Tag Archives: christianity

It is rare that a podcast will make me immediately stop what I am doing.  However, this was the case last summer, when the brilliant ‘Since Churchill and Attlee’ podcast highlighted a study from The Bible Society called ‘The Quiet Revival’. The report claimed to show that 16% of 18-24 year olds surveyed (by YouGov) in 2024 were Christian and went to church at least once a month, rising from 4% in 2018. This survey result was not just extraordinary, but frankly, unbelievable. As I read the Bible Society report for myself and googled the coverage surrounding it, I realised with shock that this report was being picked up as if it was itself gospel.

This brings me to my Roman Empire, something that a person thinks deeply about on a regular basis. My Roman Empire is that, Christianity worldwide (but particularly in North America and Western Europe) is dying out, and that no one else is noticing. This is not to say that I do not have skin in this game. I left Christianity a few years ago, when I realised that I could no longer believe in a deity, much less attend a church, that was less compassionate than I was. A ‘casualty’ of the Christianity’s move towards the political right.

As an observer of the church in the UK and certified data nerd/psephologist, I knew that the data in the Bible Society’s report went against all available evidence. Attendance data from the Church of England and the Catholic Church, data from the UK Census, and the British Attitudes Survey all disagree to a sharp increase in Christian attendance or identification as the Bible Society are suggesting. The British Attitudes Survey even showing the reverse pattern the The Bible Society claim for an uptick in the identification with Christianity. Moreover, the consistent data picture is one of decades of steady decline.  In 1960, just under 7% were on the Church of England’s electoral roll, in 2019, that had dropped to just 1.5%. The 2021 Census shows that identification with Christianity has dropped below half the population for the first time in England and Wales (46.2%, down from 59.3% in 2011).

Why this is all relevant now is because a fortnight ago (27th March) The Bible Society pulled the report and the data/claims that went with it. Now YouGov, which carried out the research, has told the Bible Society that an internal review of the data found that some of the respondents who completed its survey were “fraudulent”.