Article

Community

Creed

Faith

Spiritual formation

8 April 2025

5 min read

The welcome surprise of church growth

Beyond the noise of scandal and politics, a low and steady hum resonates. It’s the sound of a quiet revival.

Lauren Westwood

Lauren writes on faith, community, and anything else that compels her to open the Notes app.

A cover of a book show a cross and the title 'You are loved'.

Rod Long on Unsplash.

‘More young men turned up at church for the first time this morning.’

‘Suddenly our pews are filled with twenty-somethings.’

‘A new family is coming on Sundays. Their teenage daughter has been dragging them along.’

I can believe it.

If you’ve heard similar things about church congregations over the past few years, you’re likely to have heard the same caveat: anecdotally, of course. These conversations have long been coloured with an undertone of confusion and uncertainty.

The Bible Society has released a landmark piece of research that has uncovered the data to back up these anecdotes about growth in churchgoing in England and Wales. The Quiet Revival is based on findings of a survey of adults in England and Wales in 2018 and 2024, undertaken by YouGov.

This set of robust data supports that anecdotal swell around church engagement in recent years, particularly among young men. It evidences a growing Church, the increased positive impact of it in communities, and spiritual openness among the young. It paints a picture of an multi-ethnic and multi-generational Church that is transforming alongside an ever-evolving cultural landscape and a shifting national understanding. This is exciting stuff.

The report identifies a general increase of people who go to church at least once a month and call themselves a Christian from 8 to 12 per cent. It presents a radical shift among young adults between 18-24, all within the Generation Z cohort, as being more likely to fit this definition of churchgoers than any generation except for those over 65. In a further reversal of norms, the research sees men as more likely to attend church than women across most ages, but especially among under-35s. Critically the report outlines that this is ‘not a case of young men joining while young women are leaving’, but of mutual increase in church attendance.

It seems that, just maybe, Christianity is cool.

Gen Z are the most likely to believe in God and to pray regularly. Just under two-thirds would be happy for a Christian friend to pray for them, and 47 per cent of non-churchgoing Gen Z believe it is a good thing for Christians to talk about their faith with non-Christians. This signals a move from attributing growth to the sole influence of cultural commentators or media personalities, and towards confident local Christians sharing faith between friends. Rather than being spurred on by influencers and intellectuals, the greatest impact comes from relationships and in-person invitation.

However, this remarkable openness to religion and experiential spirituality among Gen Z is not straightforward: a third agree that the Bible is a source of harm in the world. This is no longer an anecdotal curiosity; this is real, documented growth exhibited in an emerging spiritual generation, received by a cultural atmosphere that is warming to faith.

Going to church is good for you. In an age of self-help phenomena, The Quiet Revival positions the Church as an antidote to fragmented social lives and mental health crises. Churchgoers of all ages are more likely than non-churchgoers to be happy, to possess hope for the future and to believe that their life is meaningful, as well as being less likely to say they’re feeling anxious or depressed. Critically, these findings are true for young churchgoers, giving further reason behind their flocking to churches. Quite simply, it makes them happier.

It’s a balm to a generation – particularly young men – who are digitally surrounded but socially isolated. Going to church leads to better connection to people in the wider community, with nearly two-thirds of 18–34-year-old churchgoers feeling close to people in their local area, compared to just a quarter of their non-churchgoer peers. Looking specifically at young men in church, this increases to 68 per cent, presenting an incredible opportunity for churches to cut through the loneliness epidemic.

‘The difference is staggering,’ remarks Dr Rob Barward-Symmons, one of the reports authors. ‘It paints a picture of young adults who have found a deep sense of meaning and life satisfaction through attending church regularly, who feel connected to their communities and – in the data we have gathered on their social action – are keen to give back to their local communities as well. This is not the image we typically see of young adults in the media, but it is a powerful one.’

Going to church isn’t just good for you, it’s also good for your community. Perhaps The Quiet Revival’s deepest encouragement lies in its glimpse of a faith-in-action Christianity. The research shows a picture of churchgoers who are not just concerned for their own wellbeing, but who want to improve the lives of others - 78 per cent of all churchgoers agreeing that making a difference in the world is important.

