They’re the generation least likely to describe themselves as atheists and 62 per cent of 18 to 24-year-olds say they’re ‘very’ or ‘fairly’ spiritual. So what’s behind this resurgence of faith? Hannah Evans meets the young believers.
Until the age of 15, I did something that was considered by my school friends and fellow teenagers to be deeply, deeply uncool: I went to church. Not just on Sundays, but also to Bible study on Wednesday evenings and socials with my youth group on Fridays. During summer holidays, I went to Christian camps and weekends away, and had more friends from church than I did at school, where saying anything about God wasn’t just lame and weird, but stupid. He wasn’t real - duh.
Today, aged 30, I don’t go to church or call myself a Christian. Instead, I sit somewhere between being a polite, small “a” atheist and an agnostic. If I’d been a few years below mine at school, though, it might have been a different story.
Jesus is making a comeback - and I don’t mean that he’s appeared again in the garden tomb. Among Generation Z - aged mid-teens to 28 - religion is being resurrected. According to new research, they are half as likely as their middle-aged parents or boomer grandparents to identify as atheists. I am a millennial, an irreligious generation, but for those who were in the classes below me, faith, religion and spirituality are on a different trajectory. As well as being the age group least likely to call themselves atheists, 62 per cent of 18 to 24-year-olds identified as either “very” or “fairly” spiritual. In 2023, a third of them also said that they believe in the existence of God or a higher power, up from a quarter in 2021.
Emily Beaney is a typical member of Gen Z. Not just because she loves fashion and works as a social media influencer, but also because she is part of a growing number of twentysomethings who believe in God. Though you’d know that if you watched the “Get Ready with Me for Church” videos that she shares with her 57,000 TikTok followers.
@stylingemilybeaney I will never not love getting dressed for Church! • • • #churchoutfit #churchfit #stylereels #fashionreels #stylecreator #whatpeoplewore #outfitideas #outfitideas #churchoutfits • • SDG
♬ Very Demure, Very Mindful - Tambo
“There are some things that ChatGPT can’t answer. Like, what is your purpose? Why are we here?” she says. “We have TikTok, Google, Instagram and AI at our fingertips. I could search anything. But there are more big questions than the internet has answers for. People are realising that maybe they can find them in God.”
What do her non-Christian friends think? “I never get any negative reactions. Just like people in the outside world are looking for honest ways they can express their authentic selves, I am going to church and I know I can be my authentic self. I don’t have to hide.”
It’s difficult to square these experiences with the ones I had as a teenager. My school friends’ parents looked at me with an odd sense of pity and amusement when I told them my parents used to get us to spell words from Bible verses around the dinner table (though my mum still says this was to help my dyslexic brother, rather than drum the gospels into us; we both agree Harry Potter might have been better). As for my school friends, mentioning that I went to church triggered an aggressive line of questioning. Are you a virgin? Do you hate gay people? Am I going to Hell?
For centuries, these have been the fault lines for debate between young people and Christians. I can understand why - teenagers want to push boundaries, experiment and discover who they are. The evangelical churches I grew up in (the most popular among my age group) were full of rules - though they didn’t want to be seen that way.
On first arrival, things appeared laid-back and approachable - no organs, no hymns, no preachers with dog collars, no candles or choirs. This was a modern church! But then I met vicars who held archaic views - they believed you could pray away being gay, and couldn’t countenance gay couples getting married in church. I knew one girl who was asked to stop leading Sunday school when the vicar found out she was living with her boyfriend.
As for women in leadership, it wasn’t until I was 20 that the General Synod, the Church of England’s governing body, voted in favour of the appointment of women bishops, having blocked it two years earlier.
Meanwhile, Gen Z today place a strong emphasis on social and gender equality and LGBTQ+ rights. According to a new Office for National Statistics report, 10 per cent of 16 to 24-year-olds identify as gay or bisexual.
Where do Beaney and her friends stand? “There is no gender gap at my church. Ever.”
What about being gay? “I don’t think God can make mistakes. I don’t think anyone is a mistake or anyone’s gender is a mistake. If people come to our doors and they are gay, I want them to come straight in and be welcomed.”
