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.
Also, Millennials are now in their 30s and 40s - and a lot of Gen Z are in their mid-20s and are married or in long-term relationships with kids. The new First Lady of NYC is Gen Z, they aren't teenagers.
It's just really odd that, as usual, Gen X gets completely left out of the reckoning. This time even the pre-boomer elders made it in, but not the X-ers. Might be a good thing.
It's just really odd that, as usual, Gen X gets completely left out of the reckoning. This time even the pre-boomer elders made it in, but not the X-ers. Might be a good thing.
I meant to mention Gen-Xers but it was an oversight.
I didn't intend my reference to Gen Z and Millenials to exclude Gen-Xers, I just listed the two to make a general point but shoud have gone for the full set as it were.
@Pomona makes a good point about Millenials and Gen Z-ers not being teenagers.
On the subject of teenagers, my daughters dropped out of any church involvement when they were teenagers. That seems very common across the board.
The Orthodox tend to run summer youth camps on an effort to engage and retain young people. A lot of Orthodox young people appear to drop out of church stuff when they go to university, although others retain their engagement with their faith, of course.
The Cypriots who emigrated to the UK during the '70s have been losing their teenagers for many years. The same has been happening with second and third generation Afro-Caribbean communities.
My daughters were put off by what they saw as 'cheesy' evangelical youth camps where earnest and bouncy church 'yoof' workers to from London would make 'hard-sell' toe-curling presentations about how 'awesome' Jesus is and how 'amazing' or 'absolutely amazing' it all is.
'Yeah, right it's amazing, absolutely amazing, it's like wow ...!'
And so on and so on and so embarrassingly on.
So what's the answer? How do we engage teenagers without either patronising them or boring them to death?
On the issue of 'targeting' particular groups, the Orthodox don't tend to do that. Perhaps we should?
But we can and do take opportunities, however backhandedly, when they come our way. I've also heard that the early Russian missionaries in Alaska took note of what they knew Protestant missionaries were doing in Polynesia.
A while back there something made of Orthodox monks out in California or somewhere 'out west' engaging positively with a punk community in their area. Monks and punks.
I don't know whether that's still going or what the upshot was.
Of my three, two dropped out because they don't believe God exists; one does and still goes. I think essentially that's the driving reason for church non-attendance - people don't believe in God.
All this talk of Generation this or that prompted me to look up myself, as it were. I was born in 1951, so that apparently makes me a Baby Boomer. We are, of course, now dropping off the tree, leaving room on the branches for our replacements...
Of my three, two dropped out because they don't believe God exists; one does and still goes. I think essentially that's the driving reason for church non-attendance - people don't believe in God.
You may well be right, and, if so, there appears to be no obvious way to convince (?) people to believe in God/god/gods...
All this talk of Generation this or that prompted me to look up myself, as it were. I was born in 1951, so that apparently makes me a Baby Boomer. We are, of course, now dropping off the tree, leaving room on the branches for our replacements...
Of my three, two dropped out because they don't believe God exists; one does and still goes. I think essentially that's the driving reason for church non-attendance - people don't believe in God.
You may well be right, and, if so, there appears to be no obvious way to convince (?) people to believe in God/god/gods...
If there was an 'obvious' way of convincing people, or ourselves, someone would have found it by now.
'Lord I believe, help mine unbelief' is the closest I can get to it.
But we've had this discussion before.
I don't think any of this stuff is about 'methods' or 'techniques' as such - although some kind of 'programme' can be helpful be it a daily 'office' or whatever else.
All we can do is to go according to our 'lights' as it were. We can't coax or force people to believe, although coercion was certainly a thing in times past.
All this talk of Generation this or that prompted me to look up myself, as it were. I was born in 1951, so that apparently makes me a Baby Boomer. We are, of course, now dropping off the tree, leaving room on the branches for our replacements...
Of my three, two dropped out because they don't believe God exists; one does and still goes. I think essentially that's the driving reason for church non-attendance - people don't believe in God.
You may well be right, and, if so, there appears to be no obvious way to convince (?) people to believe in God/god/gods...
Of my three, two dropped out because they don't believe God exists; one does and still goes. I think essentially that's the driving reason for church non-attendance - people don't believe in God.
