I'm a Quiet Revival researcher. Here's what the critics are missing

Since the launch of The Quiet Revival in April the response has been, at times, overwhelming.

Excitement, curiosity, scepticism, and criticism in different measures.

Whichever side people have landed on, however, there has often been an unusual level of passion in response to what is, fundamentally, a piece of social polling the likes of which YouGov carry out multiple times per day – albeit usually with lower samples, and with less remarkable results.  

Shaking preconceptions

This passion, it seems, stems from the extent to which this piece of research often shook preconceptions, for better or worse. While this has sometimes led to perhaps overzealous enthusiasm for our work, in other cases it has provoked ire and criticism which goes beyond critical thought and instead reveals the stubbornness of long-held social beliefs held by the critic. To be clear, not all criticism falls into this category – rigorous critique of this and all research is essential to developing our understanding of the Church and its future, and I can assure readers that the authors of the report were at various points the greatest sceptics of the findings. Before publishing we wrestled with the data alongside the experts at YouGov while consulting with critical friends and experts in the field, approaching the data with challenge and rigour before deciding to go public. YouGov review everything published using their data and would not approve anything if it was a misrepresentation or abuse of their data. They take their reputation incredibly seriously. 

But critique of the first type – driven apparently by a desire to dismiss all which challenges one’s fundamental worldview – offers little in the way of constructive progress, and instead leads to confusion and ultimately blocks opportunities for wider spiritual growth. 

One such example of this appeared in Premier Christianity last week. Tim Wyatt – a self-professed Quiet Revival sceptic from the start – drew on the latest Church of England Statistics for Mission data to attempt to discredit our work. As I will discuss, there are reasonable questions to be raised about these two data sets. Sadly, Wyatt raises too few of these points and instead falls into misrepresentations and cheap shots. 

Firstly, his assertion that we claim an increase of 1.9 million additional Anglican churchgoers is a figure of his own invention, and not a claim made by Bible Society. This is not mere semantics. We do not put a precise figure to this because variation with small samples can have huge statistical effect. In short, it can easily be misleading. In his comparison he also confuses weekly figures with monthly, a crucial distinction. 

Moreover, he insists upon a representation of Anglican growth in our report which is fabricated. We have a single mention of denominational distinctions, in which it is clear that Anglicanism is not the prime recipient of these new attendees. As I will discuss later on, many challenges lie ahead for the Church of England – but there remains cause for hope.  

Wyatt portrays our work as amateurish and insignificant. Here his argument is so misguided that it makes me question whether he understands the work he is critiquing, and whether he gave it more than a cursory exploration. Far from the hypothetical “small sample of 1,000 Britons in an online poll”, Wyatt refers to, The Quiet Revival instead is based on two surveys, the first in 2018 of 19,101 people and the second of 13,146 in 2024 – and in England and Wales, not in Britain. Both of these surveys are massive by polling standards, and undertaken by a globally respected polling agency in YouGov according to internationally recognised polling standards.  

Likewise our team is not made up of naïve cheerleaders of church growth, ignorant to the rigours of research. Across the small Bible Society research team we have three PhDs in the sociology of religion, and years of experience in the field. To dismiss our research as ”the giddy and unsubstantiated claims of one poll”, as he does, shows a lack of understanding which by itself undercuts the whole argument. And as we will see, this “one poll” is far from the only piece in the puzzle showing the same overall picture.  

Yet this is not to say that there are not some interesting reflections to stem from drawing together the Statistics for Mission data and our own. The reality is – as we state in our FAQs - we do indeed present a more optimistic image of the Church of England than its own data does. But the crucial point is that once all the variables are taken into account our figures differ by only one or two percentage points from those of the Church of England – scarcely a significant variation. Variation shouldn’t come as a surprise, as the datasets use vastly different methods and means of measurement, each with merits and drawbacks. We stand by ours as an internationally standard method of polling, but fundamentally they are measuring different things and bring different insights to support our wider understanding of the church and its mission. To pitch one against the other is to limit the fruits available for the church. 

Whether you look at our data, the Statistics for Mission data, or draw from both, challenges clearly lie ahead for the Church of England. For Anglicans our data does not point to explosive growth, particularly among the young, and the overall demographic profile remains notably older, suggesting the Church may be at risk of generational decline in the coming years. Put bluntly, there are a lot of older Anglicans who are dying off. Furthermore, they came from a generation where, for many, to be Christian in England and Wales was to be Anglican by default. Our data shows clearly that this is no longer the case, and the converts replacing them have a far greater range of choices where it comes to denominational allegiance, which inevitably means a smaller share for Anglicans.   

With this in mind, the Statistics for Mission data in fact tells a remarkable story, and one which aligns with much of what we were seeing. The fact that the Church of England is growing at all, for a fourth year in a row no less, should be enough to prompt at least some curiosity into whether the Quiet Revival is at work here. The fact that adult baptisms are at the highest since records were started seven years ago might provide further food for thought. Younger people are coming to faith in significant numbers, even if the Church of England isn’t seeing it to the same degree as other denominations. 

More than one survey

One crucial thing we’ve learned in the months since is that far from one anomalous survey (which can happen – anything less than a national census is liable to a range of statistical oddities), it is showing one aspect of a much larger picture emerging not only in England and Wales, but across much of Europe and the wider Western world.

• Belief in God on the rise among young adults
• Rise in spiritual interest among young people
• Higher interest in the Bible among students
• Dramatic increase in Bible sales in Britain – particularly youth Bibles
• Record rise in adult baptisms in France
• Young men in Finland coming back to committed faith
• Gen Z leading churchgoing in America
• Google searches for the Bible and Christianity soaring post-pandemic
• And – the Church of England attendance figures rising four years in a row, with record numbers of adult baptisms.

Challenges remain – but something is happening. And we aren’t the only ones to capture it with data. 

One of the great privileges of our work gathering the attention it has is the opportunity to meet with Christians of all types from across England and Wales and hear their stories. We’re hearing from people across the denominations, who are seeing the quiet revival in action in their communities. Sometimes in explosive waves – even before the report was launched one Cathedral dean told me that they had had an influx of young adults ‘just turn up’ (a regular refrain) and did I have any ideas of how to support them – but more often in quiet or steady instances: previously uninterested teenagers asking for Bibles for Christmas out of the blue; young people feeling called to walk into church for the first time; baptisms slowly rising year on year.

Many similar stories have been shared in the pages of Premier Christianity magazine this year. It won’t be enough to convince the stubborn critics, and of course they may say it’s confirmation bias, it’s anecdotal, that other supporting data is also insufficient – but the sheer volume of the stories we’re encountering for us has been overwhelming. 

At Bible Society, we will next year be launching a public campaign to reach these spiritually open people beyond the church, encouraging them into their local churches for whom we will be providing training in facilitating ‘Bible engagement communities’, helping people explore the Bible for themselves, in community and relationship, and continue an onward journey of discovery. We believe that a renewed focus on Bible-based discipleship, intergenerational conversation and learning, and the prioritisation of personal relationships are key to future progress. Allowing statistical quirks within spreadsheets to blind us from the stories of people longing for and experiencing God is a sure way to bring about the form of decline that some continue to insist is inescapable.  

It is nice to be able to close with a strong point of agreement with Tim Wyatt, sharing the sentiment of his final line: “God’s Church in Britain is alive and growing, for perhaps the first time in my lifetime. And that is good news worth celebrating!”

Amen to that.