What's going on with young people and God?

0:01This is a Global Player Original Podcast

0:11About 10 months ago, I committed my life to Christ. In the past, I was kind of searching for a purpose, whereas now my purpose is given by God. In this younger generation, the kind of Gen Z, Gen Alpha coming through, there's definitely a sense around a search for meaning, a search for purpose, a search for inner peace. One of my friends goes to CrossFit and he said all these big muscled guys are all studying the Bible. I was just a bit lost and I remember sitting down on the sofa one day, closing my eyes, and all of a sudden I had a bright white light imprinted in my eyes in the shape of Jesus.

0:46What is going on right now with young people and God? They call it the quiet revival because it's all happening beneath the surface. But if the polling's right, then more and more of Gen Z is turning to religion. Church attendance by young men in particular has more than quadrupled. Is this a need for something spiritual in a doom-scrolling world or rejection of how we're doing things today? We'll explore what's going on and why. Welcome to a special edition of The News Agents.

1:21The News Agents. tonight I want to talk primarily to young people and I want you to turn with me to the sixth chapter of Matthew and Jesus is speaking and he says this no man can serve two masters for either he will hate the one and love the other or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and materialism. That voice? It's the American evangelist, TV preacher Billy Graham. Now I find the psychological and spiritual and moral vacuum in the United States and in Europe and America and many other parts of the world. Millions of young people have no purpose for living and no motivating challenge.

2:09And young people are restless, I find. They want a cause. He's in Sheffield, a Bramall Lane, no less, home of Sheffield United Football Club. It's 1985. And somewhere in that crowd of 50 ,000 people is a barely teenage me. I've come along as a guest of my best friend, Sam, whose parents, Anne and Gerry, are born again Christians. It's a big deal for them to see him in the flesh. May God help you to make that commitment tonight with these many people that are coming here in Yorkshire, Sheffield, England. The Sheffield crowd adores him. As he preaches, I see a queue forming of people who run down to the stage to receive his blessing.

2:53And for a moment, I almost wonder if I will too. He's hit a sweet spot, somewhere between the showbiz and the spiritual. We are young. It's packed. And frankly, in the Sheffield summer of 85, not a lot else is going on. It all feels, well, exhilarating. In 1985, the Berlin Wall have yet to fall. Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall. Half of Europe was Soviet-controlled. The free marketeers Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were joined at the hips. No, it's me, Maggie. And we blame materialism. The stock market will be a car park in five years' time. I'll have made a fortune. For that gigantic rip in the social fabric.

3:40The stock market hits an all-time high. It's a unique period. Twelve million Americans are out of work. Four decades on, the fire and brimstone has gone. Billy Graham is dead. But I'm back, thinking about those words. She began with the healing words of St. Francis of Assisi. The narrative that young people are lost and must come to Christ remains. Only this time, it seems, they are. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith.

4:13A muggy July Thursday. We're at a Christian festival. Wildfires set in the bucolic hills of coastal Sussex. There are tents as far as the eye can see. They're expecting some 4 ,500 people over the next four days. We've come to try and put faces to the figures that suggest more and more young people are turning to religion. A YouGov survey says the number of 18 to 24-year-olds that believe in God has gone from 22 % to 45 % in the last five years. I'm naturally nervous about statistics, particularly because the figure includes those of all religions and those who may have come to the UK as immigrants with a religion already established.

4:54For the serious data breakdown, we're going to be talking to our old friend Luke Trill a little later. Right now, at the Wildfires Festival, we're just here to listen.

5:09About ten months ago, I committed my life to Christ. I just knew there had to be something else out there. In the past, I was kind of searching for a purpose, whereas now my purpose is given by God. I'd say definitely in this younger generation, the kind of Gen Z, Gen Alpha coming through, there's definitely a sense around a search for meaning, a search for purpose, a search for inner peace, that it feels like lots of young people are starting to tap into through Jesus. I didn't grow up Christian. I had an encounter with God in my room a couple of years ago. And since then, I just, I was on a journey through different faiths.

5:45And eventually in October, I found Jesus. One of my friends goes to CrossFit and he said, all these big muscled guys are all studying the Bible. Peter Grigg, pastor and founder, has been running wildfires for the last eight years. I think we've got 500 churches coming together from all different traditions, young and old, really with a desire to pray and to think and to prepare for a spiritual awakening in this country. A spiritual awakening in this country? What does that mean? Well, there are signs increasingly that people are turning back towards faith, particularly if they're under the age of 25.

