82. The Quiet Revival That Wasn't: David Voas on Faked Data and the Truth About Religion in Britain

Support Humanism Now & Join Our Community! "I don't think that we have any solid evidence of a religious revival underway in England, or for that matter, anywhere else." — David Voas In April 2025, the Bible Society published a report claiming church attendance in England had surged by more than 50% since 2018, with young men's churchgoing up fivefold. It made national headlines. A year later, both YouGov and the Bible Society retracted it. This episode unpacks what actually went wrong: bots and bogus respondents in online survey panels, why the data never supported the story, and what decades of solid evidence tell us instead about religious decline in Britain. Our guest is Dr. David Voas, Emeritus Professor of Social Science at UCL, where he led the Social Research Institute from 2016 to 2020. A quantitative social scientist, he has spent his career studying religious change in modern societies, and his TEDx talk, "Why There Is No Way Back for Religion in the West," has been viewed nearly two million times. In this conversation we cover: How AI chatbots, survey farming and bogus respondents undermined the survey data, and why this is an industry-wide problem, not a one-off The three ways sociologists actually measure religiosity — identity, practice and belief — and why they don't always move together Why secularisation is a generational process that plays out over centuries, and what fills the space religion leaves behind LINKS & REFERENCES David Voas UCL profile: https://profiles.ucl.ac.uk/56605-david-voas TEDx talk, "Why There Is No Way Back for Religion in the West": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtAR_OGzlcg "Why Humanism Is the Future" — Humanists UK Convention 2023: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfI7VgkDFMg "Is there really a religious revival in England? Why I'm sceptical of a new report" (UCL News/The Conversation, 16 June 2025): https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2025/jun/comment-there-really-religious-revival-england-why-im-sceptical-new-report British Religion in Numbers: https://www.brin.ac.uk Mentioned in this episode Bible Society, "The Quiet Revival" report (retracted): https://www.biblesociety.org.uk/research/quiet-revival BBC News coverage of the report's retraction: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpwjxx5eyn1o Christian Smith, Why Religion Went Obsolete (Oxford University Press): https://global.oup.com/academic/product/why-religion-went-obsolete-9780197800737 If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a review — it helps more people find the show. Support Humanism Now from just £5/month for exclusive content, a say in future episodes, and we'll plant a tree each month in your name. Follow us @HumanismNowPod. Send us Fan Mail Support the show Support Humanism Now & Join Our Community! Follow @HumanismNowPod | YouTube | TikTok | Instagram | Facebook | Threads | X.com | BlueSky Humanism Now is produced by Humanise Live a podcast production agency based in London, serving charities, companies, and individuals across the globe. Contact us to get starting in podcasting today at humanise.live or [email protected]: Blossom by Light Prism Podcast transcripts are AI-generated and may contain errors or omissions. They are provided to make our content more accessible, but should not be considered a fully accurate record of the conversation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices