The Quiet Revival: Myth, memory or movement?

March 21st, Cambridge, UK and online.

Photo by Debby Hudson on Unsplash

When I was a kid my parents taught me a trick. You put your hands together, fingers interlaced so that only the tops of your hands and knuckles are showing, and then extend your two index fingers upward. Then you say:

“Here’s the church, and here’s the steeple…”

At this point you pull your thumbs out to the sides.

“Open the doors…”

Now you turn your hands over, revealing the interlaced fingers.

“And there’s all the people!”

In my lifetime, though, the people have been thinning out a bit. Once vibrant and healthy congregations have been denuded, churches have closed their doors forever, attendance stats have gone into freefall. Dire prognostications have been issued, seminaries have been closed.

By 2013, when I started looking closely at the stats and trends, The Church of England reported that the percentage of English residents who attend church had halved, from three to 1.5 per cent of the total population over a period of forty years. Given the growth in population in that time, the decrease was all the more stark.

That’s why the publication of the ‘Quiet Revival’ report last year caused quite a stir.

Until 2024 all the data about the state of the British church indicated that it was, is, shrinking rapidly. Now, suddenly, a report based on robust and carefully analysed data said that the trend, established over decades, has begun to shift. What’s more it said that growth is coming from the least expected places.

Young men, the report said, are coming back to church. Not just young men, young people in general - but the young men thing was the most notable statistic.

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Get tickets for the Quiet Revival Symposium: Myth, memory or movement?

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Its fair to say the data has not be unchallenged - various other measures have presented alternative pictures (not least the British Social Attitudes Survey), and there’s been quite a bit of talk about whether what we’re actually seeing is a growth in toxic ‘Christian nationalism’ in Britain. But the stats, and the bigger picture, defy simple interpretations.

What’s more, it’s not just us.

Both Finland and Sweden have measured something similar. In Finland the increase in young men attending church has correlated with an increase in reported wellbeing among the same population.

In Comment magazine, Joel Halldorf wrote about the newly ‘not so secular’ Sweden. “One of the most irreligious countries on earth is getting religion. What’s going on?” He asked.

When I talked with one of my Gen Z children about it all, she told me about a notable crossover she had observed in religious faith, and socially conscious political activism among her generation.

And that’s not even factoring in immigration.

Jürgen Habermas - Creative Commons picture.

In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks Jürgen Habermas, the influential German philosopher and social theorist began to talk and write about a “post‑secular society”. He developed the idea more formally in his 2003 essay Faith and Knowledge (Glaube und Wissen), arguing that while West European and North American societies have been working on an assumption that religion would fade away, it hasn’t.

He would later write, in An Awareness of What is Missing (2010) that within a post-secular society, religious thought continues to play an important part, actively shaping “social life at different levels and in a variety of forms.” A line I’ve quoted many times.

In other words - it’s a complicated old picture.

As Halldorf writes: “…the emerging spiritual landscape looks more like that of late antiquity: a sprawling marketplace of faiths, cults, and eclectic spiritual practices, each offering to re-enchant a once disenchanted age.”

A few years ago now, I was writing about the same thing, and I said this:

“…church decline is not linear. Complex interrelated cultural and relational factors can muddy the waters somewhat, such that trends are difficult to predict with accuracy and claims of unalloyed decline are hard to justify.”

Hate to say it, but it looks like I was right.

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So anyway - when I read that Bible Society report I thought that what I’d really like to do is get together a bunch of social scientists and other clever people and get them to address some of the questions that naturally arise from the report. Things like: “yeah… but… is it really happening though?” And “If it is happening, then what on earth does it all mean?”

So that’s what I’ve done - by means of the Progressive Christianity Network, and in association with the William Temple Foundation, we’re putting on a ‘symposium’ in Cambridge on the 21st of March. The line up is good - we’ll hear direct from Finland and the US on what’s happening in those countries, as well as hearing from British scholars and church practitioners, and from one of the authors of the Bible Society report.

It might save time if I just give you the list:

Dr Anna Strhan, a reader in Sociology at the University of York who recently co-authored ‘Growing Up Godless’; Bishop Mike Royal, the chair of Churches Together in England and Wales; Revd Dr Sally Mann a sociologist at the University of Greenwich and chair of Red Letter Christians UK; Prof Kati Tervo-Niemla of the University of Eastern Finland who has carried out significant research in this area; Prof Chris Baker of Goldsmiths College, the director of research at the William Temple Foundation; Dr Patricia Tevington of Pew Research, an expert in surveys of religion; Revd Dr Robert Pope of Westminster College, Cambridge, a specialist in the history of revivals; and Dr Rob Barward-Symmons, a sociologist of religion and one of the authors of the Quiet Revival report. The whole thing will be hosted, and to some degree ‘chaired’ by yours truly.

The event is going to be hybrid - you can attend in person or online, if you’re well organised then if you get a hybrid ticket you could even set up a watch party and have your own discussion sessions.

Get your tickets here.

It’s a full day - 10.00am - 6.00pm - (the first session will start at 10.30) and if you’re there in person you can get food too. Anyway - hopefully that’s enough to tempt you to come along. Honestly - I think it will be a great day. Don’t miss out.

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