It was a researcher’s dream: a surprising finding that made international headlines.
Britain was in the middle of a “quiet revival” of Christianity, said a report published by a nonprofit last year. It cited what it called a “large, robust” study by a trusted polling company, which showed that one of the most secular countries on Earth was suddenly returning to church — and Gen Z was driving the shift.
The response was anything but quiet.
The media published the findings, again and again. “Christianity is coming back to life,” a Bloomberg columnist wrote. “Young people are ‘finding truth in the church,’” The Guardian reported. “The Christian revival is here,” according to The Telegraph. Christians around the world reposted the conclusions millions of times online.
I was also intrigued by the report, so I began visiting British churches. In some, the congregations were small, and homilies echoed through near-empty chapels. But in a few London churches, particularly those that had appeared in viral videos, the pews were packed.
“People are finding the church via social media,” said Marina Saif, a nutritionist, 34, who attends a Coptic church in London that was full of young people. She said her church’s ancient liturgy and heady incense offered a welcome break from a week staring at a screen. I met American evangelicals who said they had traveled to London to support the surge, and priests who said a nationwide revival was underway.
The problem, though, is that it wasn’t.
Last month, the nonprofit, The Bible Society, retracted its report and called the underlying data “faulty.” The polling company that conducted the 2024 survey, YouGov, said in an apologetic statement that an internal review found their sample of more than 13,000 adults had contained “fraudulent” responses. Those were “enough to make a few points difference to the key result,” YouGov acknowledged.
The retraction has vindicated many social scientists and statisticians who had fiercely contested the original findings. But despite the reversal, and multiple national studies showing British Christianity is still in overall decline, the idea of a “revival” has taken hold, fueled by select examples of growth.
“It’s a man bites dog story. It’s completely unexpected, and it seems to be really intriguing,” David Voas, a social scientist at University College London, said of the survey results. “But it’s ill-founded.”
The misinformation had political implications: Religious conservatives pointed to the revival report as evidence that their movements were ascendant. That matters in a moment when Britain’s right-wing populist party, Reform U.K., has been using the language of Christianity to call for “civilizational renewal.” One Reform lawmaker has said Britain needs “a revival of faith” and a recovery of “Christian politics.”
In doing so, these politicians have mirrored the Republican playbook in the United States, where President Trump and his administration have also claimed, without sufficient data, that the country is experiencing a religious revival to bolster their movement.
What did the survey claim?
For years, researchers have forecast that church pews would eventually empty in Britain, and in the West more broadly. In the 2021 census, for the first time, fewer than half of British people said they were Christian. Churches, once the beating heart of British villages, are closing, with more than 3,500 shut over roughly the last decade. Many have become the sites of luxury homes, weekend craft fairs and yoga studios.
The “Quiet Revival” report, published in April 2025, claimed all of that was changing. It specifically focused on England and Wales, and said that monthly church attendance there rose by more than 50 percent between 2018 and 2024, to about 6 million attendees. Young people were surging to church, it said, with 21 percent of young men ages 18-24 attending at least monthly.
The results shocked researchers — including the ones who had commissioned the report. “We weren’t expecting it,” Rob Barward-Symmons, one of the lead authors, told me last year. Others, like Mr. Voas, rushed to fact-check it.
What were the problems?
Instead of using a random sample of the public, the standard that high-quality opinion polls adhere to, the study used a method called an “opt-in” survey, where people can elect to take the survey online.
That self-selection often introduces incentives that skew study results. Some people rush through the survey to finish it as fast as possible. Others may select answers at random. Additionally, there is evidence that opt-in surveys are easy for chatbots to take.
The company that ran the British religion survey, YouGov, stood by its report until last month, when it published a retraction. It said many of the responses were unreliable because “anti-fraud measures” weren’t correctly administered, and referred me to its public statement when I asked for more details.
“For journalists, it was exciting to write about. For a lot of Christian believers, it was something that they wanted to be true,” said Conrad Hackett, a demographer at Pew Research.
So what is really happening?
Christianity appears to be in long term decline in Britain, according to multiple national surveys. In one, the share of British adults who go to church at least once a month was 12 percent in 2018 and is now 9 percent. In another, 54 percent of adults in Britain identified as Christian in early 2018, and last year, that number was down to 44 percent. Fewer new parents choose to baptize their children.
Still, there are signs of growth in some churches. The Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales has reported an uptick in adult baptisms. Immigrants are helping drive growth in some evangelical and charismatic Christian congregations. And about 12 percent of Anglican churches in Britain have reported congregations that were larger than before the pandemic. But those are exceptions.
“Revival is something you wouldn’t need a spreadsheet to measure. It’d be pretty obvious it was happening,” said Justin Brierley, the author of “The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God.”
There is a growing spiritual hunger in Britain, he said, though it does not always find Christian expression. Bible sales have increased in the country in recent years. Celebrities have helped make tarot reading and horoscopes into popular trends. And young people ages 18-34 are more likely to hold some spiritual beliefs, including a belief in animal spirits, than people 50 and older, Pew Research found.
Lamorna Ash, 31, spoke to young people across Britain about religion for a recent book. She said some were becoming interested in spirituality because it had been so visible on social media and in politics.
“Some see faith as a kind of countercultural phenomenon,” she said. “A way to differentiate yourself from others.” She said young people were drawn to religion because they were hungry for richer communities and answers to life’s big questions.
“These are questions that everyone has, fundamentally — questions of meaning, purpose,” Luc de Leyritz, 29, said last year while attending a service at Holy Trinity Brompton in Onslow Square, one of London’s most popular churches. It’s packed each week with young people, and he said he often arrives 20 minutes early to get a seat. “There’s a pendulum swing. The newer generation, Gen Z, is more interested in spirituality, more interested in religion.”
A growing curiosity, though, is not the same as a revival.
Lauren Jackson is an editor for The Morning and the host of Believing at The New York Times.
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