In April 2025 Bible Society published a report, The Quiet Revival, based on YouGov polling, which claimed that church going in Britain had increased from 8% of the population to 12% between 2018 and 2024. The report was subject to criticism, for example by the Pew Research Center.
But now Bible Society has issued a statement to say that “Earlier this month YouGov informed Bible Society that the 2024 survey sample on which our report The Quiet Revival was based was faulty, and it can no longer be regarded as a reliable source of information about the spiritual landscape in Britain.” The original report has been taken down from Bible Society’s website, although the society appear to be very reluctant to accept that there might not have been a “Quiet Revival”.
There is also this report from YouGov: Conclusions of investigation into 2024 Bible Society study.
I can recommend the following comments and press report.
Tim Wyatt The Critical Friend I told you so
Jennifer Stirrup The Bible Society and Garbage In, Gospel Out: Why Data Due Diligence Can’t Be Outsourced.
James Macintyre Church Times Bible Society says its Quiet Revival report was based on a ‘faulty’ survey
Thank you for the pointer to my post ‘Garbage in, Gospel out’. Unfortunately The Bible Society are desperately doubling down on their stance and there’s plenty of online voices to validate them: certainty rather than faith or doubt. Groupthink and groupshift in action, which may skew their future research and findings towards the ‘resonance’ as they try to show they were right all along. If a data source is robust, then it will withstand scrutiny. Is it impious to ask too many questions? It’s not good enough to simply rely on the reputation of the data provider. In the era… Read more »
Thanks for your article, Jennifer. It has been beyond frustrating to watch the BS defend this flawed research despite warnings from those better qualified to comment.
Excellent article Jennifer. as someone in a similar field, it all makes perfect sense. I like your example of Red Teaming. It can be more generalised to the concepts of software testing. The purpose of software testing is to find errors, not to prove correctness. Myers wrote a great (and too little read nowadays) book on software testing. I haven’t read into it, but surely the way they gathered the survey information must be in question? I guess what you were describing is how you can the data as symptoms to identify whether there is some other root cause or… Read more »
Yes, I agree. The questions are just as important as the answers. Did the survey change over time, for example? Also, on my mind is this question: What is a Christian? Do people simply mean ‘I am not one of the other, e.g. immigrant, Muslim, or other label?” With the rise of people like Tommy Robinson engaging in Christianity, what do people mean, and does that translate into Church attendance? Is there a halo effect? (not intended as a pun!) If you focus solely on who is walking through the front door, you risk ignoring the quiet Exodus out of… Read more »
That is so right. The label “Christian” means precisely nothing when it encompasses so many people who have nothing in common morally or theologically. And the tired “bums on seats” metric needs some re-thinking.
The label ‘Christian’ has, in part, been monopolised by a certain narrow group of conservative fundamentalist people and excluded swathes of faithful believers of other traditions.
In the wider world the world ‘Christian’ all too often denotes a religious nutter of exclusivist style.
It is akin to the Union Flag being coopted by the political loony but dangerous right wing.
I’m a Quiet Revival sceptic – because if there’s a supposedly big change you can’t see, the most likely explanation is that it hasn’t happened. That said, there has been a large upturn in bible sales in the UK, and book sales should be easy to verify. There’s also an obvious point re the YouGov surveys of 2018 and 2024 – namely that something must have changed to produce the different answers. The sampling methodology could have changed. But YouGov didn’t comment on methodological differences between the two surveys. If not, you’re left with the implication that people were more… Read more »
If like me, you do see more new young people popping up in church out of the blue than you have in several decades of ministry, you begin to ask the question ‘is something going on here, societally?’ More, better, research is needed, it seems to me in order to explore this, rather than doubling down on the ‘Quiet revival’ narrative, or simply dismissing it. If you can’t see new young people coming and trying out church, it may be that the church you’re looking at is one where it isn’t happening. As I understand it, the Bible Society (not… Read more »
Agreed. Increased bible sales suggests increased interest, which the church should engage with. The GouGov report is not completely clear, but my understanding is more that they have found reasons to doubt the accuracy of their data, rather than that they have shown it to be wrong. Their new survey will shed light on that. Aside from sampling issues, I wonder about subset analyses: if you slice data from two surveys into enough subgroups, you will eventually, just by chance, find a subgroup that differs substantially between the surveys: in this case, increased church attendance by young men. To avoid… Read more »
The increased Bible sales argument was in fact a red flag. Let’s suppose, arguendo, that there in fact is an increase in church going by 18-24 year olds, and that as part of that those new attendees are seeking out texts to read. How likely is it that they obtain those texts by buying physical books? There are endless websites and apps which provide the ability to look up chapter and verse, compare translations, search on keyword, search thematically, etc, etc. They are mostly free. Even if there were an increase in sales (I did read the report at the… Read more »
Three points – we don’t know the upturn in 18-24 year olds was illusory, but neither do we yet have reliable evidence for it. Second, heading back to subset analysis. The overall finding was quite a large increase in overall churchgoing, up from 8 to 12%, but a very large increase in the number of young males going to church.But how many people were in that subset and what were the confidence limits etc? Third, it seems safe to assume that substantially increased bible sales correlates with increased interest in what the bible has to say. Which the church should… Read more »
The argument that an extraordinary claim can be taken seriously because of the absence of evidence in either direction is pretty thin: we don’t have a lot of evidence either way about the Loch Ness Monster either, but few people take it seriously. Post Hoc subgroup analysis is one of the things that sparked the replication crisis in social psychology and elsewhere. You perform an experiment with 1000 people. You fail to reject the null hypothesis at the 95% confidence interval. So, you break the 1000 responses into two subgroups, by age, or by gender. That sounds legit, right? Neither… Read more »
