A sobering thought. It might just happen that the Christian Revival in this country turns out to be far-right in nature...
From the Psephizo article:
As I have mentioned before, these figures overall are a stark challenge to our messaging, and what we spend our time and energy engaged in. The LLF process has been a divisive disaster, and in some cases has contributed directly to our continued decline. It must stop.
And our overall messaging still needs to change. Daniel French puts it starkly [reformatted - the handles and links are X/twittter]:
log jam (new believers not choosing @ churchofengland ) can be fixed sooner if a fraction 1% of hierarchy spoke more in the vibe of @ jordanbpeterson than @ owenjonesjourno .
— Rev Daniel French (@ holydisrupter) October 28, 2025
In the context of the UK, I think this is more nuanced than implying that Christian revival would involve a shift to the right - maybe that churches that want to see (numerical) growth need to be friendlier to right-coded (young) people.
PS Jean Darnall's vision about revival in the UK was in 1967. "The British Isles were covered in mist…"
As ever, Ian Paul's solution is more homophobia and bigotry. When all you've got is a hammer everything looks like a nail.
While I too was very disappointed at Ian Paul's belief that decline is the result of the Church having become too liberal on issues of gender, sexuality and marriage (I think that he and other conservatives have forgotten that correlation does not necessarily equate to causation), I find the rest of his analysis helpful, realistic and - let's be honest - quite disheartening.
I also have a question (well, two) which has been bugging me for some time.
1. We see all these "resource churches" bulging at the seams with young people. Are they sending their statistics to "head office"? For, if they are, that indicates that other churches are declining at an even faster rate than the averaged statistics suggest.
2. Quite a few of the "resource churches" and new churches in other traditions have now been going for some years. You'd expect their large numbers of younger people to have fed in to other churches as they've grown up and moved around - but the statistics don't seem to show this. So do these young people find it hard to integrate into other, less enthusiastic and small-scale forms of church life? Do they stop attending church once they move out of the urban centres or when they become burdened with the pressures of raising a family etc? If so, what can be done to "conserve" them as Christians into their 30s and 40s?
@chrisstiles, it is not young Poles attending mass in the UK, bolstering numbers. That did happen to the Polish Social Clubs; it did not happen to RC parish churches. The Polish Catholics in the UK have taken an interesting line and are often acting outside of diocesan structures. For instance, I live opposite the Polish Mission in my city, but the parish is the Cathedral about half a mile away. It is not part of the diocese, and indeed, they have turned down help from the diocese. It aims to serve the new immigrant Polish community. So a 'good' young Pole will not be attending a parish Roman Catholic Church here, but the mission one as a way of keeping their religious identity.
But they would still show up in the Bible Society survey, which was surveying the individuals rather than the churches.
On the other hand the numbers rise considerably between 2018 and 2024 so that would not seem to tally with my proposed explanation.
While I too was very disappointed at Ian Paul's belief that decline is the result of the Church having become too liberal on issues of gender, sexuality and marriage (I think that he and other conservatives have forgotten that correlation does not necessarily equate to causation), I find the rest of his analysis helpful, realistic and - let's be honest - quite disheartening.
I also have a question (well, two) which has been bugging me for some time.
1. We see all these "resource churches" bulging at the seams with young people. Are they sending their statistics to "head office"? For, if they are, that indicates that other churches are declining at an even faster rate than the averaged statistics suggest.
2. Quite a few of the "resource churches" and new churches in other traditions have now been going for some years. You'd expect their large numbers of younger people to have fed in to other churches as they've grown up and moved around - but the statistics don't seem to show this. So do these young people find it hard to integrate into other, less enthusiastic and small-scale forms of church life? Do they stop attending church once they move out of the urban centres or when they become burdened with the pressures of raising a family etc? If so, what can be done to "conserve" them as Christians into their 30s and 40s?
I wonder if at least some of these resource churches have revolving doors, so to speak. The problem seems to be that those coming out of the resource churches (perhaps disenchanted with their experience) are not then going anywhere else - but this, even if true, would be impossible to quantify, I suppose.