6:31But we need to think about that, and we need to work out how to respond to that and what that means. And there is a sense, I think people are waking up spiritually, they're realizing that some of the narratives that they have been fed are not fulfilling, they're not answering the most profound questions in life. And obviously, the historic Christian gospel provides a lot of answers to the deepest questions like what happens when I die or how do I make my marriage work or how do I deal with some of the feelings of purposelessness that I have in my life. So what do you think the young people are are rejecting at this point?

7:11A recent YouGov poll showed that if you're under 25 you're 50 % less likely to be an atheist than your parents. I think there's a sense that atheism is what your parents did and it didn't really work and therefore people are looking for alternatives and asking some really big questions. So 10 months ago my partner and I started a journey of starting going to church. Before that we both grew up in a non-christian home. My parents I'd say are a little bit spiritual but wouldn't really classify themselves as anything and yeah just a lot of coincidences started to happen and we started to think okay is there something else out there or is it just us on this planet that's Monique nearly one year ago she and her now fiance Marcos discovered God was it something that changed for you was it an accident or was it no I think it's just some personal things but also just being in your early 20s I think you're pretty lost um and I think there's so much out there in the world at the moment there's so much going on.

8:12You mean as in bad news? Yeah everything yeah bad and good and I think we're just so I'd like to say that our generation is quite open in terms of what's going on around us so we've got so much at our hands with technology nowadays. I think we just know about so much so I think after time I just started to get curious and thought like what is this really about you know it's something that my my grandparents would have been committed to, my great grandparents would have been committed to and I thought there must be something to it if it's still going is what they say 2 ,000 years later. And have you sacrificed anything?

8:49Have you given things up? Have you stopped doing things that you used to do and enjoy? I think I've taken the small things in life a lot more and so I would say I probably go up partying a lot less as I don't feel like I'm having to fill a void anymore. I don't feel that need to go and get drunk with my friends on the weekend. Do you drink at all? I do drink yeah but I wouldn't say I get drunk so I try to obviously we can all make mistakes but yeah my my feel is that I would never want to yeah put a sort of rule on it but at the same time I think there's also a sensitivity around it and being sensible about it is in my eyes smart and I would would never want to get drunk again.

9:36So if I took you through a normal day, can you tell me the things that you put into it now that you wouldn't have, whether it's a time for prayer or for meditation or for, I don't know, what do you do? So I'm only 10 months in, so there's still a lot I'm figuring out. I'd say my daily life has changed in ways that I pray quite consistently. So there's times where I do intentionally pray so I will I don't know set myself 15 minutes just I'm just going to spend some time with God put like my mindset and think of him and have a conversation with God and is it a conversation or do you repeat do you recite something is there an actual sort of liturgy that you use I don't use liturgies um I think they are very helpful in times but I think my way of been doing is just having a conversation and it's just sharing as I would with a friend is sharing with Jesus what I'm going through, asking him for help and guidance.

10:33So yeah, I'd say I'd consistently do that throughout the day. I tried to read scripture every day, so I tried to read the Bible daily, whether that's five minutes, whether that's an hour. That's obviously a massive change. I'd never picked up a Bible in my life. Has it changed your politics? Has it changed how you think of the role of the state or how you vote or how you think about issues like abortion or euthanasia? Yeah, these are definitely questions that I'm absolutely still thinking about as we're only 10 months in. In terms of abortion, it's a really hard topic and I think it's really, it's difficult to set a specific rule on so many people's different contexts that are going on.

11:16So yeah, I'd say it's really important to look at it contextually. I wouldn't like to set a law, but that's just my opinion. What about homosexuality? Does that have a place in your spiritualism, your Christianity? I think we have to be accepting of everyone and I'd say if Jesus was here today, he would have everyone around him. Actually, about a year ago, I found myself in quite a low, dark point in my life. I was just a bit lost and I remember sitting down on the sofa one day, closing my eyes and all of a sudden I had a bright white light imprinted in my eyes in the shape of Jesus and that was a bit strange I was like hmm that's that's never happened before and yeah Monique came back from work and I said Monique this happened and that's how the ripple effect began.

12:05Marcos, Monique's partner, was a high-flying athlete who was expecting to go professional. I put all my cards sort of on going to university at Loughborough doing sport at high level and sort of reaching the Olympics and through no fault of my own I'd given it everything from the age of 10 years old now 23 and you know that journey was cut short through injury and through no fault of my own and in that moment I felt found myself lost confused you know why did that hard work not pay off and lost and like you know what do I do with my life and I felt I was in a very very low point searching for things everywhere and um yeah now he's big on prayer through our conversations with my partner Monique, we went to church and we gave it a go and we were handed a Bible and we also handed a little booklet which was called Ask About Prayer and it was all about prayer and I went home that evening for the first time and prayed and it was very strange, I was talking to a being, you know, hello God and it was really strange but you know what began to happen, every single prayer I prayed became true.