As mentioned, I agree about subgroup analyses, which is why it’s prudent to define up-front the questions a study seeks to answer – to prevent a long fishing trip through the data. But in an entire group, if the data show a change, I view that as interesting and something that should be explored further and explained. Now the YouGov data show a change between 2018 and 2024, and the question I’m not hearing an answer to is ‘What caused the change?’. If there were simply lots of bogus respondents providing random answers, why would the random answers show an… Read more »
“If there were simply lots of bogus respondents providing random answers, why would the random answers show an overall difference in reported churchgoing between the two studies?” Because random samples can be different. Yes, if you draw a random sample from the population many times, those samples will themselves be normally distributed (irrespective of the distribution from which you are drawing: the central limit theorem). But two samples? They can be radically different. “Also, why would it be extraordinary to claim that the number of people going to church could actually increase?” Because the British Social Attitudes Survey says they… Read more »
But random variations are quantifiable, and one of the central uses of statistical analysis is to gauge whether differences are meaningful, given the known scale of random noise. Every year, any number of studies in myriad fields compare results from two rival vendors/ methods/ products/ techniques/ treatments, and determine whether differences in outcome are meaningful (significant) given the random fluctuations due to testing them in finite groups of people. Now if that was not done in this case, it would be a very substantial weakness in the analysis. But the approach is so standard and so ubiquitous that you have… Read more »
I don’t think the argument in your first para necessarily entirely holds up. I think that for young people who start to take an interest in Christian faith there is something important and talismanic about having your own copy of the Bible. It might seem counter-intuitive among a connected generation who are fully cognisant of AI and social media, but recent experience of a number of young people has shown that having their own Bible matters more than we might think. In any event, more and better research is needed.
Agreed. And there can also be something rich and talismanic in the act of giving a Bible to someone.
Do you not wonder whether the headline news report might have created the phenomenon? If young men hear that apparently a lot of young men have started attending church and showing interest in Christianity, some might be prompted to go to church to see what it is all about.
And conversely, it the CofE persists in endlessly documenting its own decline, perhaps it will put people off going.
The suggestion from YouGov is that significant numbers of participants were fraudulent. They claimed to be young men in England or Wales but may have been from anywhere in the world and of any age and either sex. They were paid to participate in surveys and may have claimed to belong to underrepresented groups to increase their chances of selection, and therefore of payment.
When it came to answering the questions they answered more or less at random with little or no regard to the subject of the questions asked. That is the jist of what YouGov are saying.
So why the change from 2018 when the methodology was presumably the same?
It’s hardly unknown for polls to be disrupted by organised, or emergent, factors. An attempt to find a name for a new ship gave rise of Boaty McBoatface. Manchester City’s attempt to hold a fan poll to name a new stand was supposedly disrupted by United fans’ desire to honour Manchester City and England player Colin Bell, although in the end the naming went ahead. And when David Bowie unwisely proposed holding a vote for his upcoming tour’s setlist, momentum built behind having him — at that point A Very Serious Artist Indeed — perform The Laughing Gnome (the NME’s… Read more »
But to make the obvious point: if members of these newer churches were contacting YouGov, telling them they were attending newer churches, wouldn’t that actually be true???
Of course they could have rigged the demographic: putatively, loads of 80 year old church-going women might have reported to YouGov that they were in fact 23-year old church-attending males – but isn’t that a bit paranoid? Maybe the Loch Ness monster got in touch too and bogusly claimed to attend church in England – when everyone knows he goes to the kirk.
“But to make the obvious point: if members of these newer churches were contacting YouGov, telling them they were attending newer churches, wouldn’t that actually be true???” True individually, but not at a population level. If you accidentally get a lot of people with a particular characteristic into a supposedly random survey, no-one needs to lie in order for the survey to be wildly misleading. If I ask a thousand people at random for voting intentions, I’ll get one answer. If I perform the same survey on the floor of the Labour Party conference, I’ll get a different, and less… Read more »
Interested Observer’s example of a voting poll at the Labour Party conference is a helpful illustration of how honest respondents can give non-useful answers. A connected issue is participation bias, for instance whereby surveys are more likely to be completed by people with an interest in the survey topic. E.g. if you were running a detailed survey investigating people’s thoughts about Victorian Hymn tunes, the answer to the question, “Do you like Victorian Hymn tunes?” would probably not be representative of the population. (Personally, I’m a fan.) Anyone wanting to run a subject-specific survey must fret about this, I’m sure.… Read more »
Yes, over-estimation from random responses might drive the rate up in any one survey But my question is still why would it drive it up more in a 2024 survey than one in 2018, producing an apparent increase in church going? In their report, YouGov describe how they looked for a panel in which church attenders were over-represented in some sectors (seemingly younger respondents), then scaled back their responses to match the wider sample demographics (an approach that I suppose might reduce the variance in findings). They also seem to say that one of the difficulties in hard-to-reach groups is… Read more »
According to YouGov fraudsters are getting better, and in the 2024 survey YouGov now say they did not use the tools available to them in an optimal way to detect that fraud.
