A new survey is showing dramatic church growth among young adults in the United Kingdom.
The Bible Society study, “The Quiet Revival,” which surveyed more than 13,000 people, tracked a 12% uptick since 2018 among 18- to 24-year-olds who report attending church at least monthly. And, over the last six years, that number among men has shot from 4% to 21%.
More young women also started attending church, increasing from 3% to 12%.
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News of more members of Generation Z attending church comes on the heels of a report last summer from CBN News detailing a spiritual awakening unfolding across the U.K.
“Between 2020 and 2023, I found myself often saying that I’ve never seen the church at such a low ebb that it just felt like we were going through the motions post-COVID, that churches were struggling, their numbers were down,” said Pastor Craig Cooney, who leads Hope Church in Northern Ireland. “But not only were their numbers down, there was just a lack of zeal, lack of passion, a lack of enthusiasm, a lack of growth. And something shifted around the start of this year, I would say, and it’s difficult to describe or define.”
Last summer, for example, 70,000 people gathered in London’s Trafalgar Square to hear the Gospel.
Tracking with that shift, the Bible Society study showed church attendance is on the rise among a number of demographics, including Generation Z, Millennials, and those above 65 years old.
Church attendance overall has risen by some 50% in the U.K. over the last six years.
One of the study’s co-authors, Dr. Rhiannon McAleer, said the study’s findings challenge the belief that the church in the U.K. “is in terminal decline.”
“While some traditional denominations continue to face challenges, we’ve seen significant, broad-based growth among most expressions of Church — particularly in Roman Catholicism and Pentecostalism,” she said. “There are now over two million more people attending church than there were six years ago.”
And the shift seems to be very real.
John Stevens, a pastor in the English town of Market Harborough, wrote in a recent post for The Gospel Coalition that ministry “has been more encouraging than at any other point in the past 20 years.”
Interestingly, Stevens credits at least some of the shift to the mass migration into the U.K. in recent years, noting there is currently a net migration rate of 728,000 people per year. The notable upticks in the number of Catholics and Pentecostals are “almost certainly a result of migration from Africa and elsewhere, bolstering the number of church attenders,” he wrote.
“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,” he added. “The overall statistics conceal the challenge of re-evangelizing the White British population and the ethnic minorities that migrated to the U.K. in the post-war period.”
Even with that in mind, he expressed reasons for hopefulness. Stevens noted 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” as younger generations have become disenchanted with “mainstream churches that have abandoned the biblical Gospel in favor of a liberalism that reflects the progressive culture.”
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