Britain's Youth: Rejecting Idols and Embracing Christ's Cross

From Surveys to Sanctity: Britain’s Youth Called to Resist Idols and Embrace the Cross

Britain’s religious landscape, long marked by decline and indifference, may be entering a period of remarkable renewal. New data suggest a profound shift among the nation’s youth, whose openness to the Gospel is reshaping public assumptions about faith in a post-Christian society.

The statistics are striking. According to YouGov’s biannual tracker, belief in God among 18–24-year-olds has nearly tripled in just three and a half years—from 16% in August 2021 to 45% in January 2025¹. Monthly church attendance among UK adults has risen from 8% in 2018 to 12% in 2024², an increase that translates into nearly two million additional people. Bible sales, too, have doubled since 2019, rising from £2.69 million to £5.02 million in 2024³.

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The growth is not uniform. The Church of England continues to lose ground, its share of churchgoing Christians falling from 41% to 34% since 2018. By contrast, Catholic attendance has risen from 23% to 31%, and Pentecostal attendance from 4% to 10%⁴. Among young adults, Catholics now outnumber Anglicans two-to-one.

What explains this shift?

Fr Damian Feeney of Holy Trinity, Ettingshall, points to a “desire for structure, shape, and routine… and a renewal of interest in traditional, liturgical worship among young adults.” He notes that beauty in language, colour, music, and ceremony exerts a growing appeal at a time when “secularism seems too one-dimensional and beige”⁵. This accords with the Catholic understanding of the liturgy as fons et culmen—the source and summit of the Christian life, where divine truth is mediated through sacramental signs.

Emma Buchan of the Church of England’s Networks Support Team interprets the trend differently: young people are “not primarily returning for tradition, but for an encounter with Christ that is transformative,” she argues, citing initiatives like The Way UK, a digital evangelisation project with a significant social media following⁶.

Both perspectives highlight something undeniable: the younger generation is spiritually searching. More than half of 18–24-year-olds report engaging in some form of spiritual practice within the past six months, while nearly a third express curiosity about learning more about the Bible⁷.

Yet questions remain. Is this revival durable, or a fleeting response to post-lockdown instability, economic anxiety, and political disorientation? One young woman told GB News that her faith, fervent in adolescence, dissolved at university when “Christianity’s rules” came to feel like “chains.” Such stories caution against triumphalism.

The Catholic tradition recognises both the fragility and the hope inherent in such moments. St Augustine warned that “the human heart is restless until it rests in God”⁸, yet Our Lord also warned of seed that “fell upon stony ground” and withered for lack of depth⁹. Revival statistics must therefore be weighed against the deeper question: are souls being truly converted to Christ and His Church, or merely drawn to a temporary sense of meaning?

From a doctrinal perspective, the present moment underlines two truths. First, the insufficiency of secularism, which Pope Pius XI described as a “conspiracy of silence about the problems of human life” that leaves man adrift without God¹⁰. Second, the perennial truth that authentic renewal in the Church always springs from fidelity to Christ, the sacraments, and the perennial magisterium. As Pius XII warned, “If the Church were to accommodate herself to the fleeting forms of modern life… she would betray herself”¹¹.

The opportunity is immense. Britain’s youth, once thought irretrievably secularised, are turning in fresh numbers toward Christ. Whether through the appeal of tradition, the witness of digital evangelists, or the simple human hunger for stability and truth, many are rediscovering the faith that built their nation. But revival cannot be sustained by statistics alone. It requires authentic catechesis, sacramental life, and the bold proclamation of the Gospel “in season and out of season”¹².

As Bible sales climb, churches fill, and young men and women step once more into the life of grace, the task of the Church is clear: to ensure that this moment of curiosity becomes a generation of conviction.

Yet revival cannot remain superficial. Numbers in a survey do not sanctify. The true test is whether this rising generation will resist the idols of their age, as St Agapitus resisted the idols of Rome¹³.

Those idols are no longer stone statues, but they are no less real. The world demands that we treat human nature itself as malleable, to be reshaped according to passing desire. Revival would mean young Catholics daring to affirm that “male and female He created them” (Gen 1:27), that the body is not an accident but a temple of the Holy Ghost (1 Cor 6:19).

The world glorifies promiscuity, parades vice as pride, and enslaves millions through the poison of pornography. Revival would mean a generation rising to embrace chastity and purity, showing forth the beauty of the body ordered to love, not to lust, and of marriage as a covenant, not a contract.

The world has made a golden calf of autonomy, sacrificing the most vulnerable—the unborn, the weak, the elderly—on the altar of convenience. Revival would mean young Catholics refusing to be silent, confessing with their lives that every child, every life, is a gift of God, never disposable.

The world demands conformity to slogans and ideologies, shaming those who dissent and silencing voices that speak the truth. Revival would mean youth willing to endure exclusion, ridicule, even persecution, rather than deny the Kingship of Christ.

And the world tells us that comfort is the highest good, that possessions and pleasure make us free. Revival would mean young men and women choosing sacrifice, fasting, prayer, works of mercy, and even martyrdom, rather than bowing before the idol of ease.

This is what revival looks like. Not vague spirituality or fashionable interest in religion, but radical conversion, public courage, and holy resistance. It is confessionals crowded, not survey answers ticked. It is Eucharistic adoration, not vague sentiment. It is vocations to the priesthood and religious life flourishing once more. It is families formed according to God’s law, not the world’s passing fashions. It is a generation of saints, unafraid to be mocked, ready to be martyred, who live as lights in the darkness.

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Footnotes

YouGov, Belief in God Tracker (August 2021–January 2025).
YouGov Polling Data, 2018 vs 2024, UK monthly church attendance.
Nielsen BookScan UK, Bible Sales 2019–2024.
GB News summary of YouGov denominational data, 2025.
Interview with Fr Damian Feeney, GB News, 15 August 2025.
Emma Buchan, quoted in GB News, 15 August 2025.
GB News citing YouGov survey on spiritual practice, 2025.
St Augustine, Confessions, I.1.
Mark 4:5–6 (Douay-Rheims).
Pope Pius XI, Divini Redemptoris (1937), §6.
Pope Pius XII, Address to the Roman Clergy (1949).
2 Timothy 4:2 (Douay-Rheims).
St Agapitus of Palestrina, a Roman martyr of the third century, who at fifteen years old refused to sacrifice to the idols and was tortured and killed for confessing Christ. Martyrology, August 18.