YouGov do not allege that fraudulent responders were trying to influence the results, but that they were motivated by the fee for participation.
I recently attended a clergy study day in which we were encouraged to harvest all the fruit that this survey told us was hanging around waiting to be picked. I wonder if there’ll be a follow up…
Oh, and whilst I think of it, what ever happened to that report on trust and trustworthiness within the church?
The ‘Quiet Revival’ narrative has been very unhelpful. It gave a sugar rush of optimism. Optimism is good if it rests in hope, but not if it is merely wishful thinking. The ‘Quiet Revival’ induced guilt in many clergy who were made to feel that if they were not seeing the growth in their congregation they were to blame. We were told that growth was happening, and if it was not visible in your church, that must be because you were doing something actively wrong. That induces shame. I am sure that was not the intention of the Bible Society,… Read more »
I may have missed something. Has it been said if YouGov is returning whatever money was paid to them for the faulty survey?
The Bible Society is now investing even more money into further surveys. Is this wise use of money?
I’m keen to hear about the 10,000 house groups that were going to be established.
I will probably write some more when I’ve had a chance to read in more detail. But in short, it’s very unusual (and admirable) for an institution like YouGov to retract in such terms. I think their communication deserves close reading. Secondly, Jennifer Stirrup sets out all sorts of important principles but for me (despite or perhaps because of my decades of work on detailed statistical methodology) the most important one is not a technical one but is the question “Does this conclusion make sense?”. YouGov were not in a position themselves to answer that. The Church of England’s own… Read more »
a) The church in England is not just the Church of England.
b) The church in London is growing faster than anywhere else in the UK.
c) We are following the lessons learnt from the church in London,
d) We have 900 people meeting across 3 services today in a church that was closed 4 years ago.
e) Yes we have guitars, yes we do Alpha, yes we have home groups.
f) Yes we financially support otherwise unviable liberal rural churches in the diocese.
Thanks? Don’t mention it.
I believe there is a link between churches that grow and churches that remain faithful to historical church teaching and biblical orthodoxy.
I serve in a local deanery. It is failing financially. The vast majority of the clergy, it is apparent, are liberal/open Anglican. Many of the churches will close as they are neither financially or operationally viable. Many have congregations in single figures with average age of membership mid 70’s.
The church will thrive where the full gospel is preached and it always has done.
I believe in that, too . . . but to me the above ARE liberal and open (I mean “open”, as in “All the Sacraments for All the Baptized”).
I will trust the Liberating Gospel of Jesus Christ, and further trust that church demographics are in God’s hands in God’s time….
Would help for me to clarify. I was incorrect in using the term “open”. I should have said “inclusive “. To be clear, all churches should be inclusive in the their approach to all those worshiping and visiting and should not judge or discriminate. However, the great divide ( which I see clear evidence in my deanery and diocese) is that abandoning or seeking to abandon restrictions on, for example, clergy being permitted to marry a same sex partner, will not result in growth. The Church of Scotland and the Church in Wales have demonstrated the folly of abandoning historical… Read more »
Except there are many churches which support same sex partnerships which are growing – the one I attend being just one. I agree that generally speaking preaching the Gospel grows the church – but the Gospel is not about being anti-gay.
Absolutely. It’s not being anti-gay. However, a man marrying a man is not Gods plan and calling it out as sinful is not anti gay.
You’re not calling out anything – just repeating homophobic tropes. It is tiresome, ignorant and oppressive.
We are up to Episode 11 of Formed for Faithfulness and still haven’t reach the justification by faith bit. Here’s hoping …..in God’s time!
But I thought justification by faith through the blood of Jesus WAS Christianity?
Oh well…..maybe not literally, but certainly metaphorically?
(my old college Corpus Christi has an appropriate Pelican emblem).
BTW, did the Parker bibles go to the ABC ceremony?
“BTW, did the Parker bibles go to the ABC ceremony?”
No, I don’t believe so. The ancient bible, used at the several recent enthronments, was deemed to frail to use. Hence the use of a reproduction Collegeville bible.
It must have deteriorated badly since the Augustinian gospels were used at the Coronation service. Possible explanation: a change of librarian at Parker Library at Corpus Cambridge, where the volume resides?
The order of service for Archbishop Sarah’s service says: Because of its resonance with the Cathedral’s Benedictine past, and the powerful messages of its imagery which speak to the modern age, The Saint John’s Bible has been chosen for the Archbishop’s Corporal Oath in the Nave. This is instead of the late 6th century St Augustine Gospels, which were used in installations between 1945 and 2013, because of the vulnerability of that manuscript. The Saint John’s Bible Heritage Edition which was gifted in 2023 to this Cathedral. The original is believed to be the first-hand illuminated bible made by Benedictines… Read more »
Thank you Simon. “The vulnerability of that manuscript” didn’t prevent it travelling to Westminster Abbey and appearing at the Coronation.
What is the “full Gospel” actually? Usually this is code for a judgemental moralism. Even though Jesus never once mentioned homosexuality, the “full Gospel” has made up for his deficiency. And please suggest a church where I can go, since it seems that “liberal” (whatever that means) and “inclusive” (ditto) churches are on the way out. The full Gospel appears to be homophobic and misogynist and we are told they are growing. That says more about who is attracted to those things than their actual importance. But if that is the future, I’ll stay at home.