I’d say that’s a driving reason for some but not the driving reason. It’s the reason some don’t go to church. But I know plenty of people who say they believe in God, but ho don’t see any meaningful connection between that belief and churchgoing, or who even consider that what they’ve found in churches is inconsistent with what they believe about God.
Or who have a basic belief in God but don’t see the need for what they perceive as the extra beliefs that come with church, or who believe in God but not a specifically Christian concept of God.
Or who would say their experience of church has gotten in the way of their belief in God, and perhaps has even been hurtful and harmful.
And then there are the people who’d say they believe in God but who grew up in families that didn’t go to church, and they so no reason to start.
Just as I think there’s not a simple, single way to draw people (back) to church, there’s not a single, simple reason they’re not in church to start with.
All this talk of Generation this or that prompted me to look up myself, as it were. I was born in 1951, so that apparently makes me a Baby Boomer.
By popular nomenclature yes, but the booms happened at different times on each side of the pond (the UK boom was 1946, followed by a sharp drop and then a later boom in the 60s).
I'd imagine it maps to slightly different impacts on attendance, and numbers of following 'generations'.
All this talk of Generation this or that prompted me to look up myself, as it were. I was born in 1951, so that apparently makes me a Baby Boomer.
By popular nomenclature yes, but the booms happened at different times on each side of the pond (the UK boom was 1946, followed by a sharp drop and then a later boom in the 60s).
I'd imagine it maps to slightly different impacts on attendance, and numbers of following 'generations'.
O I see. That means I was part of the sharp drop...
I've also heard that there are around 7,000 people attending Mass more regularly across France. Not a massive increase overall but an increase after many decades of decline.
I'm very much with @Nick Tamen on the points he raises I'm his post about why people don't go to church.
There are a whole raft of reasons and not simply because they don't believe in God.
Equally, I think there are a whole range of reasons why people might start going to church or investigating the Christian faith.
Pinning it on single events such as the fire at Notre Dame Cathedral and its reconstruction strikes me as barking up the wrong tree.
We can't boil any of this down to a simple formula.
There might be a whole rsngecof reasons why some French people are returning to church or attending for the first time - uncertainty, the attempt to recover a sense of historic Christian heritage, reactionary political views, fear of the 'other' or very positive things such as good role models, a sense of community, a sense of encountering Christ ...
A whole range of things and some of them quite possibly all at the same time.
Or a whole load of other factors I've not even thought of.
A large proportion of the French newcomers are late teens. Some research has suggested that they have been favourably impressed by their Muslim contemporaries in schools who take their faith seriously. This has pointed the new catholics back towards their own heritage.
As an aside there has been an increase in priestly vocations in the USA and a significant number of them would seem to be somewhat conservative as far a liturgy is concerned. Not only there ... I remember a colleague telling me 20 years ago that her bishop was worried that many of his seminary students were afficionados of lace. Certainly the most recent new priests in our diocese have been noticably more conservative than the ageing congregations they have been sent to minister to.
Wearing lace vestments is associated with the Tridentine Mass of pre Vatican 2 days. YouTube has plenty of examples. It is very rare in celebrations using the modern form of the Mass.
My daughters were put off by what they saw as 'cheesy' evangelical youth camps where earnest and bouncy church 'yoof' workers to from London would make 'hard-sell' toe-curling presentations about how 'awesome' Jesus is and how 'amazing' or 'absolutely amazing' it all is.
'Yeah, right it's amazing, absolutely amazing, it's like wow ...!'
And so on and so on and so embarrassingly on.
Examples abound, of course, but the one that always comes to mind for me is when, as a young teenager unfamiliar with the LDS, I asked a pair of them why they were traipsing about our neighbourhood one afternoon, and after explaining the concept of a Mormon mission to me, finished off with the rhetorical query "Sound pretty cool?"
That said, I did know one clergy-person, a Catholic priest teaching high-school, who cultivated the image quite well. With him, I think, the key was that he didn't go out of his way to adopt the style and interests of youth(he always carried himself like a middle-class gent born in the early 1920s, which is what he was), but just kinda effortlessly expressed himself as comfortable in a youthful milieu.