People aged 18-23 are having less casual sex than ten years ago
I came of age during the Skins era of the Noughties, when the raucous television series following a group of friends shagging, taking drugs and drinking their way through school was the blueprint for what teenage fun looked like. It won’t surprise you that I wasn’t allowed to watch it, but I still managed to sneak out for Skins parties friends would host whenever they had a parent-free house.
Compare that with Gen Z today and the contrast is stark. Instead of getting drunk in parks and having sex in bushes, one in four members of Gen Z are teetotal - and countless studies have found men and women aged 18-23 are having less casual sex than young adults 10 years ago.
Sam Myers, 20, is not much different from his peers. An actor and model, he goes to church in west London every Sunday. Myers drinks, but not to excess. “Ninety per cent of the rules I follow are ones that I know, deep down, are a good idea anyway, such as the Bible verse about trying to make as many decisions as you can in sober judgment. I can’t think of a situation where I went out clubbing and didn’t wake up the next morning and think first, ‘I probably shouldn’t have done that.’ For three years, I went out at every opportunity. After every night out, I had anxiety.”
He’s also not having sex. I can distinctly remember a moment when I was 14 and at a Christian camp I went to every summer. One afternoon the boys and the girls were split into groups. It was time to talk about sex. The people there were from a broad spectrum of churches, but the perspective was the same. The boys were taught not to get tempted by women and to try not to masturbate; we were told to save ourselves for our husbands and not be temptresses. Talk about generating shame.
Almost 10 years on and it’s still a divisive topic. “There’s obviously a massive part of me that wants to sleep with my girlfriend before I marry her,” says Myers. “But then, on the flipside, I do think there’s something beautiful about the commitment of waiting. And the authority it puts on that section of our relationship doesn’t govern us.”
That doesn’t mean Christians can’t date. Anyone who has been a member of a church congregation with lots of young people will know the unspoken, suppressed sexual energy between the single people there. It’s why they get married so young, so the joke goes.
In the Nineties, the London Bible College (now called the London School of Theology) was nicknamed “London Bridal College” by students because so many graduated with a ring on their finger. There’s a church in southwest London called HTB - Holy Trinity Brompton - that I know is unofficially dubbed “Hunt The Bride” by some members of the congregation, because so many attractive couples meet at its services. Imagine an episode of Made in Chelsea but set in pews, rather than bars.
Church was where I met my first boyfriend aged 14. It was your classic teenage relationship in that we were together for less than two months and it consisted mostly of awkward dates and snogging in the back of the cinema after church - he had to sneak out early to get home. His Catholic mum had said he wasn’t allowed a girlfriend unless he was going to marry her.
Today, there are Christian dating apps such as Salt, which is like Tinder but everyone loves Jesus - and possibly you too.
Esther Jackson, 23, has friends who have met their husbands on the app, though she prefers to use Hinge. “You can set Christianity as a dealbreaker. You have to do a bit of investigative work and suss out how serious they are about their faith.”
When I was growing up, the general directive from leaders at my church was “date to marry” - casual dating was discouraged - which is obviously a ridiculous thing to tell a 14-year-old.
Jackson agrees. “When I was younger, you’d get strong messages about only dating to marry. Which is insane. Now, though, we’re encouraged to hold it more lightly, but also know that you’re handling people’s emotions.” The general consensus among the congregation is that you don’t have sex until you’re married.
Jackson grew up in a Christian family but she didn’t start going to church “for herself” until after university. “I’d become disillusioned with the rules and regulations. I thought there was more to life that would make me happy and I chased that at university — the classic experience of partying, drinking, guys. But I realised that even after doing that I was still unhappy.”
Why does she think more Gen Z peers are considering religion? “We’re always called the hopeless generation. We’re dealing with so many mental health problems, and online culture has fuelled comparison on another level. It’s driving people to burnout. I think once they hit that place of, ‘I have tried and I am still not good enough,’ that’s when people are turning to Christianity.”
‘Redemption is not about moral perfection’
Jacob White, 26, would rather not be judged for his views on sex (which he has had), whether he drinks (he does) or if you saw him “going crazy in the club on Friday”. He’d rather the strength of his faith be judged by what he calls “the fruit”.