In particular, the churches' younger generations desire social change, possess confidence and investment in effecting positive change, and a responsibility to contribute to their communities. Acts such as regularly donating to charity, supporting a local food bank, and participating in environmental improvement activities are seen as the outworkings of Christian faith in action. It indicates the consequences of churchgoing through a deep embodying of God’s love and the passing of this love to others.

‘These are the markers of whether you’re a true believer or not,’ adds Dr Krish Kandiah, sharing his own encouragement in the findings. ‘It’s not whether you turn up at church, have signed a confession or sing the songs. Jesus expounds on how to tell whether you’re in the Kingdom or not: “I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink.”’

Now we’ve got the numbers, we’re left with questions. How can we respond? Where will this lead us? Are we witnessing the death of nominal Christianity? To say the findings have caught the Church off-guard may be an understatement. The 2024 survey happened to go to field on the day that news broke of Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby’s resignation. We are living in times of political unrest. Religion and just about everything else is weaponised. The poverty gap is increasing, and not just in material poverty.

The reality is that we all have a part to play. The report is inclusive in its approach and recommendations. The first call is for an increased recognition of the scale and impact of churchgoers, something that can be adopted by social influencers and decision-makers. The following recommendations are more directed to those within the Church, to prioritise discipleship and Bible teaching, to cultivate intentional intergenerational spaces where each churchgoer is empowered to tell their story, and to put emphasis on building interpersonal relationships.

Beyond the noise of scandal and political Christianity, a soft, low and steady hum resonates. It doesn’t dictate; it shares. It doesn’t drown others out; it listens. It doesn’t withhold; it invites. It prizes action over words. This is the sound of quiet revival.

Celebrate our 2nd birthday!

Since March 2023, our readers have enjoyed over 1,000 articles. All for free. This is made possible through the generosity of our amazing community of supporters.
If you enjoy Seen & Unseen, would you consider making a gift towards our work?
Do so by joining Behind The Seen. Alongside other benefits, you’ll receive an extra fortnightly email from me sharing my reading and reflections on the ideas that are shaping our times.
Graham Tomlin
Editor-in-Chief

Join now

Article

Comment

Community

Sustainability

Wildness

12 June 2025

5 min read

What my noisy, messy crow neighbours have taught me about how to live

We can’t control nature; we just need to become more porous to it

Joel Pierce

Joel Pierce is the administrator of Christ's College, University of Aberdeen. He has recently published his first book.

Meet the neighbours.

Townsend Walton on Unsplash.

Our neighbours hate our crows. I can’t blame them. The hundreds of crows that occupy the tops of the ancient pines which surround our rural manse are the noisiest and messiest residents I have ever lived near. They greet each sunrise with a din of caws and counter-caws, as if they are deeply concerned that anyone might miss this momentous daily event or the fact that it’s now happening before 5:30a.m. In nesting season, which lasts most of April and May, our car is easily identifiable in any carpark by the crusted grey spots with which the crows see fit to adorn it. Within a week of moving in, we gave up on the washing line so invitingly strung between two of the pines. Our pristine whites were too tempting a target for our crows.

I do not attend the meetings of our local community council, but I hear whispers of what transpires there. Our crows, evidently, have been a regular topic of conversation. Multiple solutions have been proffered for driving them away. All have been tried and all have failed. Our crows cling fiercely to their homes and their determination is more than a match for any human efforts. If I have the vibe of my community right, at least some of its members feel that there’s something perverse, obscene even, about a flock of birds being allowed to upset our human right to create a serene, comfortable, and convenient habitation. Our clump of houses is surrounded by a visually stunning landscape; shouldn’t the aural landscape be equally beautiful?

If my family does not mind our crows, it is because the treetop drama is just one more example of many natural encroachments on the house, some more welcome than others.

Every year we celebrate the miraculous return to our eaves of house martins, home from their intercontinental peregrinations. We look forward to another summer spent watching their acrobatics and listening to their chicks in the nests an arm’s length from our windows.

