A CHALLENGE to the “Cassandras who simply write off British Christianity” was issued at St John’s, Waterloo, on Saturday, at a Church Times conference exploring “Springtime for the Church of England”.
Delivering the opening talk, the Revd Dr David Goodhew, Vicar of St Barnabas’s, Middlesbrough, Visiting Fellow of St John’s College, Durham University, and the previous director of the Centre for Church Growth Research, suggested that there was an excessive amount of evidence supporting the Bible Society’s report The Quiet Revival to discount it. The Bible Society was “on to something”.
He pointed to data including the explosive growth within the variety of churches in London, and polls indicating higher levels of belief amongst young people. But it was necessary to have a look at a variety of sources of evidence, including “detailed case studies”, he said.
England was undergoing “enormous demographic change, and plenty of traditional metrics struggle to maintain up. . . The reason we have now a confused discussion is that folks are inclined to say either it have to be growth, or it have to be decline. Actually, it’s each; and, should you look across British Christianity, you might be seeing an entire load of things going up, and taking place, and it depends where you look as to what you might be seeing.”
He emphasised the importance of not looking only on the Church of England: “Many Anglican conversations act as if the remaining of British Christianity didn’t exist. It will not be spring in much of the C of E, but it surely is perhaps spring elsewhere.”
The conference also heard from Dr Ken Eames, senior statistical researcher on the C of E’s data-services team, who showed data indicating post-pandemic increases in attendance. “People got here back to church, and never only did they arrive back, they’re still coming back. The numbers are still going up, even years after the pandemic.”
On the back of a century of decline, it felt “unreasonable” to suggest that the numbers were where they were before Covid, he suggested. But the Church was “not far off where we may need been had the pandemic not happened”.
The national figures masked “massive variation”, he cautioned. In around 12 per cent of churches, attendance across three measures was higher than it had been in 2019. These churches were scattered everywhere in the country, he said. “Big churches, little churches, urban churches, rural churches, High churches, Low churches, all styles of traditions. There is something in every single place that could be a sign of hope.”
IT IS now nine months for the reason that Bible Society published its report The Quiet Revival, which drew on YouGov polling of greater than 13,000 adults (News, 11 April 2025).
Of the whole, 12 per cent of respondents said that they’d attended a church at the very least once a month in 2024, compared with eight per cent in 2018. Growth was more dramatic amongst those aged 18 to 24, of whom 16 per cent reported monthly attendance, up from 4 per cent in 2018.
The narrative of revival was challenged last month by Sir John Curtice, Senior Research Fellow on the National Centre for Social Research, who drew on the most recent data from the British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey. First carried out in 1983, the survey’s respondents are chosen at random from those living in private households in Great Britain. Data is weighted to reflect the known characteristics of the adult population. In 2024, 4120 respondents participated.
In 2024, 40 per cent of BSA respondents identified as Christian — similar to in 2017. The proportion who identified as “other Christian”, versus Anglican or Roman Catholic, rose from 18 to 21 per cent, while the share who identified as “none” fell from 52 to 49 per cent.
This prompted Sir John to watch: “The long-term decline within the proportion who discover as Christian, or indeed with any religion, has seemingly come to a halt.”
But reported church attendance fell in the identical period. In 2018, one in five of “Christian identifiers” reported attending once every week; the figure is now one in eight. Nine per cent reported going at the very least once a month, down from 12 per cent. Among those aged 18 to 24, the figures were three per cent down from eight per cent.
Sir John said that the information illustrated the variety of the country’s religious landscape. “One in three of those attending a non secular service on a weekly basis are to be present in a mosque, mandir, gurdwara, temple, or synagogue, fairly than a church. Moreover, amongst those aged under 35, lower than half of those attending a non secular service on a monthly basis are to be found inside a church.”
Professor Conrad Hackett, a senior demographer and associate director of research at Pew Research Center within the United States, has suggested that different methodologies may lie behind the contrast in findings. Pew studies had found that online opt-in surveys “may produce especially misleading results for young adults”, he wrote in an internet article last month.
The Bible Society has defended its report, and suggested that recent data from the BSA “needs to be interpreted with care”. It highlights a change in methodology throughout the pandemic: a “push-to-web” approach; a drop in response rates (to 17 per cent); and “small subgroup sizes”, equivalent to only 74 young men aged 18 to 24, which, it argues, could make it harder to detect emerging patterns.
“While all surveys have limitations, differences often reflect purpose and method, not error,” it says. “No single dataset needs to be treated as definitive; counting on multiple sources is standard practice in robust social research.”
Dr Goodhew said on Saturday: “People are very quick to hammer what’s seen as flaky ecclesial optimism, but I believe we also need some scepticism about ecclesial doomsters.”
He warned against “decline theology, which assumes that the decline of the Church is inevitable. . . It has no basis within the New Testament or the Christian tradition; it’s deeply corrosive pastorally; and it’s shaky if you take a look at facts on the bottom.”