It could be that they have loved the experience and then stop going to church because they move and can't replicate it at St Agatha's-by-the-Gasworks or Little Snodborough Baptist Church.
I also got fed up of the 'we're on the verge of revival' rhetoric that characterised charismatic evangelicalism back in the '80s and '90s. I thought it had died down but apparently not.
'80s and '90s? I heard it in the mid-'70s (Jean Darnall et al). And I heard the sentiment expressed in a mainstream Baptist gathering just a couple of weeks ago. As @Jengie Jon said, we need to bide our time.
Well, I wasn't knocking around in evangelical circles during the 1970s. I dropped out of our middle-of-the-road / broadly liberal Anglican parish church when I started at secondary school in 1972.
I remember Jean Darnall being mentioned from time to time during the '80s.
I'm not as au fait with what's going on in charismatic evangelical circles these days but had rather gained the impression that revivalist expectations has waned to some extent. It appears not.
Many of the early and formative charismatic experiences were in the context of prayer meetings for revival (St Marks Gillingham or the Baptist revival fellowship for example) so I expect it's a stream that bubbles up intermittently in the movements dna.
@Baptist Trainfan and @Bishops Finger I remember talk of a 'revolving door' syndrome back in the '90s and recall a Sunday Times article which argued along those lines. I remember being in broad agreement.
Thing is, of course, it's hard to tell. From my own experience I can say that many of those who were in their 20s back in my own 1980s revivalist days are still involved in churches of one form or other.
Yes, some have a 'churchless faith', others have lost their faith but for the most part I'd suggest that most have moved into more 'moderate' expressions of the Christian faith - largely Baptist, URC or Anglican. Some went further into charismatic revivalism and have ended up in highly questionable prosperity gospel outfits - but the vast majority headed away from all that.
I'm not saying my own experience is normative and I'd struggle to put figures to it.
There was also a kind of 'ghost church' thing going on whereby some of those who were hurt by their experiences didn't end up anywhere else but continued to meet up discussing what has gone wrong and why.
It didn't seem to occur to any in that context to consider going to their local Anglican or Methodist or whatever else as they'd imbibed the sense that all the other churches were 'dead' and not worth bothering with.
It could be that they have loved the experience and then stop going to church because they move and can't replicate it at St Agatha's-by-the-Gasworks or Little Snodborough Baptist Church.
In my experience, even if they move out of urban centres they still travel there to attend church, or get involved in local church plants especially in newbuild estates.
2. Quite a few of the "resource churches" and new churches in other traditions have now been going for some years. You'd expect their large numbers of younger people to have fed in to other churches as they've grown up and moved around - but the statistics don't seem to show this. So do these young people find it hard to integrate into other, less enthusiastic and small-scale forms of church life? Do they stop attending church once they move out of the urban centres or when they become burdened with the pressures of raising a family etc? If so, what can be done to "conserve" them as Christians into their 30s and 40s?
What Pomona said above; in addition to that what you are talking about at this point are very different cohorts with different life trajectories and experiences.
In my experience, even if they move out of urban centres they still travel there to attend church, or get involved in local church plants especially in newbuild estates.
Well, OK - and that may not, of course, be a Bad Thing, given the often very limited resources of local churches.
Co-operation, rather than competition, is best IMHO, if that can be achieved.
Two turned up at St Obscures in the Backstreets from a town some 20 miles away, a couple of weeks ago, having been told they must go to AC parish. They were welcomed but promptly sent to the next town across, which has a sister parish that is also growing, though its growth is more recent in occurrence.
That is the thing with AC parishes and RCC parishes, you can send with a certain confidence within the tradition. It will not always work, but even the one person I know who was quite definitely partly hooked by style survives quite happily in a normal RC parish. Not in all, admittedly, but it is a minority they cannot cope with.
The Barna Group, a research organization, released a study a couple of months ago that says among the generations, the highest group of attendees are Gen Z with attendance at 1.9 times a month, Millennials at 1.8 , while the lowest attendees are Boomers and Elders at 1.4 times a month.
