Justin Brierley

We’re closing 2024 by republishing our five most-read articles of the year. Here’s No. 1: Justin Brierley’s article from our Easter issue on the revival of Christianity. Tom Holland recently invited me to attend a service of Evensong with him at London’s oldest church, St Bartholomew the Great. Holland, who co-hosts the phenomenally popular The Rest is History podcast, has been a regular congregant for a few years. He began attending while researching Dominion, his bestselling book which outlined the way the 1st-century Christian revolution has irrevocably shaped the 21st-century West’s moral imagination.

When weeping Parisians watched Notre Dame, the city’s beloved 800-year-old cathedral, being consumed by a devastating fire in 2019, it served as a sad symbol of the decimation of churchgoing itself in France. Ever since revolutionaries began decapitating priests and nuns in the 1790s, a precipitous decline in Catholic faith has been underway in the country. The ‘Last Supper’ debacle of last summer’s Olympic opening ceremony only served to cement the country’s famously secular reputation. In 2023, the number of people attending Church of England services increased by 5 per cent However, against all odds, the bells of Notre Dame will be ringing out again in time for Christmas Day. A remarkable reconstruction project has seen a transformed cathedral rise from the ashes.