You are incorrect with your homophobic and misogynistic labels. However you wish to distort Two thousand years of Christian understanding, homosexual practice is not and never has been implicit or explicit in Christian orthodox doctrine. All gay people are loved by God but it doesn’t mean homosexuality is an accepted part of the Christian walk.
You haven’t answered my questions. And how curious that you reply to my charge of homophobia with more homophobia.
The default position of liberal revisionist supporters is to throw the overused accusation of homophobia. The term is so diluted and weaponised that it carries very little weight,Obscurantism or
Cognitive Dissonance appears rampant in the established church.
The full Gospel, in case you haven’t heard it in your stream of the established church, makes abundantly clear that we are called to holiness and that we treat our bodies as temples. Clergy are explicitly called to live “exemplary” lives. While most of us, regardless of our theological position fail constantly in our intentions to live as God intended, deliberately violating his instructions cannot be considered “the better way”. Pretending the Christian fathers have misunderstood for two thousand years and we are now enlightened is just folly.
Does this help?
Where do you find this ‘full gospel’? In the teaching of our Lord?
It’s available to everyone but you need to seek it. You may find if you choose to put certain pre-conditions about your personal desires in place before accepting it that it will be elusive. There are many passages in the NT about the spiritually blind not seeing. I am guessing by your question that you may not find it.
You have no answer then?
Don’t you want to tell me where it is?
I have given you the answer. Read Gods word, especially those passages about husbands and wives. Read 1 Thessalonians v3-5.
Also read 1 Corinthians 6 v18.
Please do not tell me these passages are no longer valid or they do not relate to Christians in same sex relationships.
Churches are closing across Britain and denominations are collapsing because the vast majority of Britons have no interest and feel no need for God or Christianity. This isn’t helped by centuries of Christian hypocrisy, social control, and spiritual abuse. There are congregations yet that are holding their own, even growing, but we’re just shifting the deckchairs round the Titanic. I don’t see how “conservative” or “liberal” matters on such a small, case-by-case scenario. People gather with like-minded others. I could fill a church with rabid racists just as easily as I could with a bunch of free love swingers. One,… Read more »
Well David, it’s a view. Thankfully I don’t accept your view. I am not a conservative and certainly not a liberal. I do however trust God. Yes indeed, I too believe the C of E is too far gone with its embracing of the spirit of the age. Is God defeated? Absolutely not.
Dear Adrian I’m sorry that you felt it appropriate to respond to my own post in such abrupt and intemperate terms. The most appropriate comparison in Statistics for Mission is between 2019 and 2024, because figures in the intervening years all show a clear COVID effect. The national figures show a decline in average weekly attendance of 19% between those two years. Leaving aside Sodor and Man, the two dioceses with the smallest decline in attendance are indeed London and also St Edmundsbury and Ipswich both with declines of 9%. The average weekly attendance in London fell from 68700 to… Read more »
The you clearly do not understand the statistics you are commenting on!
And you, very clearly, don’t know who Professor Sir Bernard Silverman, FRS (past president of the Royal Statistical Society) actually is.
Wonderful! Your comment made me laugh so much, Erehwon (no disrespect to Bernard meant). Normally I’m quite scathing about any comment that implies status, titles etc are a guarantee of infallibility, but a) I know very well that Bernard would never claim such for himself and b) this comment was so beautifully done in the face of such an own goal. Thank you for making my day brighter!
Umm…you know who he is, right? I think you might find you’re walking around with egg on your face…..
“b) The church in London is growing faster than anywhere else in the UK.
c) We are following the lessons learnt from the church in London,”
This is excellent news, if true. Can you point us at the numbers for “the church in London” outside the CofE statistics (which Bernard Silverman has already pointed out are declining)? Also, how do we know what are the lessons learnt in London while managing to disentangle the successful differences from other differences between London and the rest of the country (demographics, resources, communication, transport, etc, etc)?
Are there really any rural churches in the Diocese of London?
You would expect evangelicals to be interested in what the truth is, not simply what attracts people to church. The departure from historic teaching on some issues (and I agree, it is a departure) is because those of us not locked in to an ancient worldview believe that the newer ideas are nearer the truth, e.g. that women should be just as able to lead as men. Tough as this is, this has to take priority over getting people into church. US megachurches being the most obvious illustration of getting this wrong. Youthful enthusiasm (guitars, certainty, etc) often gives way… Read more »
‘Youthful enthusiasm (guitars, certainty, etc)…’
At a 67 year old lifelong guitar player, I’d like to just register a protest at this tired old trope about guitars and youth.
I just watched Paul Simon on the late show. He’s 84. So is Hank Marvin. Paul McCartney is 82. Sting is 74.
It’s time to move past these tired stereotypes.
As a 72 year old, I can record I am sometimes happy and have been known to clap, but hate the cliché happy-clappy. It is lazy. Not accusing Nigel Jones of this, just others. A a 72year old there are also things about which I become more and more certain. The irrationality of humans. The fact that the worst are full of passionate intensity. The fact that the more uncertainty you have about a view, the greater the confidence with which you should declare it (see this all the time at work with ignorant colleagues putting forward ridiculous proposals –… Read more »
I agree. My favourite band is all guitars! I could have been more specific. My mentioning of guitars in the church context was code for a certain style of worship, e.g. what you see if you look up HTB or Soul Survivor or Gas Street (etc etc) on YouTube.
