YouGov has confirmed it will repeat its research into church attendance later this year, following mounting scrutiny over claims of a “quiet revival” in Britain.
The move comes after academics and polling experts publicly questioned findings published by the Bible Society, which suggested young adults are returning to church in record numbers.
The charity’s report, The Quiet Revival, published in April 2025, drew on two YouGov surveys and claimed that monthly church attendance among adults in England and Wales rose from 8% in 2018 to 12% in 2024.
Among 18 to 24-year-olds, the increase was said to be even more dramatic, from 4% to 16%, with young men reportedly leading the surge. Attendance among young women in the same age group was said to have risen from 4% to 12%.
However, the statistics have been met with scepticism. Emeritus professor of social science at University College London, David Voas, told the BBC that if the growth were genuine, it would amount to “literally millions of new churchgoers” who would have had to be “very quiet indeed, not to say invisible, to have escaped our notice”.
Meanwhile, Professor Sir John Curtice, senior research fellow at NatCen said his organisation’s "successive readings showing consistent trends year after year give him greater confidence in the BSA findings and said that, had he been presented with the YouGov data alone, he would have asked: ‘Are you sure? Because if it doesn’t look like a duck, it may not be a duck.’”
The Pew Research Center has also warned that suggestions of a revival may be “misleading”, pointing to methodological concerns. Some of the surveys in question rely on opt-in panels, participants who volunteer to take part, rather than random sampling.
Pew researchers point to the Labour Force Survey (LFS), which shows a decline in British people identifying as Christian from 54 to 44 per cent from 2018 to 2025. The LFS randomly samples 20,000 households each quarter.
Conrad Hackett, Pew’s senior demographer, warned that repeated assertions of revival risk creating “a very misleading narrative".
But, the Bible Society has consistently defended its report. In January, a Bible Society spokesperson said the research was “based on a high-quality YouGov survey which uses tried and trusted methodology”, and there was “no reason to think that opt-in surveys are unreliable”. They said the team had carefully examined the roughly 100-question survey and found responses consistent and credible.
Writing in Premier Christianity last month, Rev Mark Woods from the charity said: “Our confidence in the data can also be attributed to the stories we’ve heard since the report came out. These stories, from every Christian tradition, have been of growth – sometimes explosive, but more often of people just turning up to church because they’d read their Bible or felt the need to explore faith, and staying.
Is it happening everywhere? Of course not; if you’re in a rural village you’re less likely to see it than if you’re in an urban centre. But it is unquestionably real, and church leaders need to factor it into their ministries."
Supporters of the report have also pointed to wider signs of renewed spiritual interest. SPCK publishing director Lauren Windle suggested cultural hunger may be driving the shift.
“Maybe the generation that has everything wants more, more real, more truthful, more consistent, more outward facing, more generous and more peaceful. More God-like.” she said.