Clearing up the mess of our attic’s bats is an annual chore, one thankfully performed stoically by our church’s property convener, but there are compensations - such as the twilight shows they put on outside our living room window, performing impossible turns and reversals midair in their search for prey.

Less welcome are the massive spiders, which are a perennial presence; the slugs, which seemed to apparate onto the hall carpet all through winter, the mice, two of whom sacrificed themselves to knock our dishwasher out of action by chewing through its hose; and the wasps who built a nest the size of a telephone box in the roof space above our back bathroom.

Least fun of all has been what we call the Great Earwig Migrations, which have happened twice in our half-decade in the manse and which involve weeks of finding the little bugs under, seemingly, every object and on every surface.

When we moved into the manse, we expected challenges, the high heating bills, the leaking roof, and the isolation of the countryside. What we did not expect was the experience of porousness; the shock of realising that we had so little control over what other forms of life saw fit to share our habitation with us.

At first it felt to me perverse, obscene even, that a house, even a 120-year-old house, should be so vulnerable to incursions by animal creation. Shouldn’t our home, our space, be a haven where we can control who or what enters, who or what we feel comfortable with, and who or what we can exclude?

If I had to give a name to this expectation, maybe it would be that of the buffered home, a play on philosopher Charles Taylor’s description of the modern self as buffered. Taylor contrasts the selves we aspire to be in modernity, ones able to control and order our bodies, our space, our lives, and our relationships so that they accord with our autonomous desires and actions, with those of our premodern ancestors. Medievals and ancients assumed porosity. Bodies were subject not just to biological infection, but spiritual infections too. Projects and plans were frustrated not just by mistakes or personal failings, but by the ever-fickle whims of the goddess Fortuna. Their lives, their bodies, their homes, existed in a perpetual state of vulnerability. The threat of everything falling apart was always on the horizon.

We want nature to survive, flourish even, but not at the cost of our comforts or our sense of autonomy and security.

Modern technology has helped us tame the more unwelcome of these forces, but it has also given us an overly naive expectation that all that is inconvenient about nature can and should be gradually eliminated. This expectation frames the way we respond to worries about climate change and other creeping environmental crises. We want nature to survive, flourish even, but not at the cost of our comforts or our sense of autonomy and security. But as our ancestors might remind us, we are part of nature too, and, just as in any relationship, mutual vulnerability and sacrifice are needed if we are all going to survive. This is scary, but there are resources within Christianity - within other faiths too - to help us understand that there are benefits to affirming our vulnerability, our porosity.

My daughters love our crows. They point in wonder as the crows flood into the sky at dusk, hundreds of them making a giant circle once, then twice round the garden, before settling down for the night. When, in late May, grounded fledgings appear, bundles of feathers shocked at the sudden inhospitality of the nest, too stunned to realise they can fly home, my daughters watch over them, anxious lest the local cats take advantage of their bewilderment.

A few Sundays ago, my youngest, who struggles to stay quiet and well-behaved in Sunday School, pulled me out of church early. We sat on the church lawn staring up at the crows and soon were adapting the andante melodies of that Sunday’s hymns into imagined songs of praise that crows might sing. “No,” my youngest said, simpatico with the crows as she is, “I think they’d want something more upbeat.” And so we tried setting our own corvid-themed praise lyrics to Rosé and Bruno Mars’ song APT, while listening to the caw and counter-caw above. “Dad, how do you think God sees the world?” she asked me when we finished. I stumbled through my best theologically informed explanation of how God could be in every part of creation without being of it, before she stopped me. “I think it’s like a giant snow globe that he holds in his hands.” Watching the birds swirl around us, two stationary figures caught by the same currents of air that were sweeping them aloft, what could I do but agree?

Support Seen & Unseen

Since Spring 2023, our readers have enjoyed over 1,000 articles. All for free.
This is made possible through the generosity of our amazing community of supporters.

If you enjoy Seen & Unseen, would you consider making a gift towards our work?

Do so by joining Behind The Seen. Alongside other benefits, you’ll receive an extra fortnightly email from me sharing my reading and reflections on the ideas that are shaping our times.

Graham Tomlin
Editor-in-Chief

Join Behind the Seen