Just as a rough sense check. Would you say that these 900, plus those attending other churches in your parish, comprise more or less than 12 % of the total number of inhabitants.
Do you think, in your area, around one person in every eight attends a church once a month?
I imagine Adrian’s church works more on a gathered rather than a parish model. Most big evangelical churches in a diocese are like that. And to be fair in a city esp London parish boundaries don’t mean much.
Except that the Bible Society’s (yes, faulty) survey results weren’t about the C of E, so our Statistics for Mission (which have their own limitations, to say the least) can’t govern their plausibility.
Well, just a couple more thoughts, in the hope that we can have a serious discussion about all this. Feelings run very high and I am absolutely not trying to change strongly and sincerely held convictions about what it is right for a church to do or not to do. (Or, to be, or not to be.) Erewhon has rather paraded my credentials for whatever they are worth. In my view, not all that much–I would prefer to set out the reasoning so that it can be dispassionately discussed. I would be grateful if respondents don’t just flame the messenger… Read more »
Thanks Bernard, there’s a healthy discussion to be had about the C of E’s statistics for mission, the credibility or otherwise of the raw data, and what they imply for ongoing C of E demography etc. etc. And the understanding of our ‘membership’ and mission. For example, last week there were 700 under 16s in my church for school services (and about 300 16-18 year olds). But they had to be there, so what it meant for them to attend or have their attendance counted is unclear. And while I would never impugn the integrity of clergy/wardens who count and… Read more »
In my church the numbers are counted by the sidesmen every week (not wardens) and recorded in the Big Book which is signed by both the leader and preacher of the service. The sidesmen take the responsibility very seriously. If a warden or incumbent suggested that they massage the numbers there would be unfeigned horror. I don’t think anyone would dare. I’m very confident that the numbers we submit are accurate. I’d be surprised if that isn’t generally the case.
How big are your congregations?
Thanks Bernard.
For those who are not statisticians, and for many who are, the term ‘longitudinal’ refers to time-based studies, in my limited understanding.
I have, over time looked at the issue of effective sample size for longitudinal studies, it is a little researched topic when using time series modelling.
Richard Jones wrote a paper on the topic:
“Bayesian information criterion for longitudinal and clustered data”.
Never knew this forum would contain so many expert statisticians.
Talking about large and small churches, I am right now writing models for TAM (Total Addressable Market) which segments different markets, with different behaviours.
Thanks, Nigel and Paul and Albanian. Apologies for something of a stream of consciousness contribution. I apologise for accidentally using the technical term “longitudinal”….in simple terms what I meant was is that if you measure something the same way over a period of time then you can reasonably compare figures to see how things are developing. Statistics for Mission is very good in that respect. As I’ve said, this isn’t about sampling because there isn’t any…the approach is to try to count the entire population. My own experience tallies with Paul’s rather than with Albanian, as far as counting congregation… Read more »
Your comment on electoral rolls is interesting. Last Friday the vicar of a church I attend occasionally asked me to go on the electoral roll as numbers were low.
Res ipsa loquitur 🙂
I’m not sure that electoral roll numbers tell us very much really. After all, any baptised Anglican has an absolute right to be on the roll of their parish even if they never darken the door. At the same time, there are regular worshippers who steadfastly refuse to sign up for the roll. As an example of how uninformative the electoral roll figure is, in this deanery the parish that is deemed to be the mission hub has a smaller electoral roll than a nearby parish with a very modest congregation.
We haven’t heard from Froghole for a good while which is a pity. He has often pointed out that decline especially in rural areas is as much due to lack of provision of public worship as anything else: one service a Sunday in a benefice of 4-7 or more churches. I have often thought we need to look across the Channel to how they are managing with a more acute clergy shortage than us. In some places ( I admit not all) the laity have been galvanised.
I’d guess 70% of all chaplaincies are part-time or house for duty. Maybe higher. In British enclaves like the Perigord there are a lot of retirees as well. I was 1/3 time in Fontainebleau for example.
I was actually thinking of the RC Church. My( lay) french pen friend ( of nearly 70 years) takes funerals . He is part of an Equipe that organises marriage preparation, catechesis for first communion etc., regular bible studies, They seem to be keeping the church alive and quite flourishing in a situation where priests are increasingly scarce.
A parallel in the CofE would be presumably be Readers (or whatever they are now called!) taking funerals, being part of the ministry team (‘equipe’?) etc. But most funerals I have been to recently (attendance increases as one gets older ….)_ are taken by ‘lay celebrants’ though I feel ‘officiants’ would be a more appropriate description of the role.
Yes agreed! You have opened a can of worms here. Where shall we start? How about the recently retired bishop who told me he neither understood nor supported lay ministry? How about numerous reports etc at all levels which use the word ‘ministry’ when they mean ‘ordained ministry’? We need to recover the idea of the ministry of all the people of God and embrace also the new vision for Reader / LLM – in most dioceses LLMs do take funerals…
I agree that laity are involved in very detailed ways in catechesis, etc. Typically a Deacon is on site to help as well. I used to say it was something of the upside of clergy shortage. A real sense of ownership on the part of laity.
