Weekly Blog - 5 July 2025 - Shh. Is that a Revival?
A major survey published in April finds an unexpected rise in church attendance over the last six years, with young adults leading the way, particularly men. We explore what is going on.
A Quiet Revival?
It seems there’s a quiet revolution happening in England and Wales. In 2018, just 4% of 18–24-year-olds said they attended church at least monthly. This has risen to 16% in 2024, with young men increasing from 4% to 21%, and young women from 3% to 12%.
This is a very big change. Christianity in England and Wales has been in decline for a long time. Numbers attending church peaked in the 1950s and have fallen ever since. The 2021 census found Christianity was in a minority for the first time (in 2011 and 2001 it was a majority, and before that the census didn’t ask about religion). Most other measures - like numbers of baptisms, weddings in church, and ordinations – were all going the same way.
But the Bible Society’s report, The Quiet Revival, finds the story has changed recently. In 2024 they commissioned a big survey with YouGov, who are very reputable pollsters, comparing to the same research in 2018. They sampled adults of all faiths and none, weighted to be representative of the whole population. It’s pretty robust research. It’s only in England and Wales, and only adults. As usual with polling like this, people’s self-reporting may err on the side of optimism, and the trend they show is more reliable than the exact numbers.
That trend is clear. Women and men are both attending church more than in 2018. Male attendance – at 13% on average – has overtaken female, at 10%. The gap is bigger for young adults, with 21% of men aged 18–24 attending church each month, compared to their female peers at 12%, both considerably higher than 2018.
This appears to be encouraging news for us as followers of Jesus who want to see all people come to faith in him and get involved in a dynamic, loving, local Christian community. As Jesus famously commanded us in the Great Commission at the end of Matthew’s Gospel, “go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” (Matt 28: 19 – 20).
Change and growth
The church also appears to be growing more ethnically diverse. 32% of regular churchgoers under 55 are from an ethnic minority (in UK terms). It’s striking that 47% of black men and women aged 18-34 say they go to church regularly. White numbers are lower, but have grown considerably too. Immigration has played a role in this church growth and increasing ethnic diversity, but the research didn’t ask about migration – it asked about ethnicity, and that’s a different question. The growth in churchgoing is greater proportionately than the growth in immigration, so it’s only part of the story.
Co-author of The Quiet Revival Dr Rhiannon McAleer says, “These are striking findings that completely reverse the widely held assumption that the Church in England and Wales is in terminal decline. While some traditional denominations continue to face challenges, we’ve seen significant, broad-based growth among most expressions of Church – particularly in Roman Catholicism and Pentecostalism. There are now over 2 million more people attending church than there were six years ago.”
In 2018’s survey Anglicans made up 41% of churchgoers, and this has dropped to 34% in 2024. Roman Catholics have 31% (up from 23% in 2018) and Pentecostals 10% of regular churchgoers, up from 4%. Among 18–34s, only 20% of churchgoers are Anglican (down from 30% in 2018), with 41% Catholic and 18% Pentecostal.
This seems to fit with denominations’ attendance counts. Anglicans are well down from before the pandemic, but have started to rise modestly in the last two years. Catholics show a similar trend with a bigger rise. Methodists continue to fall. There is no central counting for Pentecostals or many other independent churches. This discussion on Religion Media Centre Podcast gives more insight.
The Quiet Revival finds young churchgoers are more interested in reading the bible than older churchgoers; but around a third say they their confidence in the bible is sometimes shaken by the media and British culture. However, there are signs of greater openness within that culture, with more non-churchgoers interested in reading the bible in 2024 than in 2018, particularly those under 35.
Connected and peaceful
Unsurprisingly, the report found that regular churchgoers are significantly more likely than non-churchgoers to demonstrate contentment with life – 71% agree ‘I’m happy with my life right now’, compared to 53% of non-churchgoers. Churchgoers are also notably more likely to consider their lives to be meaningful. Here, the gap between churchgoers and non-churchgoers is even greater, with three-quarters (75%) of churchgoers agreeing ‘my life feels meaningful’ compared to 49% of non-churchgoers. Churchgoers are nearly twice as likely to say they feel connected to their local community, more likely to feel hopeful about their future (69% of churchgoers compared to 46% of non-churchgoers) and less likely to frequently feel anxious or depressed, although these numbers are still high, at 31% of churchgoers and 43% of non-churchgoers.
The Quiet Revival co-author Dr Rob Barward-Symmons says that one possible reason for church growth is that people are looking for meaning. “With much of the population struggling with mental health, loneliness and a loss of meaning in life, in particular young people, church appears to be offering an answer.”
At the same time as this new trend of more people taking Christianity seriously, the falling number of nominal Christians continues. It seems England and Wales are getting even further away from identifying Christianity with being English or Welsh in a 1950s kind of way. Increasingly Christianity is a deliberate choice, or not at all. The report doesn’t get into detail about other faiths; it would be interesting to know if this is part of a general increase in spirituality, particularly among young adults, and which faiths are seeing it.
It’s a very interesting report and well worth reading. Or for listening, here are two podcasts discussing it - Religion Media Centre Podcast and Cross Section podcast from the Evangelical Alliance.
A different piece of research published earlier this year, Stewardship’s Generosity Report 2025, found a similar pattern; 18-24 year olds attending church more and giving more than other age groups (across the whole of the UK).
Recommendations
How should churches respond to this new openness to faith? The report has three recommendations:
- Disciple young adults, particularly their confidence in engaging with and applying the bible.
- Make sure church members have good intergenerational conversations.
- Build on interpersonal relationships. There’s more openness to Christianity in the wider culture, and more high-profile people exploring faith, but it’s still conversations with people they know and trust which are most likely to help a non-churchgoer decide to look at the bible.
Another possible recommendation is to keep church buildings open and use them to explain Christianity – particularly if they’re beautiful. People with no religion said that sightseeing in a cathedral or church is the most common way they encounter the bible.
And of course Arise’s Equipped to Share course is another good way to prepare for great conversations about Jesus.
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