‘Rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated’. Mark Twain’s iconic line could equally apply to the UK church in light of extraordinary new statistical evidence, released today. 

Bible Society UK have just published astonishing new research from 2024 showing a significant rise in the number of young people reporting belief in God and attending church in England and Wales. The statistics for young men aged 18-24 are even more surprising - an increase of between 4 to 5 times more young men attending church than was reported in 2018.

It tallies with recent statistics in various other parts of the West showing a renewal of interest in Christianity and churchgoing. It also confirms much of what I have been hearing from church leaders up and down the country - non-Christian young people, especially young men, are taking an interest in faith. If you want to learn more about ‘The Surprising Rebirth of Belief In God’ you may want to check out my book and podcast series. 

In this interview I spoke to Dr Rhiannon McAleer, Director of Research and Impact at the Bible Society about the remarkable new findings they have just released.

P.S. Rhiannon will be joining me along with co-host Glen Scrivener and special guests for the ‘Responding To The Rebirth’ Conference in London on Sat 22 Nov 2025. Save the date! Ticketing coming soon.

Rhiannon, tell us about this new research. What were the questions you were asking? What were you hoping to find out?

Bible Society has been undertaking large population attitudinal studies for a number of years now. We did our first one in 2018 and we asked the population of England and Wales a whole bunch of questions about how they feel about the Bible, but also their religious practices, like: Do they go to church? Do they take part in other spiritual activities? What do they think of Christians and the church at large? All those kinds of things.

And we have recently rerun this at scale. For the 2018 survey we did a massive sample of 19,000 people. Last year we repeated the survey in its entirety and we polled 13,000 people -  which again is absolutely massive - so they're both really robust surveys and give us a really good picture of how attitudes and behaviours around Christianity and the Bible have changed in the last six years. Obviously we've got Covid in the middle so we were really excited to see what this data was going to show for us.

And one of the most exciting and surprising things to come out was that the church has grown.

So we have more people telling us they go to church on at least a monthly basis than in 2018. And where this growth is happening is the most exciting thing. Back in 2018, under 4% of 18 to 24 year olds said they were going to church at least monthly. So we all know that story, right? The church is getting older and declining. 

But today we're seeing that 16% of 18 to 24 year olds are telling us that they're going to church at least monthly. And the most rapid or most exciting change within those young people is among the young men. 

We've certainly seen a rise in young women saying they're going to church and that's important to note. But for the young men in 2018 - under 4% were saying they were going to church regularly. It's now gone up to 21% which is just massive! It has surprised us, I’m not going to lie! And we have looked extensively into the data and tried to unpick it, to see if there's a methodological reason that this might have happened. 

But, Bible Society, like many organisations, has been hearing indications of warmth among young people for a couple of years now, and particularly young men. So this data has backed up what we were hearing on the ground anyway, which is really cool.

It's really interesting! I've taken a personal interest in this because I've written a book and hosted a podcast series talking about the rebirth of belief in God. 

I have also picked up on lots of anecdotal stories of young men being influenced in the direction of church and faith through various online influencers. But also just a lot of pastors telling me: "I've just had young guys walking into church, they want to find out more, they're picking up a Bible", and so on. Does this data appear to lend statistical evidence for what people were sensing something was happening in the last couple of years?

Right, it's exactly that. And if you were to do a single survey and these results came up, you could quite reasonably question, ‘did you have a good sample? Was there something going on with your participants?’ 

The really interesting thing about our data sets though, is that we have this comparison to 2018. We've also surveyed in the years in between as well, but we just didn't do the full survey. So not necessarily a pure like for like. So when you are looking at that trend data you have to then question why didn't we see this in 2018 if it was an issue with the sample? Or what has happened to young people to make them say they're going to church more when they didn't think they needed to say that in 2018 if they're not actually going to church? 

Both of these samples, because they're big at scale, were conducted by YouGov, which is an extremely reliable research panel - they give us confidence in the data. So absolutely we would suggest that this is the statistical backup for the anecdotes that we've been hearing for some time and it is remarkable to see it at this level of scale.

But when we worked out the numbers, we did see that actually, while it feels really dramatic, if you look at the number of churches over the country, you only need to be seeing actually a handful of people coming into any particular congregation. So you might not necessarily notice it. And that's why we've called our report ‘The Quiet Revival’, because it's not a rush. It's not a flood. But overall, it is having an impact on communities and certainly impact on our statistics.

I’m aware there have been similar data points noted in other parts of the world. In Finland, there was a more than doubling of young men reported. Likewise, there's been some publicity recently around the sudden boom in young men entering the Orthodox Church in parishes in the USA and elsewhere. So do you sense that this is wider than just a UK phenomenon?