In my local UCA there are a number of people who are loyal members of the Op Shop (charity shop) and who put in a lot of effort outside the opening hours. They are happy that money raised may go to either local people such as refugees, or larger charities such as the Catherine Hamlyn Fistula Foundation.
They are not interested in attending worship services or being counted as members of the congregation, which annoys some members. I think they are followers of The Way of Jesus. Of course, these are mostly older people.
If the issue is church attendance, then creating societies in which non-attendance was socially (or otherwise) unacceptable used to work pretty well.
Maybe the question is what an appropriate level of church-going is in societies where church attendance no longer matters one way or the other.
I think this is a really important point. When churches were fuller, for example prior to WWII, how many were there because they had to be? Or because there was a social pressure to be there?
When I was about to graduate and being interviewed for jobs as a solicitor, I can recall at least one firm which would only employ someone who could "link to the community and network." Active church attendance ticked that box, although membership of the golf club would have been equally acceptable.
Would "active church attendance" be seen as career enhancing today? Would it still be on a par with "membership of the golf club?"
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.
It doesn't seem too surprising to me.
I've long thought that if you're the least bit aware of sales and marketing (what it is and how it works), it's not difficult to see how it gets applied in evangelical contexts, and to start wondering how appropriate it is.
What I found surprising (as an evangelical) was how few of my fellow evangelicals ever considered this question. Most of them seemed to take for granted that we'd use whatever techniques were available to get people into the Kingdom and/or into churches. My familiarity with the phrase "what matters is what works" predates Blair and New Labour.
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.
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.
Yup. I don't think it's just young people. The evidence seems to suggest that median Christianity (in the UK) is drifting in a conservative direction: socially, politically and theologically. There wasn't a widespread movement of Anglicans abandoning the Conservatives in the 2024 election. (And a noticeable proportion of those that did jump ship voted Reform.)
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.
Hard to disagree with that. But the historical precedents aren't promising.
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.
My impression is that what matters are the values, but the values have to be "real" values, not just lip-service values. And "real" is a relative term. It's one of the things that makes conversations with Gen Zers (including relatives) so frustrating and interesting.
I think 'membership of a golf club' would count against you in some circumstances and work in someone's favour in others.
Likewise with church attendance.
I've cited this before, but when I worked in Huddersfield I read a fascinating and very detailed historical account of the town. One of the chapters was all about non-conformist religion. Yes, there was a certain amount of social pressure but there was also an element of the exercise of 'choice'.
In a town dominated by a handful of wealthy textile barons, choosing which chapel to attend was one of the few free choices available. And yes, particular chapels attracted a particular demographic. Attendance was highly stratified socially.
What struck me was how quickly attendance declined from the 1920s when public transport came in and the cinema arrived.
Prior to that, almost everything revolved around church or chapel. Band of Hope. Christian Endeavour. Sports teams. Magic-lantern shows. Talks. Brass band or choir practice.
Suddenly people could cycle somewhere else or catch a bus on a Sunday.
I think it was @Baptist Trainfan who observed how The Forsyth Saga was blamed for the decline of evening service attendance in the 1960s.
By then, at least where I grew up, people still tended to send their kids to Sunday school but stayed away themselves.
'Chapel' culture was very residual in my part of South Wales by the 1960s. My Dad's family were 'chapel' and my great-great grandfather a Baptist minister of some renown. But they all dropped out during the early 1900s and throughout the 1920s.
Was the Welsh Revival a 'revival' or the last spasmodic pulse of a dying religious culture?
Yes, that is 'bizarrely', although I do know a few people of my generation and above, myself included, who were profoundly affected by that TV production.
Which rather ties in with the point @LatchKeyKid was making above about the good people he knows at the OP Shop who follow 'The Way of Christ' without necessarily darkening the doors of church or chapel that regularly.
I may differ from LatchKeyKid theologically in many respects but I'm with him on that one.
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.
The Barna Study mentions Gen Xers.
I didn't intend my reference to Gen Z and Millenials to exclude Gen-Xers, I just listed the two to make a general point but shoud have gone for the full set as it were.
