred to these young adults as ‘the spiritual generation’, and that this was happening at least in part due to the need to find community.

But do these claims stack up? 

The findings were based on two very large YouGov surveys that are clearly statistically robust. But in terms of growth of church attendance, the data from those surveys is at odds with other (arguably more reliable) data sets – and that throws into question the wider findings.

Are the Church of England and the Catholic Church growing?

Short answer: the evidence does not support this and recorded church attendances are in fact falling.

The survey asked people, ‘Apart from weddings, baptisms/christenings, and funerals how often, if at all, did you go to a church service in the last year?’ Those reporting monthly attendance rose from 3.7 million in 2018 to 5.8 million in 2024 – a seemingly massive 56% increase in adults attending church.

But the survey also reported what shares of this alleged attendance were part of the Church of England, Catholic Church, and Pentecostal churches, in both of those years. This means it’s possible for us to calculate that for the Church of England, the survey reported monthly attendance figures as going from 1.5 million to 2 million – 30% growth. For the Catholic Church, numbers went from 850k to 1.8 million – an astonishing 112% growth!

This isn’t just unlikely – it’s wildly out of step with wider figures

And, unlike the survey results, these wider figures are not self-reported survey data but objective records. Both churches record attendance each year. The Church of England publishes this annually as Statistics for Mission. It measures the size of the ‘Worshipping Community’, ‘defined as those people who attend worship regularly, once a month or more (whether in-person or “at home”).’

The most recent report (2023) records this measure of monthly church attendance as going down from 1.1 million to 1 million. It records average weekly attendance as going from 880,000 to 690,000.

The Catholic Church records weekly mass attendance each year. Between 2019 and 2023, this was reported to go down from 700,000 to 550,000.

Attendance in both denominations has grown from 2020 to 2023, but this is because attendance was massively hit by the pandemic, and has taken some years to recover. However before that attendance was in long-term decline. It has yet to recover to the trendline that might have been predicted pre-pandemic.

We can note two things from this

One is that recorded attendance is and always has been quite a bit lower than reported attendance. This may largely be due to ‘social desirability bias’ – people reporting they go to church more often than they actually do because they see it as a good thing to do and so they exaggerate when asked.

But the second thing we can see is that this gap has grown substantially. Churches have continued to shrink in attendance while the Bible Society survey says it has grown significantly. How can this be?

Why might recorded and reported church attendance figures be diverging?

One possible explanation is the rise of ‘online church attendance’. This wouldn’t have been much of a feature in the 2018 Bible Society survey but could be a big one in 2024. Church of England data does include ‘at home’ recorded attendance but it’s unclear how well such attendance is captured (though it’s worth noting it did fall significantly in each of 2022 and 2023 as people returned to in-person attendance). Nevertheless, it’s possible that the rise in online attendance might explain the growing divide, particularly as young people are much more online and so perhaps more likely to ‘attend’ church online. It’s an open question as to what this online attendance consists of. How much are people paying attention versus doing other things? How long are they staying tuned in?

Other explanations might include that the social desirability of church attendance has changed, and so over-reporting of attendance has increased. It’s worth noting that the Bible Society particularly found growth in reported church attendance among young men – going from 4% to 21% claiming to attend church monthly, compared to 3% to 12% among young women. With Christian nationalism increasingly assertive in the United States, and the likes of Jordan Peterson and other pro-Christian influencers appealing to young men in particular, perhaps church attendance is seen as desirable by a growing minority of this demographic.

We don’t have reliable recorded attendance figures for Pentecostal churches, but the Bible Society reported monthly Pentecostal attendance as going from 150,000 to 600,000 in the timespan – a massive quadrupling – a 292% increase to be precise. Of course, not all Pentecostals are immigrants. But even if we don’t accept these figures as true, it’s highly plausible that growing immigration accounts for a meaningful portion of these changes. The countries people immigrate to the UK from changed after Brexit – fewer from Europe, more from Africa and South Asia – and this may well be a factor.

More research is needed to disaggregate how different young people claim to be attending church and who they are, and recorded attendance by age demographics, in order to tell what is going on.

Are young people a ‘spiritual generation’?

The growth in the share of people who identify as religious in the Bible Society survey is notable and worth considering. But are 18-24 year olds a ‘spiritual generation’, as asserted?

It’s a complex picture. Clearly many young people, as has always been the case, are searching for meaning. There is some data – such as the World Values Survey – to suggest that Gen Z is more interested in existential questions, and that their attitude to religion may be marginally more syncretic and eclectic than older generations. Emeritus Professor of Social Science at UCL David Voas told the Guardian in 2023 it was a ‘fascinating puzzle’ that Gen Z ‘were more likely than older people to call themselves atheists, but also to say that they believe in hell’.

But if ‘spiritual’ is a synonym for ‘religious’, then the answer to the question would very much be ‘no’. Even by the Bible Society’s own figures, most of Gen Z don’t claim to believe in god, less than a third say they are Christian, and only 1 in 6 of them say they go to church – and the latter stat, as we say, when compared with real church attendance figures, shows up as highly dubious anyway. So while there is an uptick in some of those figures compared to 18-24 year olds a few years ago, it’s worth not over-stating the significance of this change.

What does this mean for public policy?

The UK remains a highly diverse country where most people are not Christians and yet the state remains very Christian, out of keeping with society. The bottom line remains, the state urgently needs reform to reflect the diversity of beliefs common in the UK today. That particularly means looking at the place of religion in state institutions, like Parliament and our schools.