The critics are absolutely right that the doubling down and the arrogant refusals to engage before the data were discredited are far worse than publishing flawed research. I was always taught that when you publish anything, an important part of being part of a broad research community was engaging in some of the debates, disputes and spats that inevitably emerged out of what you’d said, especially when what you’ve said was either ground breaking or bucks the trend of what others were finding. Unfortunately the Bible Society’s approach owed more to the church malaise of believing what fits your narrative… Read more »
I listened to Paul Williams from BS being inteviewed on R4 Sunday (37.15 on) & it was astonishingly bad.
BS from BS? Surely not?
Much of the tenor of this thread feels pretty unedifying for Holy Week
If the sale of Bibles has risen (any particular version or language?) that has to be good. And can be counted. But then the scrabble to declare a gotcha!moment …. And secretly more souls have been got than anyone thought so there!! Please!
The information about Bible sales – 19% rise in 2025 – came from NielsenIQBookdata, a firm which provides information to the book trade, so should be reasonably objective
Nevertheless 19% is such a huge increase, it surely ought to raise suspicion. Are the majority of these purchases of individual bibles by individuals? Or are they bulk purchases destined to remain in their crates until distribution in some projected missionary activity? Is this matched by a similar increase in Quran sales?
Yes, and whether there is a corresponding rise in library borrowing of the Bible. More questions about the increase in book sales for books called ‘The Manliness of Christ: How it eradicates feminism’ etc etc. along with the interest in books written by these well-known US authors. It is convenient to talk about an increase in Bible sales but not in the sales of books about the ‘reviling’ wife. At the same time, there is an interesting trend about women quietly withdrawing from the Church. These are important issues which need to be explored further. The BS report about ‘younger… Read more »
Based on local conversations there are some interesting things happening – as a colleague of a very different theological background said recently “it is not a revival”, {implication “not yet” – hoping a revival might be the outcome); and I would suggest that, if you broadcast it, it is not “quiet” either. But we both had very different stories about a modestly increased interest in the Christian faith amongst younger people in our contexts. “A bruised reed I will not break … ” seems like a relevant text – I am trying, gently, to bring a smouldering wick to a… Read more »
This is very wise. I felt mixed reactions to the ‘Quiet Revival’. I can see some signs of increased interest in church and Jesus among the young, and men, and this has been visibly evident in our own church recently. But we’ve not been terribly good at nurturing interest into discipleship. Down the road, where they do do this better, they’ve been in full-fat celebration mode re. the QR. Which I interpreted as both a mechanism for boosting hope and enthusiasm, as much as a recognition of facts on the ground. But it’s dispiriting to witness some of what sounds… Read more »
Maybe, in one sense, this episode could be viewed positively – the tenacious questioning (in public and in private) by academics, researchers, and commentators has (eventually) led to the investigation that uncovered the problems with the dataset, resulting in the withdrawal of the report. I am grateful to everyone who has asked those questions. Given the report has been withdrawn, perhaps it’s unnecessary to rehearse in detail the reasons why many people felt its headline result that: “Overall, churchgoing Christians now make up 12% of the population, up from 8% in 2018. In numerical terms, that’s growth from 3.7m in… Read more »
I’m grateful for your honesty and straightforwardness too, Ken. It’s rare among those in Nyeville-on-Thames and indeed in the Diocesan spin factories. I find it hugely refreshing.
Thank you ken for your wise observations. I find myself wondering, sadly, about YouGov’s Quality Assurance and internal systems which allowed this report to be published, let alone those of the Bible Society which seems to have drawn ‘interesting’ conclusions from it. Any educational establishment would expect to seek and gain ‘Ethics Committee Approval’ which would allow for sample sizes and possibilities of fraudulent or questionable activity to be examined. IIRC we are reminded at this time of year that Pilate asked ‘What is truth?’ And just last week some of us may have considered our responsibilities to ‘tell truth… Read more »
A perspective from a polling professional turned MP;
https://chriscurtismk.substack.com/p/young-men-bad-data-and-moral-panic
There are problems with using internet panels to do polling, and those problems tend to surface most seriously with young men. The better companies (like YouGov) try to deal with those problems, but it’s not easy and it didn’t work in this case.
Yes, that’s why it’s worth exploring what the specific problem with this study was. If it’s right that organisations should do due diligence on results provided to them by polling organisations, then it’s also right they do due diligence when the pollster says they got the data wrong – finding out precisely what was wrong and how wrong – because data pointing to an unexpected result may either be wrong or important. The really curious thing is why just this poll? If there is a widespread issue with panels, bogus contributors etc, you would think it would have affected many… Read more »
Having read some of the expert comments it seems to be a very recent issue with bad-actors gaming the system using AI to put in multiple garbage responses for personal reward – they get paid a small amount per response and they want to maximise income. This is therefore a very recent issue and the countermeasures are not yet there in depth.
Perhaps other very recent polls are equally at fault, but because they were not so high profile they were not challenged, and are still believed to by valid by their commissioners.
Do a lot of these “newer” Christian Churches and Fellowship actually keep accurate statistics? We have a regular Romanian congregation here in Canterbury and at my old church in Bloomsbury there is now a Ukrainian Orthodox Congregation 8-10 am. At least 150+ . I’m not sure they bother counting.
Perry asks an excellent question about statistics in different denominations. I don’t know the answer; I expect it varies. If anyone can suggest people to talk to in other denominations I’d be most grateful. I’m hoping to chat to someone in the Baptist Union, and Jennifer has kindly given me a pointer for a group of Pentecostal churches. I’d expect someone in any individual church, if asked, to be able to give a sensible estimate of their church’s size, whether or not they formally count anything, but unless those estimates are collated “centrally” getting hold of those numbers would be… Read more »
There seems to be two ways of measuring church attendance. One is to count the numbers attending. The other is to ask people how often they go to church.