Yes, absolutely. I mean, you've named the major places that this stuff has already been coming out -  and Britain, England and Wales is not out of step with America and Finland as cultures. Obviously, we have our differences, but on the whole, we're in quite a similar kind of context - sometimes described as post-Christian or secular.

When we look at young people as a whole, there are some really interesting things going on with them. I think you can look at the self-help genre, for example, and people like Jordan Peterson outside of his work on the Bible and Christianity. There's a theme around self-improvement and the interest in stoics - self-discipline, a search for a different way of doing things that we were seeing across scale, wellbeing, not being opposed to spirituality as part of that holistic well-being. All of these things, I think, are broad trends that we do see in young people. And the really interesting thing is that for many young people, they are finding these things in church. Certainly not all of them, but it's still a massive change, certainly from millennials and even six years ago.

We don't know the extent to which COVID might have had an accelerant on this, that young people in our survey would have been teenagers at the time that they were experiencing lockdowns and the existential crisis of society looking quite radically different very quickly. 

These trends were starting probably earlier than we've observed, but there might have been a bit of an accelerant. 

The interesting thing when you look at the charts is you actually see a bit of a dip for people who were 35 to 55. So they almost look like the exceptional generations that are almost weirdly anti-religious compared to the emerging generation now and certainly older people. So that belief that the charts only go one way, I think we're seeing being challenged. 

Of course, we can't then predict what the long-term future looks like. This could be a bubble of interest that pops, but there is certainly real excitement that the future could look different to what it has done for the last 20 or 30 years.

Some people might ask, "Well, is this growth perhaps a result of migration and people from more Christian cultures and young people from those cultures coming along to church in greater numbers"? Have you been able to factor that in as well?

Yeah, absolutely. So there's two things going on in our data. So one of them is that we do see greater diversity in the church in terms of ethnicity than we did in the past and that we have seen this particularly among young Christians. So overall about one in five churchgoers is from an ethnic minority. In our data, when you look at the 18 to 34s, this actually rises to one in three. So that is absolutely observed and what's going on.

But it is not the story of the growth alone, because when we look at the white population, especially among young people, we see that this growth is mirrored. So among our white young men, aged 18 to 24, it's the same growth pattern as you see at the average. So under 4% in 2018, up to between 18 and 21 percent depending on whether you put the older people in their 20s in that group or whether you stop at 24. When we're layering age onto ethnicity and all these things we're getting into smaller samples so we prefer the bigger groups, but you are seeing growth among the white population, so it's not just a migration story.

One of the things that the new research points out is the fact that the Christians in the sample report greater belief in God and more Bible reading than in the 2018 survey -  essentially increased religiosity. So it isn't just people wearing the cultural label of Christian. These are people who seem to be quite actually engaged in Christian practice?

Yes, and that is really, really key, I think. 

We've known for some time that there is a difference between people who say they're Christian (especially people who tick that box on the census) and people who actually practice Christianity. That's a known trend in sociology for some time. But I think what's really key to note here is that the people who are joining the church are not joining just because they get a sense of belonging or they're looking for community, or that they're belonging without believing. They are saying that they have a strong belief in God. Bible reading rates as a whole among the church have gone up quite a lot since 2018. 

We talk about Bible confidence - how do you feel about the Bible in terms of head, heart and hands? And on most of those statements we have seen an increase that the church is looking more Bible confident. So while the number of people who are saying that they're Christian without practicing is either declining or staying the same, we're certainly not seeing young people take on Christian identity without practice. But the active church is vibrant, and I think that's really key for the church to know.

Likewise, in another aspect of this research which you title ‘The Spiritual Generation’, you say that in addition to the increased church going, young people in the sample show above average levels of warmth to spirituality, to the church and spiritual practice. Could you take us through some of those particular findings?

Yeah, they're a really interesting group as a whole, the 18 to 24s. They're the group who are most likely to say that they pray - and that's not just going to be Christian prayer, that's across other religions and non-religious sorts of prayer, if you can put it that way. They're the group most likely to have engaged in a spiritual practice in the last six months, and meditation usually tops the list. But even when you get into perhaps more niche practices like magic, or tarot, they're doing these at twice the frequency of the national average. So to greater extents across the board they show increased openness to spirituality.

On the subject of church they are often quite above average in their warmth to statements like "it's a positive thing for Christians to talk about their faith". With non-Christians they show above average interest in saying that "I'm interested in discovering more about the Bible". If I was to sum them up I'd say that curiosity and openness is just a feature of that cohort overall when we compare it to the national average.

