by Tim Wyatt, The Critical Friend
We haven’t returned to the Quiet Revival for a few weeks, so here’s some interesting snippets you may have missed. First up, Madeleine Davies at the Church Times did a typically thoughtful and thorough exploration of the idea a few weeks ago. She zooms in on the phenomenon of a surge in young unchurched men expressing interest in faith, quoting anecdotes from a Pentecostal theologian worshipping in a Welsh village and an Anglo-Catholic priest in central London. Despite their wildly different contexts and traditions, both say they have seen significant numbers of young men with no background in Christianity converting.
If true, this would be a huge turnaround given anxiety about a lack of men in congregations has existed for centuries in the church. There are some surveys from other countries which do seem to point to a growing religiosity among men (or in some cases, simply a decline among women which has the effect of rebalancing out the gender divide in church too).
Madeleine also dwells on the professional religious statisticians who have expressed strong doubts about the reliability of the Bible Society survey which kicked the whole thing off. They echo scepticism Critical Friend readers have heard before, of course. One such expert, Clive Field, said:
“As a historian who has been researching British religious statistics for the past half-century, and from the 18th century to the present day, I see little evidence that Britain is undergoing some kind of ‘religious revival’ in contemporary times. So far as can be ascertained, denominational in-person attendance statistics have bounced back somewhat from the lows of the Covid-19 era, but remain below 2019 levels.”
The Bible Society’s own director of research Rhiannon McAleer has maintained a cheerful confidence in her Quiet Revival report despite the criticism from statisticians and others. She told Madeleine that she welcomed the debate:
Read here (scroll down)