Has Britain Stopped Secularizing?
Across the country, a wealth of evidence tells of a modest but real Christian revival.
ET
Oxford, England
In mid-1980s England, when Jo Gilbert was 5, there were two questions that went around her elementary school: “Do you like the Beatles?” and “Do you believe in God?” Both were a test, she tells me: “You knew that you had to say ‘no’ in both cases, otherwise you were seriously uncool.”
That was typical of an age when Britain was rapidly secularizing. The Beatles were your parents’ music, and Christianity, more likely than not, was your parents’ religion. But what happens if secularization stops? Across Britain, a wealth of evidence tells of a modest but real Christian revival.
NEWSLETTER SIGN-UP
Morning Editorial Report
All the day's Opinion headlines.
Anglican clergy regularly describe a “steady trickle” of new parishioners seeking to know more about the faith. Some Catholic dioceses note a sharp increase in adults asking to be baptized. In July, the coastal town of Bournemouth witnessed a mass baptism of 92 new Christians in the sea. More than 1,000 attended the service—a striking display in a society where faith tends to be privately nurtured more than it is publicly proclaimed.
Ms. Gilbert works for a parish in Brighton and coordinates the Catholic chaplaincy team for the town’s two universities. She has worked with students and young people for two decades. The past few years, she says, have seen a marked change. “A lot of us working in pastoral ministry, and a lot of people in a lot of churches, are saying we’re seeing a renewed interest and spiritual openness, and more new converts.”
Even in a city like Brighton, one of the most progressive places in the U.K., Christianity seems to have a new appeal. “Being Catholic has become cool,” one young convert quipped to Ms. Gilbert recently. “But I want it noted that I decided to become Catholic before it had.”
Such stories have been brought into focus by a controversial study from YouGov, one of the U.K.’s most respected polling companies. The study, titled “The Quiet Revival,” claimed that churchgoing surged from 3.7 million in 2018 to 5.8 million in 2024—a 56% increase. The most marked change, according to the data, was among 18- to 24-year-olds, among whom churchgoing was said to have quadrupled.
On the one hand, it seems unlikely those numbers are totally reliable. Another large survey found a decline in churchgoing, by as much as a quarter from 2018 to 2023. Attendance records kept by the Church of England and the Catholic Church also suggest that attendance is down. Stephen Bullivant, a sociologist of religion at St. Mary’s University in Twickenham, writes that while the study’s methodology is robust and well-designed, “something, somewhere, appears to have gone awry.”
But Mr. Bullivant, along with others who have doubts about these particular figures, believes that the study “has identified something real.” There are genuine signs that secularization might have peaked—and that whereas older generations were bored by their parents’ Christianity, younger people might be rediscovering it as something fresh and exciting. If so, it would mirror evidence from the U.S. This year the Religious Landscape Survey found that Christianity in America, after a long period of numerical decline, has stabilized in the 2020s.
In Britain, there are really two stories: rapid decline in some Christian communities and unexpectedly vibrant growth in others. The Methodists, the United Reformed Church, and parts of Anglicanism, like the church in Wales, are “in big trouble,” says David Goodhew, an Anglican vicar and sociologist. Others—most dramatically the Pentecostal churches—are thriving.
Mr. Goodhew deserves credit for spotting the first signs. For more than 15 years his research has challenged pessimistic predictions of universal decline. In 2019 he co-edited “The Desecularisation of the City,” which noted that since 1979 the number of congregations in London had risen by 50%.
Much of that is owing to small churches serving largely immigrant communities. Mass immigration has certainly helped keep British Christianity alive. But Mr. Goodhew believes that is only part of the story. “A secular worldview,” he says, “is actually pretty depressing. People are seeking more.” His church in the northeastern town of Middlesbrough has seen its own quiet revival, with “quite a dramatic upswing” in baptisms since the pandemic.
Mr. Goodhew says there are a few basic challenges of human existence that secular humanism has struggled to address. “What brings a sense of purpose, what brings hope after death, what brings the possibility of forgiveness when you mess up? Those are the big three questions that humanism has very poor answers to.”
Correspondingly, he notes that the most successful Christian communities in Britain—Pentecostalism, Eastern Orthodoxy, High Church Anglicanism and “the more traditional strands” of Catholicism—are those that make the boldest doctrinal claims, or what he calls “full-fat faith.” The diet version doesn’t have the same appeal.
Britain’s religious revival shouldn’t be overstated, but it can’t be ignored either. “We’re seeing death and resurrection,” Mr. Goodhew says. “It depends where you look.”
Mr. Hitchens is a senior editor of First Things.
No comments:
Post a Comment