In 2025, I read that there had been a “quiet revival” of Christianity in Britain. According to the Bible Society, there had been huge increases in the numbers of young people going to church, including 18-24 year olds where the numbers attending had increased from 4% to 16%. Now, I am all in favour of people exercising their freedom to worship any of the available Gods, but I was concerned about these figures. With the number of people identifying as Christian having fallen to just 39% in 2025, then how come church attendances were now increasing? The right-wing media leapt on the story and while it was challenged it was never contradicted. Until now.
On its website, the Bible Society has revealed that the study was, and here I paraphrase, absolute bollocks. And only with the maximum amount of reluctance, once it was revealed that the You Gov poll was “faulty”. There has been no “revival”, quiet or otherwise, of Christianity in Britain. Indeed, all the available evidence indicates it is in terminal decline.
Older members of my family, all now departed, did not refer to themselves as atheists or even agnostics and when asked their religion would answer, “CofE”. They may have had a tenuous connection with religion – if my old Grandma heard the very young me say “Blimey!” she would admonish me by saying that God would strike me blind for saying things like that. It was not exactly the most effective way of encouraging me to become a believer, but I guess in those days fear was a useful weapon for our theist friends. I briefly worried that a vengeful God might indeed strike me blind, but even at a very early stage in life I pretty well ruled out his existence. Any deterioration to my sight was corrected in the mid 1990s when I had laser treatment, so there, God.
I wonder if part of the reason for sharing such wildly inaccurate information was to encourage young folk in particular that doing God was a bit of a fashion item, that if plenty of their contemporaries were packing the aisles of the local church then they should, too. If so and so is going to church, then maybe I should join them? I can imagine the pressure, although I must say it never impressed me much. As I got older, I began to believe in science, not religious superstition. Science can be blunt, especially when it depends on evidence and I have to admit I prefer evidence to religion, which is basically faith without evidence. As the years ago by, as more and more prayers go unanswered, as people still die in wars and from terrible diseases and particularly when so much of the world is controlled by those of faith, isn’t it obvious why people are coming to the conclusion that actually, there probably isn’t a God after all?
I understand why some people get comfort from religion. No one wants to die and the promise of eternal life can sound rather more attractive than the grim finality of death. It is one thing believing one will survive one’s own death, it is quite another trying to prove that one can. This is yet another reason why the Bible Society’s poll was so out of kilter with reality.
It gives me no pleasure to pooh-pooh decent folk who live by their faith. There may have been an element of wanting to believe that Christianity was on the way back after years of decline and I suppose you can’t believe the devout for feeling that way. But the reality, as we now know, is that there is no comeback for God after all and with any luck there never will be. I am hugely relieved, I will say that. With the way the world as it is today, with religious fanatics in charge all over the world, the less faith we have the better.
