by Bijan Omrani, Telegraph
Religious education is not what it once was. Today’s youth are now having to seek out spiritual experiences
Sales of the Bible in the UK have reached a record high. According to a new survey by the Christian publisher SPCK, purchases have increased by 134 per cent since 2019.
Anecdotal evidence from booksellers shows that the greatest interest in the Bible comes from the young. This parallels data about the recent “Quiet Revival”. An investigation by the Bible Society has found that churchgoing amongst 18-24-year-olds has quadrupled over the same period.
We should be asking profound questions about the causes of these trends. One may say that “The spirit bloweth where it listeth”, and we should not try to account for changes in belief. However, even if we avoid making windows into men’s hearts, the fact that young people seem to be buying the Bible in droves should make us reflect on how society has been treating them.
Many clergy have told me that a major prompt for the young to reconnect with the faith has been the recent collapse of certainties in Western society. Those born in 2000 will have experienced the fallout from the September 11 attacks on the US, seemingly permanent financial crisis since the 2008 recession, the effects of mass migration, Covid, the machinations of Brexit, the political rise of Donald Trump and bloody conflict in Gaza. I could go on. Not for this generation is there the sunny confidence of Western hegemony and the jolly aftermath of the collapse of communism.
Parallel to this loss has been the evaporation of cultural self-confidence. Whilst this phenomenon is most eye-catching in one-off cringeworthy episodes – councils calling Christmas trees “multi-cultural trees” or Sir Keir Starmer “taking the knee” for Black Lives Matter – the quiet change of how Christianity is taught in British schools and the impact of this on the young is more important.