The ‘quiet Revival’ Breaks Spiritual Stillness In The United Kingdom

In the years following the COVID-19 pandemic, the spiritual atmosphere in the United Kingdom seems to have changed. Evangelical churches have been reporting significant growth in attendance, as well as more conversions and baptisms. Congregations are more ethnically diverse, and people have been coming to church to seek God on their own initiative, often because they’ve been reading the Bible or engaging with the gospel online.

There are similar reports from evangelical churches in various denominations and coalitions. The Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches (FIEC), to which my church belongs, is an association of more 660 independent gospel churches in the UK, and it’s probably the nation’s largest single conservative evangelical grouping. Among ourselves, members of the association have described what’s happening in our country as “low-level revival.” Ministry has been more encouraging than at any other point in the past 20 years.

What we’ve sensed anecdotally has now been confirmed by a major report published by the Bible Society, “The Quiet Revival.” They surveyed more than 13,000 people, repeating similar research undertaken in 2018. The results reveal a significant increase in church attendance over the past six years, especially among those aged 18 to 24 (and particularly among men in that group). The data puts a lie to the common assumption that churches will continue to decline and that each successive generation will be less religious than the last. It turns out Gen X is the least religious generation.

What Does the Report Say?

This report is understandably good news for Christians in the United Kingdom who feel beleaguered in a secular and post-Christian culture. Church attendance and Christian adherence have been in near-continuous decline in Britain since the high point of 1858, with one short period of sustained growth between the end of the Second World War and the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Less than half the population identified as Christian in the last national census in 2021, and the vast majority of those lack real understanding of Christianity and aren’t involved in church. They’re nominal, cultural Christians.

Ministry has been more encouraging than at any other point in the past 20 years.

The mainline denominations are experiencing a catastrophic meltdown and face a demographic time bomb due to their aging congregations. This includes the Church of England, Church of Scotland, Methodists, and the United Reformed Church. Unsurprisingly, Christians are increasingly marginalized and have little political or cultural influence.

The report suggests this pattern of decline isn’t the whole story. In the past six years, churchgoing Christians have increased from 8 percent to 12 percent of the population, or numerically from 3.7 million to 5.8 million people. The number of 18-to-24-year-olds attending church has risen from 4 percent to 16 percent, with young men increasing from 4 percent to 21 percent. Only 12 percent of their female peers are churchgoers. Nineteen percent of churchgoers are now from an ethnic minority, but 32 percent of churchgoers aged 18 to 54 are from an ethnic minority.

The growth in church attendance hasn’t been uniform across denominations. The greatest growth has been within Catholicism and Pentecostalism. Catholics have increased from 23 percent of churchgoers in 2018 to 31 percent today, and Pentecostals from 4 percent in 2018 to 10 percent today. In contrast, Anglicans have dropped from 41 percent to 34 percent. Young people say they’re more spiritual, with 35 percent of 18-to 24-year-olds saying there’s “definitely a God/gods or some higher power,” and 40 percent pray at least monthly. Those who attend church report higher life satisfaction and better connection to their communities.

Beyond the Numbers: Putting the Report in Context

While the report is encouraging, we shouldn’t be too desperate to find hope there. Churchgoing isn’t the same as genuine Christian faith, and a rise in cultural Christianity, even if expressed more actively, doesn’t equal revival.

Much of the growth is also attributable to the effects of migration. There’s currently a net migration rate of 728,000 per year to the United Kingdom, and the large rises in the number of Catholics and Pentecostals are almost certainly a result of migration from Africa and elsewhere, bolstering the number of church attenders. The U.K. population has grown by a little less than 2 million people since 2018, which is almost the same as the increase in church attendance. The overall statistics conceal the challenge of re-evangelizing the White British population and the ethnic minorities that migrated to the UK in the post-war period.

However, despite such cautions, and considering our experience and the reports from evangelicals more widely, there does seem to be a new move of God in the United Kingdom and a greater openness and response among young people, especially men.

From a human perspective, a major factor seems to be the desire to find real hope and meaning. Secular liberalism hasn’t delivered the happiness and freedom it promised, and loneliness and mental health issues are ever-increasing. Young people bear the impossible burden of defining their own identity, and young men are tired of the relentless castigating of so-called toxic masculinity. Some pressures that have led to a rise in populist policies and alt-right influencers are also causing people to turn to the church for answers to their pain and frustration.

The growing churches fall into two broad categories. On the one hand, some young people are turning to Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. They’re attracted by the solemnity and historical rootedness of formal ritualism. The more sacramental style fits with the zeitgeist of nebulous spirituality and the desire for transcendence that rises above the mundane. On the other hand, many growing churches faithfully preach the apostolic gospel in all its depth and provide a warm and welcoming community to all.

In decline are the mainstream churches that have abandoned the biblical gospel in favor of a liberalism that reflects the progressive culture, or those shallow, seeker-sensitive evangelical churches that seemed trendy in the 1990s but now feel like a tired and insubstantial chat show. The lesson is that people want substance, not superficiality.

It remains to be seen if the turn to Catholicism and Orthodoxy endures or if this is a spiritual fad, a natural swing of the cultural pendulum. I’m more convinced of the enduring significance of the growth of evangelical churches, with real conversions and commitment. Research undertaken by the Evangelical Alliance to be published later this summer will confirm growth in all groups and show that simple factors lead to people becoming Christians in evangelical churches, such as having a Christian friend and reading the Bible for yourself. We can often make evangelism and church growth far more complex than it is and forget it’s the work of the sovereign Spirit.

From Embers to a Flame

These signs of new evangelical life in the United Kingdom encourage us to have confidence in the gospel and persevere in gospel ministry. At the darkest times, spiritually speaking, in our national history God has been gracious to send reformation or revival.

The church’s decline and secularism’s triumph aren’t inevitable. In many ways, it’s easier to preach the gospel in a post-Christian, liberal, progressive culture than to try to fight the battle to maintain cultural Christianity and its attendant morality. The light and truth of the gospel shines more brightly against the background of its alternative. Our task isn’t to preserve a Christian culture through politics but to seek to convert people into God’s kingdom. As the church grows, the society will be influenced and changed, just as it was after the 18th-century revivals with the high point of evangelical social reform. In God’s mercy, such transformation is possible again.

The church’s decline and secularism’s triumph aren’t inevitable.

I commend the Bible Society for the significant investment it has made in producing this report and the encouragement it has brought. We probably need to discount some of the bare statistics because they don’t reflect real gospel growth. But within them, we can confirm anecdotal evidence that God is at work in a greater way compared to the recent past.

Please pray for the Lord to have mercy on the United Kingdom and for the “quiet revival” we’re experiencing to become a mighty revival that transforms the church and the nation. That’s what we need.