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”.
My first emotion was one of vindication. I knew as soon as I read the report that is now 404 pages, that the report was inaccurate and fundamentally floored. My second emotion was something approaching anger, a rare emotion for me to experience. I was angry on two points:
Firstly, this now rubbished report was given very wide news coverage. With journalists, column writers, even politicians proclaiming this report and a societal turning point. This all whilst not even doing the simplest of validations of the data. All apart from BBC Radio 4’s More or Less, who investigated the claims with Professor Sir John Curtice, who said when commenting on the Bible Society’s report “The long term decline in a Christian service of worship still seems to be going on”.
Secondly, the Christians that just blindly accepted this miraculous revival as fact, with little to no anecdotal evidence as to its existence. In a time where Christianity is fighting for relevance and leaning every rightwards politically in order to try and achieve that relevance. To hop on the bandwagon of young men joining not only the political right (which has also been overstated) but also the church. Is merely the last throws of an organisation, trying and failing to prove that it matters.
The only other state to have reserved members of its official church in its parliament is Iran. With hereditary peers making their way out, is it time that the bishops went too? Britain in the 2020s has a diverse make up of faiths and non-faiths. Yet many of our traditions and institutions still act as if Christianity and the Christian teachings are the only game in town. I hope the debunking of this report sparks an examination of the true support for Christianity in the UK and the over-sized power the established churches has in the UK.
* Mills Dyer (she/they) is a recovering Lib Dem HQ staffer (2014-21) and a former member of the Federal Board as staff rep (2017-21). Now just an ordinary member in East London.
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13 Comments
An interesting article. My own experience (as a Christian) is that nominal Christianity is declining rapidly but that the numbers of committed/evangelical/born-again (or whatever term you would use) is increasing. So while the Church of Scotland is merging parishes and selling off church property, other evangelical denominations are ‘planting churches’ and seeing growth.
Anyway, whatever faith or no faith, everyone has a home in the Liberal Democrats and no one will be discriminated against based on religious or non-religious affiliation. I look forward to the day when our Party May again be led by someone unashamed to declare their faith.
As a long-time Methodist minister I have never believed that our task is to make everyone the same as us! If churches are to take the teaching of Jesus seriously how on earth could they? In some ways this overlaps with my way of being a radical Liberal. Unfortunately the majority media tend to think in terms of headcounts in “official worship services”. Christianity, and indeed spirituality is so much better than that. Majority support for a faith is rarely good for humanity, particularly if it becomes part of the political constitution. Sorry Tommy Robinson you’ve totally lost it!
As a Christian who has voted Lib or Lib Dem in every election since 1970, I found this negative generalisation about Christianity rather concerning. Irrespective of surveys and data, the Church which I attend is growing numerically across all age groups, and has been for the past 3 years. Not mentioned in the piece is the fact that Food Banks and various other community groups are heavily (but obviously not solely) dependent on the support of Churches for volunteers. As it happens, I also question the role of Bishops in the House of Lords, not least because I think the entire H of L should be abolished. Lastly, in my experience, there is a whole range of political opinions amongst Church goers. So, my plea is, don’t make assumptions!
Surely the main point to arise from this story is that a client that commissioned a very expensive piece of market research from a reputable company was given a very sub-standard piece of work. Do the Lib Dems ever commission reports from YouGov, and if so, how can we ensure that we are getting value for money? YouGov apparently based their research on the “responses” of a large number of fictitious, imaginary and fraudulent respondents. There is no way that the Lib Dems – or the Church of England – could be expected to check on the veracity of the data used to generate the research. Let’s hope that our Target Seats strategy is not misled by this sort of research.
I hope Mills Dyer’s recovery continues and that she/they soon feels better. I also wish the Pope well in his criticism of the current temporary tenant of the White House (who is a much bigger threat to mankind than the Bishops in the Lords).
The ‘Hard Right’ version of the bible being promoted by self proclaimed “born again Christian” Pete Hesketh seems to rely far more on Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction than on King James’s version..
