Bible Society retracts false Quiet Revival claims

There has been no ‘quiet revival’ of Christianity in Britain. Today, the Bible Society has retracted its claims that there is a quiet revival of Christianity in Britain based on a faulty and unreliable YouGov survey.  For nearly a year, Humanists UK has called on them to do so and provided factual evidence that shows the decline of Christianity in the UK amongst all age groups.

Andrew Copson, Chief Executive of Humanists UK said:

‘This is both validation and vindication. We need to be absolutely clear: there is no revival of Christianity in Britain. For almost a year, Humanists UK has taken a rational, evidence-based approach, repeatedly and rigorously explaining why the Bible Society’s claims do not stand up. They chose not to engage with that evidence.

‘Much of the damage has already been done. Global media reports have too often and wrongly jumped on the bandwagon of a supposed Christian revival in the UK. That must stop. At a time when truth in these social questions has never been more politically important, everyone has the obligation to be rigorous in their presentation of data in the public realm and the claims they make for it.

‘The UK is not a Christian country, and our politics must reflect that. If we fail to recognise the plural and mainly non-religious nature of our society, not only will we be living a lie as a country, we will be undermining our ability to work for peace and cohesion in our diverse society.’

A statement today from Paul Williams, Chief Executive Officer, Bible Society, said that ‘YouGov informed Bible Society that the 2024 survey sample on which our report The Quiet Revival was based was faulty, and it can no longer be regarded as a reliable source of information about the spiritual landscape in Britain.’  

Humanists UK’s evidence-based approach

On 7 April 2025, the Bible Society released a report called The Quiet Revival. It claimed 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.

Three days later, Humanists UK questioned these claims, outlining how the data wasn’t just unlikely – it was wildly out of step with wider figures. Objective records of church attendance from both the Church of England and the Catholic Church show a large-scale decline in attendance.

In January this year, Humanists UK and the KCL Policy Unit brought together leading demographers to analyse the Bible Society polling, which raised the possibility that the result could be skewed by junk participants recruited into YouGov’s online opt-in polling sample. This is a reported problem with online polling and can make polling results about hard-to-reach groups (such as young people) less reliable. The Bible Society has repeatedly stood by the research until today, in spite of other YouGov polls from the same time period showing the opposite result.

Despite this approach, in an FAQ attached to the statement, the Bible Society has claimed:

‘Could Bible Society have spotted the error? 

No. We exercised exceptional care when it came to this research. We delayed publication of The Quiet Revival for three months while we investigated YouGov’s data thoroughly. Because we have an academically trained research team, we were able to interrogate the data rigorously – asking questions about weighting, the possibility of sampling error, panel drift, drop out, response bias and questionnaire effect’

Humanists UK and several academics contacted the Bible Society and published clear evidence refuting the claims and calling into question the evidence.

Rise of the non-religious 

The British Social Attitudes Survey data corroborates all this evidence showing that churchgoing, including among Gen Z, has continued its long-term decline.

This underlines that the real story of the past decade, and of the 21st century as a whole, has been the growth of the non-religious. The non-religious now make up a majority in the United Kingdom. Unfortunately, rather than grapple with what that would mean for the future of policy-making, we saw that the Quiet Revival report had much the opposite effect, with at least one council making long-term planning decisions premised on the predicted explosive growth of religion among young people. This shows how important it is to have accurate data about demographics to inform national policy.