Losing My Irreligion

Stories and stats from the UK suggest that something has shifted, spiritually, over the past few years. -- Since 2018, two million more people in England and Wales have started regularly attending church – an increase fuelled largely by Gen Z, and by young men especially. So say the results from a new survey conducted by YouGov on behalf of the British and Foreign Bible Society, results which cut across a bunch of our assumptions: that Western societies are on a secularising trajectory; that women are more religious than men; that young people are more likely to reject “traditional” beliefs such as Christianity. In this episode of Life & Faith, we gather a few reports from abroad to get a handle on what’s happening in the UK, spiritually speaking. Vicar-in-training and Oxford research student Daniel Kim, who has written extensively about spirituality and occult beliefs in contemporary culture, talks about the spiritual openness of Gen Z. Bri Walsh, an Aussie who spent a season in London recently, offers an insider/outsider perspective on UK churchgoing in the 2020s. And Rob Barward-Symmons, co-author of The Quiet Revival – the report that puts concrete numbers to the anecdotal rumblings of the last few years – talks us through the data and what might be driving the recent surge in church attendance. Explore: Check out The Quiet Revival report, by Rob Barward-Symmons and Rhiannon McAleer, from British and Foreign Bible Society https://www.biblesociety.org.uk/research/quiet-revival Read more from Daniel Kim about contemporary spirituality https://www.seenandunseen.com/contributors/daniel-kim [Note: This content references The Quiet Revival report published by Bible Society UK. Since publication, flaws have been identified in the underlying survey data, and the report’s headline findings have been withdrawn while new analysis is undertaken. You can read more here.]