If this is classed as a ‘revival of Christianity’ no wonder Trump, Vance, et al have problems with the Pontiff..
Did YouGov use so-called AI? They should ask for a refund.
There is precedent from Australia.
@Richard Cripps, I too find negative generalisations about Christianity concerning, thought many activities of organised Christian institutions have not adhered to the teachings of Jesus and some of them downright evil. Likewise people who do not call themselves Christian have lived the Christian way, for example Gandhi and that to me as a local preacher is the key. There is of course various ways of living out the Christian life.
As Geoff Reid says there is much overlap between that and the Liberal way. Jesus did not force people to conform to an ideology or strict set of rules set by humans however much they think God supports them.
I find Mills Dyer’s assertions that Christianity is moving rightwards rather troubling but not in accordance with my experience, as a member of a (non-conformist) congregation. The actions and words of Jesus seem to me opposed to many of MAGA supporters’ attitudes. Perhaps Mills Dyer should look into the Joint Public Issues Team (JPIT).
I too as an elderly member of the Church of England find the “quiet revival” issue disturbing, but despite the withdrawal of that data, my own experience is of a gradual increase of interest in religious matters amongst young people. I also certainly refute the idea that the church is moving to the right in this country. Yes, there are some groups spreading hard-line views, but the majority of Christians are trying to follow Jesus by helping their fellow citizens in a local context (doesn’t that sound rather like Lib Dems?)
Christianity is not a monolithic religion. ‘Orthodoxy’ has been given many interpretations over the centuries. The resurgence of right-wing interpretations, especially in the southern states of the USA, has been countered by the growing emphasis on the social elements of the gospel within the Church of England and the Roman Catholic church. Trump has just accused the Pope of being a liberal. I see the divide between authoritarians and liberals in politics and in each of the Abrahamic religions as reflecting similar differences in belief and attitudes to power and individual autonomy; and as both a Christian and a Liberal I know which side I’m on.
Thank-you for the article. This is interesting piece, but I think Mills perhaps has too many broad brush assumptions, and a few rhetorical talking points such as comparison of the House of Lords to the Government of Iran.
The church press I follow, for example, has been skeptical about “The Quiet Revival” since the report was released. The Church Times has had a number of such articles (and gives 2 guest reads per month free). On the other hand the Church of England has seen increased attendance for each of the last 5 years. I’ve been following church development and stats since the 1980s, and I’m not making any calls on any of it.
There are some noisy figures in UK far-right circles at present, but the church ones are mainly waifs and strays of various sorts looking for a living – three or four figures who have cleaved to “continuing, traditionalist” denominations. They include backward looking “Give us all our medieval churches back” ultra-traditionalist Roman Catholics who are basically opposed to anything since Vatican II. There are one or two who were rejected for, or ejected from, ministry in the Church of England, such as Calvin Robinson.
Generally they are cross that the national church continues to work towards more inclusive policies despite it being a difficult journey, and affirm women in leadership. They even went so far as to try and brand Justin Welby, a charismatic evangelical formed by Holy Trinity Brompton, as some sort of liberal.
Second part:
I do not think that UK Evangelicalism is at risk of going down the Pete Hegseth route (the best comparators we know are probably the Dutch Reformed in South Africa from 1948, or Paisley style Reformed Churches in Northern Ireland). In the UK the Evangelical tradition was massively embedded with belief in social action by people such as Wesley, William Wilberforce, Lord Shaftesbury and William & Catherine Booth, plus is not siloed to anything like the same degree as happens in the USA.
The political far-right figures here are generally civic nationalists, not Christian nationalists, and are trying to use religion as a camouflage netting. The Evangelical Alliance has some excellent work on this categorisation. The main figures I would identify as making the USA mistake of trying to impose the practices from their religion, rather than letting the values inform their politics, are National Conservatives like James Orr, Danny Kruger MP and of course Sir Paul Marshall.