The Barna Group, a research organization, released a study a couple of months ago that says among the generations, the highest group of attendees are Gen Z with attendance at 1.9 times a month, Millennials at 1.8 , while the lowest attendees are Boomers and Elders at 1.4 times a month.
The Barna Group, a research organization, released a study a couple of months ago that says among the generations, the highest group of attendees are Gen Z with attendance at 1.9 times a month, Millennials at 1.8 , while the lowest attendees are Boomers and Elders at 1.4 times a month.
Could this be a positive indication of revival?
None of those figures indicate a particularly high level of attendance, and one would expect a revival to do better IYSWIM.
It's true, none of the generational averages come close to weekly attendance, but it does seem there is more of an interest in the younger generations than the older ones. I think it gives a clue that we need to appeal more to the Gen Zs and Millennials.
It's true, none of the generational averages come close to weekly attendance, but it does seem there is more of an interest in the younger generations than the older ones. I think it gives a clue that we need to appeal more to the Gen Zs and Millennials.
That said, I doubt that if one were to happen, any church relying on doing things the same way they’ve always done things will get left behind.
I am open to hearing what ideas might be out there.
What ideas might you have?
As for whether the Barna survey is “a positive indication of a revival,” I’d say it’s insufficient data upon which to base an opinion.
The page linked to says this:
The headline: Millennials and Gen Z Christians are attending church more frequently than before and much more often than are older generations. The typical Gen Z churchgoer now attends 1.9 weekends per month, while Millennial churchgoers average 1.8 times—a steady upward shift since the lows seen during the pandemic.
The key here is that the data is only about people who already identify as churchgoers. Perhaps Millennials and Gen Z churchgoers do attend church more often than churchgoing Boomers and Elders, but that leaves the question of what percentage of all Millennial and Gen Z Americans (the study appears to be of Americans) would identify as churchgoers, and how does that compare to the number of American Boomers and Elders who identify as churchgoers? If Millennials and Gen Z churchgoers on average attend church every month, but a significantly smaller percentage of Millennials and Gen Z Americans identify as churchgoers to start with, compared to American Boomers and Elders who identify as churchgoers, I wouldn’t call that evidence of “revival.”
Perhaps if the data showed that the percentage of Millennials and Gen Z Americans who identify as churchgoers was shown to be consistently growing, we’d have more to go on. But that’s not what this study looked at or says.
And I think for the Elders category as well as older Boomers, the degree to which older people might want to go to church but are unable to because of health, transportation limitations, or other things beyond their control may be a factor here. Comparing their attendance habits with those of younger people without taking such factors into consideration might lead to some false conclusions.
In short, this data might tell us something when combined with other data, but on its own, I don’t think it’s sufficient for any real conclusions about “revival.”
This might sound counter-intuitive from someone who worked in marketing communications of one form or other, but in evangelism terms I'm always wary of 'targeting' particular niche groups or demographics.
Don't misunderstand me, I'm by no means questioning mission initiatives within particular 'people-groups', such as the work the Ship's own @Lamb Chopped is doing among Vietnamese people in her city.
But I am wary of initiatives such as, 'We must target Gen Z or Millenials or Left-handed Plumbers or Young Professionals or ...
As I've mentioned a few times on these boards, various more 'conservative' forms of Christianity such as evangelicalism, Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy are seeing an influx of young men at the moment. I can't speak for the RCs and evangelicals but the Orthodox haven't 'targeted' these fellas. We haven't really done anything at all. They've simply come our way because of online influencers - some of them very questionable - or because they feel our particular form of Christianity offers something rigorous that they can get their teeth into.
Name dropping time. I spoke to the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams about this when I met him on a pilgrimage earlier this year.
Like me he deplored the right-wing baggage that sometimes accompanies all this but he could see that some of these young guys are looking for something that challenges and engages them. He felt Orthodoxy was likely to attract some of them because it requires some effort - there's a fasting element, lengthy services ...
Now, I'm by no means suggesting that liberal churches can't or don't offer a challenge. Of course they can. Social action. Promoting progressive causes. All that.
But we have to deal with the cards we are dealt. As far as Orthodoxy goes, we're getting these young men. The challenge is to ensure they enter the life of the Church through careful catechesis and the realisation that it's about Christ and not some anti-woke campaign in fancy dress.