He has a group of 20 or so Christian friends who work in the entertainment and media world - White is a content creator with 77,000 followers on Instagram - who all go to church in southwest London on a Sunday morning. “In the Bible it talks about the fruit being love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness and self-control. So as much as someone can claim to be a Christian because they don’t have sex, or ‘I don’t drink,’ or, ‘I don’t smoke,’ but ultimately what I believe it is comes down to, can you see patience? Can you see kindness? Can you see gentleness?”
It helps, he says, to have the “big thinkers” of his era talking about Christianity. “Seeing Russell Brand and Jordan Peterson understand Christianity from a more intellectual point of view is quite interesting.”
Last May, Brand was baptised as a born-again Christian in the Thames by Bear Grylls. Last month, Peterson described himself as a “new kind of Christian” and spoke about the psychological significance of Bible stories.
Aren’t they still problematic inspirations for young men? The unflappable Jordan Peterson for his stance on masculine dominance; Brand for his, you know, sexual assault accusations? “I think that’s the beauty of redemption. It’s not about moral perfection. In seeing those people who have notoriously been problematic turning to faith and seeing a change in how they are, that almost tells people who have done bad shit, ‘No, you can also be in this faith.’ ”
Erykah Pittaway, 21, met her fiancé at the “charismatic evangelical” church she goes to in north London. She’s engaged and is waiting until they get married to have sex.
She doesn’t just go to church on Sundays but also to Christian festivals such as Wildfires, which is held in West Sussex in July, and David’s Tent, which consists of 72 hours of nonstop worship in a field near the Cotswolds. “It’s probably the Christian Glastonbury. At traditional music festivals that I’ve been to, everyone is high. But this isn’t like that at all.” There are food trucks serving alcohol and pop-up bars with sermons throughout the day. “None of us are there to get drunk. We don’t find purpose through that.”
A scandal at my church involved a priest and under-age girls
Over the past 10 years there have been countless fumbles and failures in how the Church of England has handled scandals, failing to act or hold vicars accountable, often more concerned with reputational damage than the safety of their congregation.
When I was a teenager, there was a scandal involving a predatory priest in training and under-age girls at my own church. To say it was brushed under the carpet would be a gross understatement. At the man’s sentencing - more than a decade later - the judge said there had been a “wholesale failure by those responsible at that time for safeguarding to understand whose interests they should have been safeguarding”.
Lots of my friends who have never gone to church simply roll their eyes when another scandal hits the headlines - “Here we go again.”
Do they talk about it at Pittaway’s church? “At our carol service in December, it was talked about in front of everyone. [Our pastor said] that they were not hiding that the church had made mistakes, and that they were sorry. They reminded us that Christianity did not start as a religion for, or controlled by, people with power. This is what men have done to the word of God.”
‘A lot of people live their life thinking, you’re on your own’
There are lots of reasons why I am no longer religious. I found churches that only talked about forgiveness and how much Jesus loved you, rather than real social issues happening in the real world, self-indulgent. I found it contradictory how some people I knew described Christianity as “a relationship with God, not a religion with rules”, but then heavily relied on the Bible for answers and certainty. Isn’t true faith the abandonment of the need for certainty?
But I still have the utmost respect for how some people’s faith means they act in the most selfless ways, such as my dad, who was ordained as an Anglican priest eight years ago and is the most compassionate person I know. I am eternally grateful for the moral compass with which my Christian parents sent me out into the world.
I know that the Church of England is very broad and full of churches I’d probably find less frustrating if I went, such as Southwark Cathedral which celebrates diversity, champions inclusivity and has an openly gay dean emeritus. The irony is that the Gen Z demographic among the congregation is on the low side.
But I truly appreciate the community it brought in the first half of my life, when church was the backdrop of some of my fondest childhood memories.
This is the ultimate reason Theo Powell, 20, believes that his generation is turning to God. He goes to an evangelical church in south London where he also works. “Christianity counteracts individualism. A lot of people live their life thinking, you’re on your own. You do what makes you happy. But we’re designed to be connected and live for and with other people. Community is essential. I believe we’re here for a reason bigger than just looking after yourself.”
Written by: Hannah Evans
© The Times of London
