A few months ago, at a conference, I sat next to an Anglican priest who told me that over the last six months, 23 new people have started attending her relatively small church in an area of high deprivation in Bristol. The stories of these new people finding the church were something like this. One said, “I woke up this morning and just felt I needed to come to church. So, tell me what it’s about?” Anecdotally, this appears to be happening in multiple places in various traditions from Anglican to Pentecostal, Orthodox to Catholic.
Indeed, over the past few months, there has been a flurry of reports suggesting we are in a new era of receptivity towards the Christian faith. The Bible Society’s Quiet Revival research claims that Gen Z are leading an exciting turnaround in church attendance with a particular rise in church going from younger men. Bible Society’s chief executive Paul Williams, commenting on the report said: “The Quiet Revival is a highly significant report which should transform the perception of Christianity and churchgoing in England and Wales. Far from being on a slippery slope to extinction, the Church is alive and growing, and making a positive difference to individuals and society.” Other notable reports include statistical evidence that the Bereavement Journey, now run by around 400 local churches, from AtaLoss is helping older adults to engage with faith and Youth For Christ’s Z-A: Growing Spirituality report, which suggests an “awakening” in the 11-18s.
Similar encouragement came from the launch in early June of the Evangelical Alliance’s Finding Jesus report undertaken primarily by Dr Ruth Perrin. It identified pathways to faith in adulthood with a range of both statistical material and helpful stories of different individuals coming to faith with surprising numbers (32% of all those who completed the survey making a decision to follow Jesus in less than six months and 39% saying their final decision to follow Jesus came through an acute spiritual experience).
Other traditions are reporting an increase in attendance and membership, too. Anecdotally, several Greek, Romanian and Antiochian Orthodox priest friends of mine have shared how many young men are committing themselves to the church through catechism, the joy of discovering new rituals and the demands made upon them in a world that can seem superficial and flaky. His Eminence Atanasie was enthroned in London in early May as the first Romanian Orthodox Archbishop of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, further evidencing the growth of the Orthodox in these Isles. Additionally, in the past few years the Chinese church has grown spectacularly, largely due to immigration from Hong Kong. In short the church is alive!
‘Wildly out of step’
All this seems like news to be celebrated, and it is. But it is not the whole story. There are questions to be asked about the actual statistical information that some of the reports are based on. Statistician Tim Harford comments on The Quiet Revival in his BBC Radio 4 programme More or Less. He notes that the results from the survey look startling in terms of increases of attendance. In these cases one would expect to see similar results in other surveys. Churches themselves are not reporting increases in attendance above pre-pandemic levels. Madaline Davies’ piece in The Church Times says that social scientist David Voas described the study’s findings as “wholly unbelievable” and “wildly out of step with wider figures”, including the churches’ own counting of attendance, such as the C of E’s carefully collected Statistics for Mission. But the Bible Society’s research was gathered at the end of 2024 so could potentially be picking up a trend yet to be seen by other data.
Both Graham Tomlin and Madeleine Davis have cautioned against a euphoric ‘the tide has turned’ response to these recent surveys. Tomlin reminds us that ‘Mark Twain, that purveyor of slanted wisdom, was wary of data. “Figures often beguile me,” he wrote, “particularly when I have the arranging of them myself.’ The problem of statistically based surveys is they can be used sometimes to say what we wish to hear. When the church in general is faced with a period in history in which she is marginalised, has less influence and vitality than previous generations, she may wish to cling onto stories that help her feel good about what she is achieving.
The long view
We know the historical churches in Britain have suffered massive decline since the mid-1960s. The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, made it clear he did not want to manage decline. But we may wish to take the long view. Throughout Christian history, there have been times when the church has been marked by periods of decline and looked close to death. The book Going to Church in Medieval England paints a fascinating picture of the church from early 13th until roughly mid 16th century and the complex relationship English people had with the church. There have been times of renewal and revival and times of decline and death. Graham Tomlin probably rightly suggests that the “‘Revival’ used of the ‘Quiet Revival’ is perhaps too ambitious a word to use right now. It would need a lot more hard evidence from bigger surveys and more observable results to deserve such a designation.’
The reality is that some churches are struggling. Across a wide variety of our member churches in both rural, urban and suburban settings congregations are haemorrhaging numbers, finding it difficult to care for their buildings and seeing almost no children and young people. Churches are closing. In many of these settings it really doesn’t feel like a ‘revival.’
Flourishing or fading, we need to see that faithfulness is the key headline rarely acknowledged in the news stories. In some settings, faithfulness leads to fruitfulness; sometimes it doesn’t. In some cases, the relentless pressure to keep things going is causing clergy burnout. But what if church decline might be an opportunity for something new to happen? Bishop Guli Francis-Dehqani has asked “What if we have things to learn during a season in which we’re smaller, more marginal and less influential?” (Listen to her speech at the Church Times Festival of Preaching 2024).
Finding a balance of flourishing and fading, of both life and death, is important so we don’t only allow a narrative of perpetual victory and success to dominate our headlines. God is doubtless at work as God has always been throughout Christian history, sometimes in unexpected ways amongst unexpected people.
Bible Society is a Charity and Network in Association with Churches Together in England
This article is in a three-part series called Flourishing and Fading from CTE’s Principal Officers, as each of them reflects on a series of recent reports on church growth.