On one level of course, Gen Z and Millenials are where it's at as the Boomers will have boomed and bust and gone to meet their maker ere long.
But young people can 'see through' attempts to target them. The phrase 'Disco Vicar' was around at one time as a catch-all for clergy and others who were trying to 'get down wi' da yoot' and making prats of themselves in the process.
There's no magic bullet. I don't think there is any 'revival' as such either. I do think, though, that there is a level of interest among some young people at the more theologically conservative end of the spectrum that we haven't seen for some time.
For those of us at that end of the spectrum there's a degree of responsibility in terms of what we say, how we behave and what we project about our faith.
As for the more liberal end of things, I don't know what they can do to reach out to Gen Z and Millenials if those groups don't want what they are offering.
Some might. But rather than trying to attract them 'artificially', perhaps these churches can demonstrate by word, deed and action that they do have something to offer and something to say.
This might sound counter-intuitive from someone who worked in marketing communications of one form or other, but in evangelism terms I'm always wary of 'targeting' particular niche groups or demographics. . . .
But young people can 'see through' attempts to target them. . . .
There's no magic bullet. . . .
But rather than trying to attract them 'artificially', perhaps these churches can demonstrate by word, deed and action that they do have something to offer and something to say.
Comments
As ever, Ian Paul's solution is more homophobia and bigotry. When all you've got is a hammer everything looks like a nail.
I also have a question (well, two) which has been bugging me for some time.
1. We see all these "resource churches" bulging at the seams with young people. Are they sending their statistics to "head office"? For, if they are, that indicates that other churches are declining at an even faster rate than the averaged statistics suggest.
2. Quite a few of the "resource churches" and new churches in other traditions have now been going for some years. You'd expect their large numbers of younger people to have fed in to other churches as they've grown up and moved around - but the statistics don't seem to show this. So do these young people find it hard to integrate into other, less enthusiastic and small-scale forms of church life? Do they stop attending church once they move out of the urban centres or when they become burdened with the pressures of raising a family etc? If so, what can be done to "conserve" them as Christians into their 30s and 40s?
But they would still show up in the Bible Society survey, which was surveying the individuals rather than the churches.
On the other hand the numbers rise considerably between 2018 and 2024 so that would not seem to tally with my proposed explanation.
I wonder if at least some of these resource churches have revolving doors, so to speak. The problem seems to be that those coming out of the resource churches (perhaps disenchanted with their experience) are not then going anywhere else - but this, even if true, would be impossible to quantify, I suppose.
Many of the early and formative charismatic experiences were in the context of prayer meetings for revival (St Marks Gillingham or the Baptist revival fellowship for example) so I expect it's a stream that bubbles up intermittently in the movements dna.
@Baptist Trainfan and @Bishops Finger I remember talk of a 'revolving door' syndrome back in the '90s and recall a Sunday Times article which argued along those lines. I remember being in broad agreement.
Thing is, of course, it's hard to tell. From my own experience I can say that many of those who were in their 20s back in my own 1980s revivalist days are still involved in churches of one form or other.
Yes, some have a 'churchless faith', others have lost their faith but for the most part I'd suggest that most have moved into more 'moderate' expressions of the Christian faith - largely Baptist, URC or Anglican. Some went further into charismatic revivalism and have ended up in highly questionable prosperity gospel outfits - but the vast majority headed away from all that.
I'm not saying my own experience is normative and I'd struggle to put figures to it.
There was also a kind of 'ghost church' thing going on whereby some of those who were hurt by their experiences didn't end up anywhere else but continued to meet up discussing what has gone wrong and why.
It didn't seem to occur to any in that context to consider going to their local Anglican or Methodist or whatever else as they'd imbibed the sense that all the other churches were 'dead' and not worth bothering with.
Yes, that could well be true...
What Pomona said above; in addition to that what you are talking about at this point are very different cohorts with different life trajectories and experiences.
Well, OK - and that may not, of course, be a Bad Thing, given the often very limited resources of local churches.
Co-operation, rather than competition, is best IMHO, if that can be achieved.