I have heard Gen Z described as ‘the open generation’. Research earlier this year showed that, in fact, Gen Z are half as likely to be atheists compared to their Millennial and Gen X parents. So it seems other research is tallying with this warmth and openness to spirituality in general?

Yeah, absolutely. And that research that you're referring to follows this pattern that we're seeing that Gen X, maybe some of the boomers and millennials, are almost the abnormality in the trend of "weirdly unreligious". It will be so fascinating to see how this unfolds as more Gen Z come of age and whether these practices remain. But I think we're certainly seeing a really strong challenge across multiple datasets and more general qualitative observations that 21st century Britain does not inevitably become cooler to religion or Christianity or that Christianity will continue to decline while other religions grow. I just don't think that we can argue that as strongly as we were arguing it 20 years ago.

And this comes with an opportunity for churches and Christians. What's the sort of openness that you're seeing now for people who maybe haven't actually turned up in church, but who might be willing to give it a go?

Yeah, we definitely are seeing openness in our data sets. So one of the really interesting stats we found was when we asked non-churchgoers “would they go to church if they were invited by a friend or family member?” 31%, just under a third, said they would, which is pretty amazing. And that rose a little bit to 34% of 18 to 24 year olds who were non-churchgoers. So we’ve certainly seen this growth, but it's not a ceiling. And when we think about the importance of friendships and relationships to people exploring faith, that's a really interesting place to begin.

We saw that two thirds of the population said they'd be happy for a Christian friend to pray for them. And just over a quarter said they'd be interested in learning more about the Bible. And that's just so much bigger than the number who are regularly in church, which even in this new data set is only 12%. So that interest is far greater than those who are currently practicing.

And I think one of the big themes that comes through is just how important relationships and friendships are. We asked people to agree or disagree with a statement around whether they would read the Bible if a friend or family recommended it to them versus if a philosopher or thinker, or public figure recommended it to them. And in general the agreement rate is far higher if friends or family recommended it rather than public thinkers. So certainly people like Jordan Peterson are important, I don't think there's any question on that, but really what makes people open to trying new things does seem to be at the much more personal and local level. So yes, we would encourage everyone to see openness as something for them to explore and think about.

My final question is: Where is this all coming from? You've talked about the influencers who are pointing people, especially young men, back in the direction of faith and the Bible. But it's still quite remarkable, isn't it, that having seen a couple of generations that are almost unusually anti-religious, you're suddenly seeing this warmth appearing, young men coming back into church and so on. What's driving that, would you say?

Before I give my thoughts on it, I would really encourage anyone who is encountering this growth to really just speak to the young people themselves. I don't think there is a known and obvious answer, and I think we've got a lot more listening and unpacking to do before we can put the theory around it. So I would say, be curious, ask questions. How important was Jordan Peterson really? How much did it come from something else like a deep seeking sort of within?

Within our data sets, we certainly see that churchgoers have better wellbeing and life satisfaction. They are more likely to feel connected to local people in their area, less likely to report that they frequently feel anxious and depressed, for example. We know that there are massive challenges for young people in Britain today around isolation and loss of connection. And so I look at these outcomes and I say: Is it any wonder that young people would be drawn to places that you can turn up that people are happy to see you? A place that helps you connect through things like volunteering your time, giving to food banks, as well as the spiritual dimension and a new way of doing life. 

I think many people, regardless of their age, feel that something is broken at the moment and we're not quite sure how we ended up in the state that we've ended up in. The willingness to return to things or try new things doesn't particularly surprise me. We know from our wider research that major life changes, such as bereavement, the birth of a child, job loss or change, moving house - all these things make people more spiritually open or curious for moments in their time. There are times in life when they are more open than others. Young people are in one of those transitions now.

I think the atmosphere around religion being a bad thing has perhaps cooled a bit. I think the atmosphere is clearer to explore these things without being seen as a bit weird that perhaps was there for millennials. And we have gone through a major ongoing existential world crisis, starting with COVID and onwards. If we see that death, bereavement, change, disruption at a personal level make a difference, why would we not expect it to on a societal level?

But that is very much my emerging theory and I really would encourage people to let us know what they've heard from the people in their local communities. Certainly researchers always want more data points, so yes, the question is open.

P.S. Rhiannon will be joining me along with co-host Glen Scrivener and special guests for the ‘Responding To The Rebirth’ Conference in London on Sat 22 Nov 2025. Save the date! Ticketing coming soon.

Watch the interview here:

Read the ‘Quiet Revival’ research in full at: biblesociety.org.uk/research

Learn more about ‘The Surprising Rebirth of Belief In God’ via  my book and podcast series. 

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Justin Brierley.