The appointment of Sarah Mullally as the first female Archbishop of Canterbury is an “immense step”, said Alastair Bruce on Sky News. But as the Church of England takes a new direction, critics have “poured cold water” on recent surveys which claimed that younger people were more likely to be churchgoers than older generations, said Kaya Burgess in The Times.
Instead, experts have pointed to the fact that church attendances “across the major denominations” have “failed to recover fully from their pandemic slump”.
Why did people think there is a Christian revival?
For many, 2025 was the year where a “stirring of renewed spiritual interest became impossible to ignore, even among doubters”, said Ken Costa in The Telegraph.
The Quiet Revival, a report published by Bible Society in April 2025, kickstarted the belief that attendance for worship was rising, “busting the myth of church decline”. It claimed that “church attendance has risen by 50%” in the last six years, that there was “growth among young adults”, that churches in England and Wales were “more diverse”, and that churchgoers were “more likely to give to charity”.
The report was based on two YouGov polls from 2018 and 2024, recording that the number of people who attended church at least once a month rose from 8% in 2018 to 12% in 2024. The number of those aged 18 to 24 jumped from 4% to 16% in the same time frame, with a “notable rise” in the number of young men attending.
What are the problems with Christian revival surveys?
The narrative around a purported Christian resurgence “may be misleading”, said Conrad Hackett, associate director of research at Pew Research Center (PRC).
Surveys that imply Gen Z are more religious often canvass participants in “opt-in” panels, where people are “recruited” to take part, responding to website ads or email campaigns, he said on the company website. There is a much higher likelihood that opt-in surveys would contain “bogus respondents”, who, instead of answering honestly, answer with “the minimal effort required to complete surveys quickly and receive monetary rewards”, or an agenda to skew the survey’s results. Increasingly, large language models can be “easily programmed” to take part in opt-in surveys, which researchers describe as an “existential threat” to the validity of online opt-in surveys.
Data collected by the Church of England has “painted a more nuanced picture”, said Sir John Curtice of the National Centre for Social Research. According to the C of E, average adult weekly attendance increased by 4.5% in 2022/23, and all-age average Sunday attendance rose by 1.5% in 2023/24, this rise “was not sufficient” to reverse a 19% fall between 2019 and 2023 following the pandemic, “let alone suggest any reversal of the long-term decline in church attendance”, said Curtice. “Even the Bible Society report acknowledged that the apparent recent growth in attendance had occurred among Catholics and Pentecostalists rather than in the churches of England’s established church.”
A spokesperson for Bible Society told Christian Today that The Quiet Revival report was based on a “high-quality YouGov survey” which used a “tried and trusted methodology”. The team was “meticulous in controlling for bias in responses”, and that there was “no reason to think that ‘opt-in’ surveys are inherently unreliable”.
What does the new, random sampling, research say?
Surveys based on random samples show that “Christian identity and practice are not increasing among young adults in Britain”, said the PRC report. “The narrative of a religious revival in the UK appears to be receiving much more attention than data and commentary challenging this narrative.”
I’m “surprised” and “sceptical” at the claims of increased church attendance, particularly among young people, said David Voas, Emeritus Professor of Social Science, UCL on The Conversation. Bible Society, which published The Quiet Revival report, “haven’t engaged with the mountain of evidence, some of it very recent, pointing to religious decline”. While it does appear that church attendance has continued to “rebound from the lows of the Covid lockdown”, it still remains “substantially lower” than pre-pandemic levels.
Two major reports stand out. The Labour Force Survey in summer 2025, of around 50,000 individuals per quarter, showed that 28% of 18- to 34-year-olds identified as Christian, down from 37% from early 2018. “Throughout this period, older British adults consistently identified as Christian at higher levels than young adults,” said PRC.
Similarly, the annual British Social Attitudes survey of more than 3,000 randomly sourced participants, showed “no clear evidence of a Christian revival”, said PRC. In 18- to 34-year-olds, the number of churchgoers has still not surpassed pre-pandemic levels, with 6% in 2024, compared to 8% in 2018.
Research has shown that claims of increased church attendance, particularly among young people, ‘may be misleading’