Surveys showing Christian resurgence among young adults in UK may be 'misleading': Pew

Despite rumblings of a Christian resurgence among young adults in the United Kingdom, recent surveys purporting to find high levels of religiousness among youth may be misleading, according to the Pew Research Center. 

Pew, a nonpartisan fact tank, published an analysis on Jan. 23 concluding that most surveys indicating rising Christian identity and church attendance among young adults in the U.K. were opt-in surveys, typically commissioned by faith-based groups. 

“Surveys using random samples of the population do not show clear evidence of a Christian resurgence,” the analysis stated. “In such surveys, you can only participate if the researchers randomly select you to respond.” 

In recent years, several surveys have indicated a surge in the proportion of young adults in the U.K. who believe in God, prompting some church leaders and commentators to speculate that a “spiritual awakening” is underway among younger generations. 

One report from last year by the Bible Society, titled “The Quiet Revival,” found that the share of 18- to 24-year-olds who attend church at least once per month rose from 4% in 2018 to 16% by 2024. The study also showed that men (10%) were more likely to attend church than women (15%). 

Pew’s analysts, however, questioned the methodological foundations of that conclusion because participants in opt-in surveys are typically not randomly selected but instead volunteer to complete them. These analysts argue that the results of online opt-in surveys are sometimes biased by “bogus respondents,” who may have taken the survey for a promised reward and put minimal effort into their responses. 

A spokesperson for Bible Society told The Christian Post that the organization’s “The Quiet Revival” report is "based on a high-quality YouGov survey, which uses a tried and trusted methodology.”

“YouGov is meticulous in controlling for bias in responses,” the spokesperson stated. “There's no such thing as a perfect survey, but there's no reason to think that 'opt-in' surveys are inherently unreliable.”

Pew’s Jan. 23 report also highlights the Labour Force Survey to support the claim that Christian identification is declining across age groups. LFS measures religious self-identification among more than 50,000 individuals across more than 20,000 randomly sampled U.K. households.

According to the LFS data cited by Pew, the percentage of 18- to 34-year-olds who identified as Christian went from 37% in 2018 to 28% in the summer of 2025. The survey also reported that the percentage of adults in Britain who identified as Christian went from 54% in early 2018 to 44% by the summer of 2025.

In addition to the LFS survey, Pew’s analysts pointed to an annual British Social Attitudes survey of more than 3,000 randomly sourced participants, which reportedly showed “no clear evidence of a Christian revival.” 

The BSA survey, according to Pew, found that adult respondents who identify as Christians and attend church at least once a month went from 12% in 2018 to 9% in 2024. Among respondents aged 18 to 34, the survey found that the number of churchgoers had not surpassed pre-pandemic levels: 6% were in this category in 2024, compared to 8% in 2018.

Supporters of the Bible Society’s analysis argue that concerns about opt-in surveys, if taken to their logical conclusion, would extend far beyond religion-related research and that questioning the credibility of such data would have implications for the wider polling industry and should not be applied selectively to religious research.

They also caution against treating probability-based surveys as definitive, noting that the National Centre for Social Research, which conducts the annual BSA surveys, changed how it collects data in 2020, resulting in lower response rates. 

Those who believe the religious landscape in the U.K. is changing cite other indicators, such as a reported rise in Bible sales, increased numbers of adult converts to Catholicism, and comparable trends reported in other European countries, including Finland, Sweden, France and other Western nations.