@Pomona makes a good point about Millenials and Gen Z-ers not being teenagers.
On the subject of teenagers, my daughters dropped out of any church involvement when they were teenagers. That seems very common across the board.
The Orthodox tend to run summer youth camps on an effort to engage and retain young people. A lot of Orthodox young people appear to drop out of church stuff when they go to university, although others retain their engagement with their faith, of course.
The Cypriots who emigrated to the UK during the '70s have been losing their teenagers for many years. The same has been happening with second and third generation Afro-Caribbean communities.
My daughters were put off by what they saw as 'cheesy' evangelical youth camps where earnest and bouncy church 'yoof' workers to from London would make 'hard-sell' toe-curling presentations about how 'awesome' Jesus is and how 'amazing' or 'absolutely amazing' it all is.
'Yeah, right it's amazing, absolutely amazing, it's like wow ...!'
And so on and so on and so embarrassingly on.
So what's the answer? How do we engage teenagers without either patronising them or boring them to death?
On the issue of 'targeting' particular groups, the Orthodox don't tend to do that. Perhaps we should?
But we can and do take opportunities, however backhandedly, when they come our way. I've also heard that the early Russian missionaries in Alaska took note of what they knew Protestant missionaries were doing in Polynesia.
A while back there something made of Orthodox monks out in California or somewhere 'out west' engaging positively with a punk community in their area. Monks and punks.
I don't know whether that's still going or what the upshot was.
You may well be right, and, if so, there appears to be no obvious way to convince (?) people to believe in God/god/gods...
Indeed. Including ourselves. Well, some of us.
'Lord I believe, help mine unbelief' is the closest I can get to it.
But we've had this discussion before.
I don't think any of this stuff is about 'methods' or 'techniques' as such - although some kind of 'programme' can be helpful be it a daily 'office' or whatever else.
All we can do is to go according to our 'lights' as it were. We can't coax or force people to believe, although coercion was certainly a thing in times past.
Hehe. Yes, me too, I'm afraid...
It all seems so far-fetched, IYSWIM.
Or who have a basic belief in God but don’t see the need for what they perceive as the extra beliefs that come with church, or who believe in God but not a specifically Christian concept of God.
Or who would say their experience of church has gotten in the way of their belief in God, and perhaps has even been hurtful and harmful.
And then there are the people who’d say they believe in God but who grew up in families that didn’t go to church, and they so no reason to start.
Just as I think there’s not a simple, single way to draw people (back) to church, there’s not a single, simple reason they’re not in church to start with.
By popular nomenclature yes, but the booms happened at different times on each side of the pond (the UK boom was 1946, followed by a sharp drop and then a later boom in the 60s).
I'd imagine it maps to slightly different impacts on attendance, and numbers of following 'generations'.
Maybe the question is what an appropriate level of church-going is in societies where church attendance no longer matters one way or the other.
O I see. That means I was part of the sharp drop...
The Catholic News Agency reported a record number of adult baptisms in France this past year.
According to the report there is an increase in a search for meaning in and age of anxiety, and the need for spiritual community.
I also wonder if the burning of Notre Dame and its reconstruction contributed to the increase.
I'm very much with @Nick Tamen on the points he raises I'm his post about why people don't go to church.
There are a whole raft of reasons and not simply because they don't believe in God.
Equally, I think there are a whole range of reasons why people might start going to church or investigating the Christian faith.
Pinning it on single events such as the fire at Notre Dame Cathedral and its reconstruction strikes me as barking up the wrong tree.
We can't boil any of this down to a simple formula.
There might be a whole rsngecof reasons why some French people are returning to church or attending for the first time - uncertainty, the attempt to recover a sense of historic Christian heritage, reactionary political views, fear of the 'other' or very positive things such as good role models, a sense of community, a sense of encountering Christ ...
A whole range of things and some of them quite possibly all at the same time.
Or a whole load of other factors I've not even thought of.
Range of, perhaps?
As an aside there has been an increase in priestly vocations in the USA and a significant number of them would seem to be somewhat conservative as far a liturgy is concerned. Not only there ... I remember a colleague telling me 20 years ago that her bishop was worried that many of his seminary students were afficionados of lace. Certainly the most recent new priests in our diocese have been noticably more conservative than the ageing congregations they have been sent to minister to.