The latter method produced the figure of 40% of Americans attending an act of public worship on any given week. It was only when someone used the first method in a particular city that it was realised that attendance was far lower and people exaggerated the frequency of their attention.
There is a point illustrated here in Thatcham which may account for part of the difference between measures. Our church is open during the day. Some people come in, not for a service, but for an intentional quiet moment. Such people may self-describe as attending church regularly, but may come to very few services (if any) at which a count is taken. That would not make the whole difference, but might make some.
The c.1000 young people who came to my church for School Easter Services come regularly, though not frequently. Even more come for Christmas Services.
They could all honestly reply to an inadequately phrased survey that they are regular churchgoers. But what does their attendance signify? For some, an interesting exploration. For a few, an event consonant with their faith and weekly practise. For others a boring obligation.
Statistical approaches to measuring the reach and scope of church activity always need thick narratival supplementing to yield any real depth of meaning.
Indeed. Before COVID I estimated that at least 15% of our population here in Thatcham attended our church at least once each year. We are well down from that now, but the numbers are not trivial. School services are a significant part of that.
Your comment also reminds me of one of my daughters completing a survey at school about teenage habits. She felt obliged to say that she consumed alcohol regularly because she took a sip of communion wine each week. Precise and correct, but in her case the survey was not capturing the information the authors imagined.
A lot of words here have been wasted here because David Voas’s critical comments have not been read. David is a fine sociologist who, it so happens, once wrote his own interpretation of the bible. I have worked with him and know he is a person of great integrity. His short critique is found here.
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2025/jun/comment-there-really-religious-revival-england-why-im-sceptical-new-report
Other comments will be found by a search of his name.
David Voas’ contributions here may not be unaffected by his ideological commitment to the hypothesis that cultural progress requires and implies secularization, perhaps.
I am afraid they are not in the least affected. David never allows his personal beliefs (he does not hold to an ideology) to affect his analysis of data. You can go to the data (I am sure he would send you a copy of them) and check for yourself. The pollster, John Curtis, who is a Christian, also agrees with David’s analysis. He argues that Islam, Buddism and other religions have seen a growing number of young people from ethnic minorities accepting belief. That is not the case as far as Christianity in the UK is concerned.
Taking a John Millbankian view of the basis of and endeavour called ‘Sociology’, I shall have to dissent from your assertion that Voas does not hold to an ideology.
I agree. There is no evidence of bias in Professor Voas’ output and it is approaching a calumny to suggest that he is biased in any way. I also note that the Church and clerical lobbies like Save the Parish have made frequent use of his 2014 report ‘From Anecdote to Evidence’ when it suited them. For example, Save the Parish noted his apparent finding that lower rates of attendance might be correlated with the absence of clergy to press for greater investment in the provision of stipendiary clergy: his tentative observations elided conveniently with their very definite policy agenda.… Read more »
Were there not questions asked about some of the conclusions of “From anecdote to evidence?” I recall a very frosty deanery chapter meeting some years ago in which we were advised to treat its conclusions with caution.
The “From anecdote to evidence” research was well done (the rural church part was weaker, in my view). Issues were raised – including falling clergy numbers: numbers falling faster in practice than in optimistic plans for the future – that have still not been effectively addressed. Serious efforts were made, but they have proven ineffective. The research raised some questions about causation/correlation which were not addressed and, as with all good research prompted me to think of a number of questions that should have been followed up. The failing was not in the research, but in confirmation bias – quite… Read more »
Yes, that is precisely the point I was making. The issue was not the quality of the research, but the use that was made of it: specifically, that people in the Church used or abused it in order to advance their own internal political agenda, namely – in 2014-15 – Renewal & Reform. No one seems to be talking about R&R these days, presumably because it has been an abject failure, along with every other scheme (the ‘Call to the Nation’, the ‘Decade of Evangelism’, etc.) that was supposed to ‘turn the tide’ against the inevitable.
What’s inevitable, Erehwon, and why?
Because, as Steve Bruce, Abby Day, Clive Field, Hugh Macleod and other students of secularisation have demonstrated in detail (see, for instance, Field’s four detailed statistical volumes on attendance since the late 17th century), the decline has occurred in almost reverse linear progression, and with every successive generation the young experience ever less religious socialisation. Thus, what one generation forgets, the next never knew. All efforts at revival have failed to affect that progression for more than a relatively brief period. What will be left, quite soon and absent a miracle, is a small, often localised and marginal residuum.
Ah, the glorious Sociological Gospel of secularization!
Music to the Thinking Anglican’s ears?
Jesus answered and said unto them, Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God.
So according to secularists, revivals can never happen, or are at best short lived? Confirmation bias at work, I would suggest.
A European Christian revial, especially a protestant revival, is highly unlikely in the coming century. The main source of religious observance is parental influence, followed by school influence. The big demographic news of the next twenty years is the accelerating death of the baby boom 1946-1966, when TFR peaked at about 2.9 in the mid-1960s having been above 2 since about 1950. But the last twenty years have seen the death of their parents, born say 1926-1945. That latter generation contained not only a lot of church-goers, but very high number of church-doers (and for church, read almost every other… Read more »
The work of the Holy Spirit might be a factor too. The explosion of the Christian faith in the first century was highly unlikely, until it happened.