That is the thing with AC parishes and RCC parishes, you can send with a certain confidence within the tradition. It will not always work, but even the one person I know who was quite definitely partly hooked by style survives quite happily in a normal RC parish. Not in all, admittedly, but it is a minority they cannot cope with.
Could this be a positive indication of revival?
None of those figures indicate a particularly high level of attendance, and one would expect a revival to do better IYSWIM.
Upthread, @Nick Tamen stated:
I am open to hearing what ideas might be out there.
Yes, point taken.
As for whether the Barna survey is “a positive indication of a revival,” I’d say it’s insufficient data upon which to base an opinion.
The page linked to says this: The key here is that the data is only about people who already identify as churchgoers. Perhaps Millennials and Gen Z churchgoers do attend church more often than churchgoing Boomers and Elders, but that leaves the question of what percentage of all Millennial and Gen Z Americans (the study appears to be of Americans) would identify as churchgoers, and how does that compare to the number of American Boomers and Elders who identify as churchgoers? If Millennials and Gen Z churchgoers on average attend church every month, but a significantly smaller percentage of Millennials and Gen Z Americans identify as churchgoers to start with, compared to American Boomers and Elders who identify as churchgoers, I wouldn’t call that evidence of “revival.”
Perhaps if the data showed that the percentage of Millennials and Gen Z Americans who identify as churchgoers was shown to be consistently growing, we’d have more to go on. But that’s not what this study looked at or says.
And I think for the Elders category as well as older Boomers, the degree to which older people might want to go to church but are unable to because of health, transportation limitations, or other things beyond their control may be a factor here. Comparing their attendance habits with those of younger people without taking such factors into consideration might lead to some false conclusions.
In short, this data might tell us something when combined with other data, but on its own, I don’t think it’s sufficient for any real conclusions about “revival.”
Don't misunderstand me, I'm by no means questioning mission initiatives within particular 'people-groups', such as the work the Ship's own @Lamb Chopped is doing among Vietnamese people in her city.
But I am wary of initiatives such as, 'We must target Gen Z or Millenials or Left-handed Plumbers or Young Professionals or ...
As I've mentioned a few times on these boards, various more 'conservative' forms of Christianity such as evangelicalism, Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy are seeing an influx of young men at the moment. I can't speak for the RCs and evangelicals but the Orthodox haven't 'targeted' these fellas. We haven't really done anything at all. They've simply come our way because of online influencers - some of them very questionable - or because they feel our particular form of Christianity offers something rigorous that they can get their teeth into.
Name dropping time. I spoke to the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams about this when I met him on a pilgrimage earlier this year.
Like me he deplored the right-wing baggage that sometimes accompanies all this but he could see that some of these young guys are looking for something that challenges and engages them. He felt Orthodoxy was likely to attract some of them because it requires some effort - there's a fasting element, lengthy services ...
Now, I'm by no means suggesting that liberal churches can't or don't offer a challenge. Of course they can. Social action. Promoting progressive causes. All that.
But we have to deal with the cards we are dealt. As far as Orthodoxy goes, we're getting these young men. The challenge is to ensure they enter the life of the Church through careful catechesis and the realisation that it's about Christ and not some anti-woke campaign in fancy dress.
On one level of course, Gen Z and Millenials are where it's at as the Boomers will have boomed and bust and gone to meet their maker ere long.
But young people can 'see through' attempts to target them. The phrase 'Disco Vicar' was around at one time as a catch-all for clergy and others who were trying to 'get down wi' da yoot' and making prats of themselves in the process.
There's no magic bullet. I don't think there is any 'revival' as such either. I do think, though, that there is a level of interest among some young people at the more theologically conservative end of the spectrum that we haven't seen for some time.
For those of us at that end of the spectrum there's a degree of responsibility in terms of what we say, how we behave and what we project about our faith.
As for the more liberal end of things, I don't know what they can do to reach out to Gen Z and Millenials if those groups don't want what they are offering.
Some might. But rather than trying to attract them 'artificially', perhaps these churches can demonstrate by word, deed and action that they do have something to offer and something to say.