The key to the revival we long for ...
Lace.
Explain
Wearing lace vestments is associated with the Tridentine Mass of pre Vatican 2 days. YouTube has plenty of examples. It is very rare in celebrations using the modern form of the Mass.
Examples abound, of course, but the one that always comes to mind for me is when, as a young teenager unfamiliar with the LDS, I asked a pair of them why they were traipsing about our neighbourhood one afternoon, and after explaining the concept of a Mormon mission to me, finished off with the rhetorical query "Sound pretty cool?"
That said, I did know one clergy-person, a Catholic priest teaching high-school, who cultivated the image quite well. With him, I think, the key was that he didn't go out of his way to adopt the style and interests of youth(he always carried himself like a middle-class gent born in the early 1920s, which is what he was), but just kinda effortlessly expressed himself as comfortable in a youthful milieu.
They are not interested in attending worship services or being counted as members of the congregation, which annoys some members. I think they are followers of The Way of Jesus. Of course, these are mostly older people.
I think this is a really important point. When churches were fuller, for example prior to WWII, how many were there because they had to be? Or because there was a social pressure to be there?
When I was about to graduate and being interviewed for jobs as a solicitor, I can recall at least one firm which would only employ someone who could "link to the community and network." Active church attendance ticked that box, although membership of the golf club would have been equally acceptable.
Would "active church attendance" be seen as career enhancing today? Would it still be on a par with "membership of the golf club?"
I've long thought that if you're the least bit aware of sales and marketing (what it is and how it works), it's not difficult to see how it gets applied in evangelical contexts, and to start wondering how appropriate it is.
What I found surprising (as an evangelical) was how few of my fellow evangelicals ever considered this question. Most of them seemed to take for granted that we'd use whatever techniques were available to get people into the Kingdom and/or into churches. My familiarity with the phrase "what matters is what works" predates Blair and New Labour.
Yup. I don't think it's just young people. The evidence seems to suggest that median Christianity (in the UK) is drifting in a conservative direction: socially, politically and theologically. There wasn't a widespread movement of Anglicans abandoning the Conservatives in the 2024 election. (And a noticeable proportion of those that did jump ship voted Reform.)
Hard to disagree with that. But the historical precedents aren't promising.
My impression is that what matters are the values, but the values have to be "real" values, not just lip-service values. And "real" is a relative term. It's one of the things that makes conversations with Gen Zers (including relatives) so frustrating and interesting.
Likewise with church attendance.
I've cited this before, but when I worked in Huddersfield I read a fascinating and very detailed historical account of the town. One of the chapters was all about non-conformist religion. Yes, there was a certain amount of social pressure but there was also an element of the exercise of 'choice'.
In a town dominated by a handful of wealthy textile barons, choosing which chapel to attend was one of the few free choices available. And yes, particular chapels attracted a particular demographic. Attendance was highly stratified socially.
What struck me was how quickly attendance declined from the 1920s when public transport came in and the cinema arrived.
Prior to that, almost everything revolved around church or chapel. Band of Hope. Christian Endeavour. Sports teams. Magic-lantern shows. Talks. Brass band or choir practice.
Suddenly people could cycle somewhere else or catch a bus on a Sunday.
I think it was @Baptist Trainfan who observed how The Forsyth Saga was blamed for the decline of evening service attendance in the 1960s.
By then, at least where I grew up, people still tended to send their kids to Sunday school but stayed away themselves.
'Chapel' culture was very residual in my part of South Wales by the 1960s. My Dad's family were 'chapel' and my great-great grandfather a Baptist minister of some renown. But they all dropped out during the early 1900s and throughout the 1920s.
Was the Welsh Revival a 'revival' or the last spasmodic pulse of a dying religious culture?
Time will tell.
Which rather ties in with the point @LatchKeyKid was making above about the good people he knows at the OP Shop who follow 'The Way of Christ' without necessarily darkening the doors of church or chapel that regularly.
I may differ from LatchKeyKid theologically in many respects but I'm with him on that one.