That explosion of the christian faith was amongst the “left-outs” in a very unstable world. Those on the margins that Jesus preached to. It was only a couple of Centuries later, that Christianity became the religion of the establishment, and has been ever since. We now have a whole generation of young people in Europe and America who are also the “left-outs” and on the margins, as described so clearly by Interested Observer above. Might they also be drawn into religion for the very same reasons. I find it quite easy to see a religious revival, and a Christian revival,… Read more »
‘I suspect they will need and create different Christianities which match their own experiences and values. There is no guarantee that the Church of England as we know it, or any other traditional church, will do the job. They might well look elsewhere or create their own structures. They might also be very vulnerable to the teachings and preachings of charismatic bad actors.’
I think this is happening. Most of the energy in English Christianity right now seems to be located in non-establishment, lightly structured informality, rather than bodies with laborious synods, canons and institutional structures.
Albanian, at one level I welcome this, it’s a chance to try lots of different ways of being church to find what bears fruit for a new generation. But I am aware that in a church setting, “lightly structured informality” can be a risk for various forms of abusive behaviour.
Agreed. There’s always a trade-off between charism and its routinisation. My fear is that the CofE is routinising charism out of existence with burgeoning managerialisation/compliance/bureaucracy.
The exchange on another thread between the Dean and Mrs G Chapman of Truro Cathedral looks to me to be a case in point. I’ve no perspective on the situation – I’m not sure I could point to Truro on a blank map. But in terms of priorities and claimed progress/lack thereof I thought it highlighted two very different vision of what a healthy church might look like in this day and age.
The explosion of the Muslim faith in the seventh century was even less likely. Do you attribute that to the same agency? If not, why not?
That’s already happened: the future has arrived, to coin a phrase. But aside from your uncannily accurate prediction of the near past, do you have any insights about what might come next? You seem to advocate a model of linear decline, but it needs more work: Given a current church attendance of 10% and a decline per year of 0.25%, it suggests an impressive 250% of the population would have been been at church in 1066, while by 2166 minus 25% of people will be going.
Attendance was compulsory after 1552, and non-attendance was punishable by fines in the courts Christian. After 1689 the mechanisms of coercion disintegrated and non-attendance increased in almost linear fashion, excepting the dead cat bounces of the early 19th century and the transient post-war boom. See here for a sample of Field’s work, from 2008: https://www.kentarchaeology.org.uk/journal/128/churchgoing-cradle-english-christianity-kentish-evidence-16th-20th-centuries The fortunes of the Church in Kent have declined significantly since then, as I have seen for myself. When I met Robin Gill (of ‘Myth of the Empty Church’ fame) at Hucking near Maidstone 15 years’ ago, he conceded that it was a myth no… Read more »
Some forms of church are thriving in ‘advanced economies’. Often those which are most counter-cultural, I would venture, as in the C1. ‘Advanced Societies’ which may not seem so very ‘advanced’ from some theological perspectives, but returning rather by stealth to a neo-pagan State hegemony. A blasphemous polity where the most vulnerable of God’s children (so far, fetuses and the terminally ill, who knows what/whom’s next) are seen as disposable. The judgement of the nations, and the churches, is in God’s hands, and God’s time. But do we trust his promises that he will sustain his faithful until the parousia?… Read more »
So the linear model only works in between big events, when things change. In other words it’s descriptive (of past events) but not predictive. That’s in line with Feynman’s characterisation of sociology as a pseudo-science, which collects data but fails to generate actionable, predictive laws. Of course Feynman wasn’t a big fan of organised religion either, so what he’d make of attempts to apply sociology to religion doesn’t bear thinking about… How do you explain the ongoing growth of US mega-churches in the world’s most advanced economy? And since you believe in the power of God, why don’t you believe… Read more »
Some mega churches have indeed grown, but others have failed, sometimes spectacularly: Mars Hill, Lakewood, Crystal Cathedral, etc. Many others are mired in debt. It is possible that those mega/giga-churches which have held their own have picked up the sweepings of other failed churches, or offer forms of community which various institutions (including some public bodies) are now unable to provide, or which appeal because they are cultural islands in an increasingly hostile and/or unrecognisable sea of indifference and/or antipathy to the faith. Of course, they may also attract larger congregations because of superior preaching, sound doctrine and overall dynamism.… Read more »
Erewhon, your post exemplifies for me my concerns about the discussion on this thread. It is entirely quantitative, based on numbers. If somebody labels themselves as Christian and says that they are saved, then that is a tick in the box on the plus side, and we can celebrate with no further questions asked. “As to my beliefs, I rejoice in growth wherever it is to be found.” How happy are we to accept the label on certain of these expressions of Christianity? As you said (correctly) about the US: “Christianity became more closely identified with partisan politics at home… Read more »
Er no. The survey on which the report was based was faulty,
I was referring to previous research from about 2013 – see https://www.churchofengland.org/about/vision-strategy/funding-strategic-mission-and-ministry/strategic-development-funding/anecdote for relevant material if you do not know it.
This Pew Research Center article explains the difference between a random sample pole and an opt-in panel that YouGov used
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/01/23/has-there-been-a-christian-revival-among-young-adults-in-the-uk-recent-surveys-may-be-misleading/
I think that article says everything that needs to be said about this topic.