13:11I was actually raised by a single mum so my dad was not in my life I'd only met my dad once at 19 years old never saw him again ever again and my second Sunday service I was actually there and someone had a a prophetic word and they said hey we feel like someone in this room has something that's weighing on their heart and they need to ask God for closure with it and I knew in the moment I felt God point at me in that moment and I went okay God it's obviously that thing it's obviously that side of my family can you um I just pray to God and I said God can I have clarity is it a yes or no do they want to meet me and uh amen and um the very next day less than 24 hours later I received a out completely out the blue message from my brother on that side of the family saying by the way last night we were all talking and we actually really want to get to know you so please when you're next over in the Canary Islands come and visit us we really want to get to know you and I just dropped to my knees and I just crying and in shock and actually that evening we had a church event something that we call an upper room essentially it's a fancy word for we put a band in the middle and we all stand around it and it's just a beautiful moment and someone prayed for me and I got absolutely drenched in the Holy Spirit which for those who don't know basically I just someone prayed for me I felt a heat that I'd never felt before inside of me I began to sweat profusely and it was, you know, I've done a lot of sport.

14:36I know what being hot and in the sun. So I know what being hot and what sweating is. But this was completely different, completely supernatural. Yeah, so that is how I came to faith. Marcus, are you nervous that if your prayers aren't answered, it will shake your faith? I mean, at the moment, you've had a really good run. You know what? No, no, I'm not. Because if he doesn't answer that, he will answer a different one. and if he doesn't open that door, it's because he wants me to go in the other door. And I really, truly believe that. Camilla, in her 20s, has a similar tale. I live with a chronic condition, so that's still very much a present reality and he just gives meaning to that.

15:16And obviously with that comes also some mental health, you know, just struggles and so on. But it's just Jesus is with me and I feel his presence. It's really interesting. It sounds like a sort of navigational tool more than anything else. It sounds like it could be therapy or it could be counselling. I mean, is that how you think of it or am I being sort of too simplistic about it? No, I mean, I think, you know, I've definitely done the counselling and the therapy, which are incredible, you know, and yeah, I've reaped so many benefits out of that. But Jesus is not like a self-help type of, you know, practice and so on.

15:57He guides my life. Once you surrender your whole life to God, he starts to just, you know, speak to you and guide you and be there in those moments. And so, yeah, he's everything. In many ways, it's all textbook. I was lost, but now I'm found. A vulnerable young person needing help, figuring life out when disaster strikes. Most of those we speak to mention depression or mental illness. Most mention the perils of social media, like Joe. You sound like you've kind of put the phones down, put social media down. Is that right? I think a lot of my experience from social media, it's not to say that there's not some amazing Christian voices out there.

16:38There definitely are. I think my experience was that it wasn't useful for me. Yeah. I mean, it was bad for you. It was disruptive for you. Yeah, I suppose in my experience, yeah, It was something that I suppose was perpetuating this continual search for purpose, search for meaning, and it wasn't quite like, didn't really feel real, you know. And I think that's one thing that this younger generation are really going after is not these abstract ideas of what peace is or what hope is, but we actually want the real thing. And even though I'm expecting a mention of the new breed of Bible-touting influencers whose sway on TikTok has been immense, no one does, at least not to us.

17:20For now, it all makes sense. A life lived online by kids born into the world of the touchscreen, trying to find the one thing that, by definition, cannot be touched. But I'm trying to work out what impact, longer term, this pull to religion will have on all of us, on the structure of society, on the way we make and frame our laws. Here's Peter again. I mean, you said something very interesting, which is people are rejecting evil and coming to the church. I mean, the church, Christianity, has not always been known as a force for good, right? I mean, look at the scandals that have rocked the Church of England in the last year.

18:01The cover-ups, the resignations, the covering up of child abuse or sexual abuse. and so in a way it's a sort of it's a brave person who sits there saying the church delivers good well the the tragedies of um the the evil and the covering up of evil in all expressions of the institutional church not just the church of england is appalling and has to be rooted out and has to be addressed. And as a minister of the gospel, I often feel deeply ashamed about those scandals. And I'm dealing with trying to care for victims on quite a regular basis. but we can't then just take that and ignore all the good that the church has historically done and continues to do.

19:05I wonder how it changes the sort of big issues that we think of that sort of bring the Christian moral and religious space together for example in the US we've seen a massive change to abortion laws in the last three years do you think that that is something that's coming here would you welcome that discussion here well in the last month we've seen exact opposite our parliament has has passed highly progressive votes on both end of life and abortion. So if we did see some, you know, moderating of that, I would welcome that because I think we are becoming increasingly progressive and liberal. Is there a place for young gay Christians and gay Christians who want to get married in the church here?

