There has been a spate of media reports about impending religious and spiritual revivals in Europe and the U.S., but it is not clear if these reported trends will prove to represent long-term shifts in religiosity or “blips” on the screen of continuing religious decline. A much-publicized Pew study in March showed a stabilization of decline in religious affiliation in the U.S., and other surveys since have even pointed to signs of revitalization. A recent survey entitled “The Quiet Revival,” commissioned by the Bible Society and conducted by YouGov, found that church attendance in England and Wales has actually increased by 50 percent over the past six years, and that young people between 18 and 24 years of age have the second highest rates of attendance, behind those who are 65 and over. The trend was found to be especially strong with young men in this group, with 21 percent saying they attended church at least once a month, compared with 12 percent of young women. The survey also showed that members of Generation Z are particularly drawn to Roman Catholicism, which accounts for a significant rise in the number of Catholics in England, almost closing the overall gap between those who identify as Catholic and those who identify as Anglican.
The survey found social activism to be a significant concern among the Gen Z respondents, especially among the more churchgoing ones, who reported higher rates of community and charity work compared to those who were not church members. But British sociologist David Voas questions the findings of the Quiet Revival survey. He told RW that churchgoing is down in all denominations by around 20 percent from pre-pandemic levels, and it is among the younger generations where church attendance has dropped off more strongly. “The authors of the Bible Society report try to defend their findings by arguing that the additional (invisible?) churchgoers are probably attending independent churches, but it’s implausible that the total churchgoing population could have grown by more than half while participation is declining in all the largest Christian organizations. I suppose it’s not impossible that young men are flocking to church, but my feeling is that such reports are entirely anecdotal (and probably matched by other churches where fewer and fewer young people are attending).” The puzzle is why the YouGov findings from 2018 and 2024 were so different. Voas suspects that it’s about “differential non-response, or to put it another way, the 2024 sample isn’t religiously representative of the population. Perhaps YouGov invited members of their web panel to complete a survey about religion and religious people were disproportionately likely to respond.”
Meanwhile, The Pillar (April 16), a Catholic newsletter, reports on baptism figures recorded during the Easter season in churches around the world, with several nations showing a growth of new Catholics. A record 17,800 catechumens will be baptized at this year’s Easter Vigil in France, including more than 7,400 young people aged 11 to 17. Luke Coppen writes that “France is arguably the country that is driving the growing discussion about a Catholic adult baptism ‘boom.’ The number of adult baptisms in Belgium is expected to rise to 536 this year, an almost 50 percent increase from 2024, when there were 362. Ten years ago, in 2015, there were 180 adult baptisms, meaning the number has almost tripled over the past decade. In Austria, about 240 adults are preparing to be baptized, up from roughly 130 people in 2024, an 85 percent year-on-year increase. In the Austrian Church, an adult is defined as anyone over the age of 14.” Coppen adds that in the Vienna archdiocese, “which has reported rising adult baptisms for almost a decade amid an influx of refugees, 118 adults will be baptized at the Easter Vigil, 50 more than in 2024.”
A church official in Vienna said that, “In the past, we primarily had baptism candidates between the ages of 20 and 40, but now the adolescent age group represents the largest group, with the majority of them being Austrian citizens.” Outside of the Catholic Church, there are also indicators of church revitalization, even in the secular precincts of Lutheran Scandinavia, such as Finland [see last month’s report on growth among young adults in Finland’s Evangelical Lutheran Church]. Christian News (April 21) cites the Church of Norway News Service (March 17) in reporting on Statistic Norway figures showing the number of participants in services has increased on average from 77 to 80 since 2015. As reflected in other church statistics, there is specific growth among young adults (again, more young men than women), with a three-fold increase within this demographic since 2015.
Circling back to the American case, political scientist Ryan Burge has voiced his doubts about a religious revival happening anytime soon. In his newsletter Graphs About Religion (April 7), Burge writes that “the overall decline in attendance at houses of worship has continued at a pretty steady pace since 2008. In that [2008] sample, 44 percent of folks attended less than once a year while 31 percent were attending religious services on a weekly basis. It’s been all downhill from there.” In survey data from 2024 he finds about a third of respondents saying that they never attended religious services—a 4-point increase since 2020 and a 14-point jump from 2008. Overall, 55 percent of American adults now attend a religious service less than once a year—an 11-point rise in 16 years. Burge notes that there is stability among Americans who are very religiously active. “Again, it was 31 percent weekly attenders in 2008 and it was still 28 percent by 2016…In the next eight years, it also dropped another three points. Today, a quarter of Americans are weekly attenders. Low-attenders bested high-attenders by 13 points in 2008. In the 2024 result it had ballooned to 30 points. There’s no evidence of any type of revival in this graph.” He does, however, conclude with the upbeat finding that Gen Z’s religious attendance is actually more robust compared to other generations. In 2024, 24 percent of Gen Z members were attending weekly—two points higher than Millennials and members of Gen X.
(The Quiet Revival survey is accessible at: https://www.biblesociety.org.uk/research/quiet-revival; The Pillar, https://www.pillarcatholic.com/p/adult-baptisms-whats-driving-the)
