Last year a story appeared in the British press claiming that a “quiet revival” was taking place in English Christianity. Countering the figures in the 2021 Census and the British Social Attitudes Survey – both of which narrate ongoing decline in Christian religious identification and church attendance – the Bible Society reported that between 2018 and 2024, the number of Gen Z’s attending church in England and Wales had risen sharply. However YouGov, the company which conducted the poll, has recently called their data into question, admitting that the methodology they used was susceptible to distortion and manipulation.
The “quiet revival” narrative emerged at a time when right-wing populists in the UK were mobilising Christianity as a civilizational cornerstone that they said was under existential attack from Islam and immigration. Tommy Robinson’s “Unite the Kingdom” march in September 2025 was addressed by Confessing Anglican Church Bishop Ceirion Dewar who declared, “God, you have not abandoned Britain!” while, at an earlier far-right protest in Whitehall he thundered, “This nation of ours is under attack! We are at war! We are at war not just with the Muslim, not just with wokeness”. If Gen Z’s were going to church, Tommy Robinson supporters were now also apparently turning to Christianity.
Intersecting with stories of Christian resurgence were then, discourses of a nascent Christian nationalism, and both drew oxygen from pervasive narratives of national decline, a decline allegedly enabled by a stifling, disenchanting bureaucratic and secular state. So let me restate, in case there is any doubt: there is no evidence of a Christian revival in England and Wales, and the greatest area of religious change in the UK continues to be the growth in numbers of those identifying with “no religion”. While there seems to be some churn and even modest growth among evangelical and conservative churches, it is not enough to offset the steep decline of the mainstream churches. The fact is that Christianity’s centre of gravity shifted a long time ago to the Global South – to Africa, the Americas and Asia – and the UK’s future, in common with Europe, appears to be increasingly non-religious.
Sources
Church attendance report pulled after YouGov finds ‘fraudulent’ responses – BBC News
Is there really a ‘quiet revival’ of religion among Gen Z? – BBC News
The Quiet Revival: All you need to know
The truth about the “Quiet Revival” | Rhys Laverty | The Critic Magazine
Why Tommy Robinson supporters are turning to Christianity – BBC News
Recommended readings
Cotter, C. and Lee, L. 2020. ‘Secularization’ in A. Possamai & A. J. Blasi (eds), The Sage
Encyclopedia of the Sociology of Religion, London: Sage.
MacCulloch, D. 2010. A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, London:
Penguin.