19:58Well, the gospel of Jesus Christ is good news for everybody, whatever their sexual orientation, political viewpoint or or whatever, and the church here at Wildfires would seek to be welcoming spaces for everybody. Some parts of the church, as you know, are liberalizing and redefining marriage around, you know, gay marriage and so on, and others aren't. My church, we are not liberalizing on that because we're trying to work out how do you stay in tune with a global church and a historic church um you know the majority of americans now are africans i mean how do you actually isn't it rather colonialist to say that what we think is absolutely true on any issue here in the west is the absolute truth that every other part of the world now needs to absorb and i think there is a live conversation to be had with a global church I think it's 2.4 billion Christians in the world and with a historic church Augustine with his YouTube channel so I guess I'm just imagining a world because obviously you can't pass legislation the rest of the world you can only look at the legislation in your own country if an increasing number of our young you know 18 to 24 now but they retain their christianity into coming decades could you see the uk becoming less abortion friendly less end of life friendly uh i mean i know you won't like the word friendly um but would you say we should be less open to abortion we should be less open to end of life measures less open to gay marriage i mean would that be a move in the right direction in your view with all due respect god is a bit bigger than our party politics um yeah i'm not i'm not for a moment sort of questioning the church i'm just trying to work out in sort of in real terms what that means if the country is becoming more religious more christian more spiritual are we going down a more conservative more orthodox root on some of these issues that's what i'm asking well socially conservative possibly but politically conservative i mean the foundations of our labor party are christian i mean the the roots of socialism is kind of christian so the idea the american idea is sort of god is more on the right but actually if anything god is more here if we're talking politics but but of course christians tend to be more conservative socially and have a very high view of of human dignity Five years is too short a time to tell us if it's a fad or a paradigm shift.

22:48Maybe religion is bridging that gap between adolescence and fully-fledged adulthood. Maybe it's a response to the growing number of young Muslims here who wear their own faith more comfortably. Or maybe Peter's right. It's a rejection of the generation before by people who think we screwed everything up. But if it is here to stay, will it fundamentally shift how we think of the biggest challenges of the decade ahead, questions literally about life and death. And will we need to be more tolerant of politicians who bring their own faith to the heart of politics? Coming up, Luke Trill, with a deeper dive into other growing religions of the UK and what it all might mean.

23:34Hello, this is Mark Urban. I'm one of the co-hosts of the Crisis Room podcast. This week, alongside my co-hosts Amber Rudd and Mark Polimeropoulos, we discuss whether Britain is really ready to go to war with China, as the Defence Secretary seemed to suggest. And our main discussion is about the timing of this week's announcement on British recognition for the state of Palestine. It's quite significant to recall Cabinet for this during recess. I don't think, I mean, that doesn't happen very often. So it helps him in terms of the political story. look how seriously I'm taking it. I'm recalling cabinet.

24:11Then it sounds like cabinet went on for 90 minutes. Actually, it's not very long for a recalled cabinet where you might expect quite a lot of argy-bargy and discussion. And given that they've come out with a kind of firm position, it sounds like it was probably the majority position. What I feel about this is that there is an argument, a strong argument to recognise the state of Palestine, but the argument not to recognise the state of Palestine is much harder to make because it's much more nuanced about still wanting to be on the side of the Palestinians, still having a reasonable position to take.

24:45But actually, it doesn't have the same weight, does it? I mean, if you've got two sides, you need to be passionate about both if there's to be an equality in it. But there isn't really. People who are saying, I don't want to recognise the state of Palestine, they're saying now, even though I believe in a two-state solution. So I think there was an inevitability about it. And I think the politics must have tipped him over as well. So do join us for the whole episode of The Crisis Room, which you can find on Global Player or wherever you get your podcasts.

25:23This is The News Agents.

25:29so joining us now is luke trill who's been conducting some work for us on this with both a focus group and and some polling luke and i guess my question to you is are we actually seeing something new is it a real change in the number of young people now coming and staying with religion well i think there are two separate points there uh and it was funny actually i was chatting to a Church of England vicar just before doing this interview and he said make sure you get across a distinction between joining and signing up and staying with the church and their view was very much that particularly conservative groups within Christian churches are doing a very good job at reaching out to young people, offering solutions to young people, to the myriad of challenges and problems that young people are facing from mental health to financial struggles to social media dislocation but there's not yet that evidence that they are necessarily sticking with it and the truth is you know we do have the study from the bible society which has been used as the main source of evidence for this uh sort of quiet uh revival and that jump just explain that phrase because we've heard it a few times now this idea of the quiet revival which just means what people kind of rediscovering Christianity but not making a noise about it yeah it's I think it also plays into the idea that it's going unnoticed this idea that there is a growing number of young people in particular who are either rediscovering faith having gone as children and then going later in life and we found quite a bit of that in our focus group or finding it for the first time there.

