The revival so quiet you can’t actually hear it?

Three years ago I wrote a comment piece for Evangelicals Now suggesting that there was a quiet work of God taking place in the churches and we had not noticed it.

Imagine my delight when the Bible Society published “The Quiet Revival”, a survey by YouGov showing that church attendance in the UK had risen by 50% in the last six years and that the main growth was among young people. Only 4% of young people attended church at least once a month in 2018, now the figure is 16%.

The Bible Society’s numbers raised questions though. Writing for en, Rebecca Chapman pointed out an important problem: “Data from the denominations themselves indicates a decline over the period between 2018/19 and 2023 in both Catholic and Church of England attendance.” She was not the only one to point this out, Humanists UK commented: “Where is this quiet revival? It is so quiet we can’t see it!”