Secularists are cock-a-hoop at the news that the “Quiet Revival” in British Christianity may just be a thing of nought. On Thursday, YouGov announced that a survey they had conduced last year which had found a striking increase in Christian observance, particularly amongst the young, had been flawed. Controls to filter out fraudulent responses had not been properly put in place. Thus, the results, which have driven a debate about a national return to faith, could not be trusted.
There is something of the holier-than-thou and doth-protest-too-much in this secularist sermonising
Andrew Copson, Chief Executive of Humanists UK, was swift to chide: “This is both validation and vindication. We need to be absolutely clear: there is no revival of Christianity in Britain…Much of the damage has already been done. Global media reports have too often and wrongly jumped on the bandwagon of a supposed Christian revival in the UK. That must stop.”
There is something of the holier-than-thou and doth-protest-too-much in this secularist sermonising. Secularists’ constant refrain that “The UK is not a Christian country” is undermined by them having no answer to the cold fact that our ideas of nationhood, law, education, time, and culture have all been profoundly shaped by 1,400 years of Christian observance. Besides this, they are out of touch with the data about the present. Although the YouGov survey is not reliable, there are a host of others from different pollsters showing a gentle growth in engagement with Christianity amongst the young. Harder to measure, but still perfectly visible to anyone involved in the field, is a change in the attitude of the young towards religion.
It was once the property of youth culture, freshly minted in the ‘60s, to rebel against Christianity. A fresh-faced Alan Bennett made the audience of That Was The Week That Was hoot with laughter at his parody of a pontificating parson. John Lennon didn’t just say that the Beatles were bigger than Jesus, but that his disciples were “thick and ordinary.” The young deserted the pews and polite church tea dances for free love and the spiritual wisdom of the maharishi.
But just as Private Eye has turned from being the sharp satirist of the ‘60s into the present-day simpering senescent courtier with ossified manners and boundless self-regard, so too has the ‘60s progressive rebellion against Christianity aged into the overbearing orthodoxy of the establishment. It is folly to think Gen-Z will get their teenage kicks by mocking a faith that has already been the object of rebellion since the time of their grandparents.
Over the last year, I have visited a number of schools and universities to give talks about Christianity and history. On every occasion, I have been struck by a thirst for knowledge amongst students, and a desire to reconnect with and cherish a religious tradition whose neglect by previous generations disturbs them.
A striking example has been the burgeoning congregations for daily services at Oxford colleges. When I was an undergraduate in the ‘90s, daily matins and evening prayer were just the chaplain praying by himself. Sunday evensong numbers were only buoyed up by the prospect of free claret from the chaplain afterwards. But now, the chapels are bulging at the seams.
The Rev’d Dr Robert Wainwright, Chaplain of Oriel College Oxford, recently commented: “The chapel is full for Choral Evensong (between 80 and 110) every Sunday…Everyday students turn up for BCP Mattins at 8am, mostly lads, usually double digits – it’s a level of commitment I’ve never seen before in my 20 years at Oxford.”
These numbers don’t necessarily mean that everyone in the pews have become Christians, but that they are curious: “Plenty of non-believing students are happy to attend Evensong and they expect to hear a distinctively Christian sermon, not a humanist moral message with a religious veneer.”
Wainwright also reports that they have a strong desire for ritual. Others have confirmed this, and see it as a desire to connect with an authentic tradition of spirituality and contemplation not offered by contemporary online culture.
Similar patterns have been seen by Esmé Partridge, a researcher at the Christian think tank Theos who is currently studying new churchgoing patterns among young adults for the Church of England.
“In my research,” said Partridge, “I’ve been able to speak to over thirty young people who have recently started attending church. Naturally there are whole variety of positive influences that have personally led them there – social media, discovering Christian authors like C. S. Lewis, even learning about other world religions – but perhaps the reason these explorations are occurring now rather that say, ten years ago, is because of the absence of hostility towards Christianity in mainstream culture and the breaking down of barriers that once closed it off as an area of spiritual exploration. We’ve moved beyond both the Boomer rebellion against religion and the New Atheism of the early 2010s – today’s climate is one of curiosity and openness.”
If there is a rebellion, it is against the Boomers who have left Gen-Z with spiralling debt and a fractured country, while failing to pass on a Christian religious culture that might offer personal solace in the midst of chaos and the tools to re-knit society together. The questions I have been asked again and again by young people is “how are we going to reconnect?” and “how are we going to repair the damage?” The self-indulgent Boomers and the schoolmarmish secularists are driving the youth to be rebels with a cause: religious restoration.
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