27:18I mean, the way you describe it, and certainly the way sort of we discovered it with some of the young people we spoke to, it's almost like church as therapy. You know, something has gone wrong in my life and I'm looking elsewhere. You know, I'm not getting the answers from what I was doing. So I'm actually coming to it for therapy, which is a very different thing to, I guess, a sort of, you know, we started with Billy Graham, this sort of fire and brimstone idea of an angry, vengeful God that you must do right by. You know, I didn't get the sense that it was necessarily changing people's sense of fear or awe.

27:53It's kind of like it's just somebody to talk to, isn't it? Yeah, and again, so, I mean, what really jumped out from the focus group was there were a range of different ways in that the people we spoke to had found interreligion. So there were a couple of young mothers and it was the experience of having a child that made them turn church. But for some of the young men, it was sort of almost sort of simplifying life. It gave them a moral framework and a way to look at. I mean, should we talk about some of the young men? Because you asked the question about the sort of the bro culture and the sort of Christian influences now.

28:26I mean, do you think there are these very powerful, the sort of the Christian protein shake gang, I'm going to call them, that are bringing young men in? And is that Christianity as we would normally previously have seen it? Well, what's interesting, and again, it is hard to get hard data on some of this, but one of the things, if you look at the Latin Society, for instance, they report a rising request for the Latin Mass, for instance, a very sort of traditional mass has been a source of big conflict within the Catholic Church. So there definitely seems to be that kind of element of more traditionalism.

29:06If you look at the polling that we did in this amongst Gen Z young men, there is around a fifth to a quarter who say they think it would be better if we went back to traditional gender roles. And I don't think we can separate this from wider feelings of young men, which you've talked about on the pod before, young men feeling left behind, feeling neglected some of them have turned to the so-called manosphere I think this is another route for some of that kind of dislocation amongst young men and what was interesting though in the focus group last night was there was one young man who said actually I'm really frustrated that this has been hijacked by the manosphere or very conservative voices you know you know I go I'm part of a church of love I'm part of a church of community I'm part of a church you know he talked actually a lot about the mindfulness of it you know to go to your point about coping with a difficult world so i don't think it's all of that group but there's very clearly a group within that for whom this is uh well the church represents masculinity and or a reaction against this sense that either society doesn't work for men or that society has become too feminized for them and as i say you know it's only you know it's only a quarter but a quarter to a fifth so it's not all Gen Z young men, and I think sometimes in these debates we assume every Gen Z, but it's a not insubstantial proportion of young men who think life was better.

30:37And clearly it was for some young men in the past. So I guess I want to bring it into the sort of political sphere a bit, because it wasn't so long ago that Tim Farron, Lib Dem leader, found himself pretty much sort of stepping down from his role because he couldn't manage to equate his personal beliefs, I guess it doesn't think that gay marriage should happen in the church, with where he was as the Lib Dem leader. And I guess the Kate Forbes role at the SNP in Scotland is a sort of similar one. I mean, if what we're hearing is young people who are coming to religion, maybe not quite so liberal in their views, whether it's abortion or gay marriage or end of life, you know, euthanasia or the rest of it.

31:27Do you think that changes what happens? I mean, does it change how we make our laws now? Well, I think we've got to look at the big picture. So if we zoom out, let's remember the 2021 census was that big watermark moment when it came to religion in the UK, when we found that fewer than a majority, only 46 % in England and Wales identified as Christian. So there's no getting away from that kind of long-term trend towards secularization and even if you look at the bible societies work they've had monthly church attendance rising from eight percent to twelve percent but that's just christianity if you added in islam if you had in other religions i mean you'd get us over the 50 percent mark yeah and i think this is this is the wider um you certainly get over the the 50 percent mark and i think this is the wider pattern because christianity is one part of the story if you look at i was looking at some data at the makeup of jewish schools between sort of orthodox jews reform jews different types judasim their orthodox proportion within those schools rising quite significantly we also know from the census data that islam is one of the youngest religions in the uk quite significantly young and what is interesting is when you dig in there was some research that uk and changing europe did which found that the typical effects which are more liberalizing in other religions so education age weren't as prevalent in Muslim communities.