From Premier League footballers thanking God for setting up their match-winning goals to the spread of “Jesus is king” flags at nationalist rallies, young men in Britain may be losing their “herd immunity” to Christianity, experts have said.
While the number of people who identify as Christian has fallen to record lows, debate is raging over whether a “quiet revival” in faith is being seen among Generation Z, particularly young men.
Experts who have tracked religious trends for decades disagree over whether a spiritual revolution is really underway, but agree that Christianity has become part of mainstream public conversation in a new and sometimes controversial way.
After the England footballer Eberechi Eze scored three goals for Arsenal against Tottenham this season, he said in a post-match interview: “I prayed for it today — a hat-trick — and God gave it to me. That’s faith, man.”
The English-born striker Antoine Semenyo was seen praying at the side of the pitch with his pastor before one of his last Bournemouth matches this month. The England stars Bukayo Saka and Marc Guéhi have spoken proudly in interviews of their devout Christianity. A group of Arsenal players have even been dubbed the “Bible boys”.
Antoine Semenyo prays with his pastor before a football match
Eberechi Eze makes a cross sign after scoring for England
DAVID KLEIN/SPORTIMAGE/ALAMY LIVE NEWS
In the 1990s you might see “some Colombian striker who’d do the sign of the cross when he scored”, said Stephen Bullivant, a professor of the sociology of religion at St Mary’s University, “but I don’t recall England players being known for their religion.”
These devout twentysomething players could be both a symptom and a driver of young men showing more interest in spirituality. Open discussion of faith has become “normalised” among footballers, as “people who are highly admired by a much wider cross section of the population than are ever going to go to church on a Sunday”, said Nick Spencer, senior fellow at Theos, the religion think tank. He added that they “haven’t got an obviously evangelistic agenda, they’re there to play football”.
Nationalists and populists
Tommy Robinson, the far-right activist, has said that he found faith in prison. His rallies, including “Unite the Kingdom” gatherings, increasingly feature people with wooden crosses or Crusader costumes, bearing banners proclaiming “Jesus is the way”. The Lord’s Prayer has been recited on stage. Last month they held a carol concert to put “the Christ back into Christmas”.
Some have seen this as an importing from America of what is known as “Christian nationalism’. It is a concept promoted by figures including Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated last year, that national identity is closely bound up with Christian values and that these must now be vigorously reasserted.
A Unite the Kingdom protest
LAB KY MO/SOPA IMAGES/LIGHTROCKETGETTY
“Christian imagery and language have surfaced in populist and far-right spaces, sometimes used positively to defend tradition and a broadly Christian heritage, but other times as a framework against both Islam and social liberalism,” said a report from the Hope Not Hate anti-extremism charity this week.
Some are likely to be declaring “I’m Christian” because they really want to declare “I’m not Muslim [and this is] not a Muslim nation” in protest against immigration, while some see Christian symbols as “a response to wokery”, said Spencer, who is conducting research on “the rise of Christian nationalism”.
The Church of England’s Bishop of Kirkstall, the Right Rev Arun Arora, talks to people with “Jesus is king” flags at anti-migrant protests to “try to get an understanding of who they think Jesus is”.
Right Rev Arun Arora
THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND
“What they come out with is quite heavily shaped by American Christian nationalists,” he said. “The politics comes first and the faith fits into their politics.”
He warned that there is “a concerted attempt to co-opt Christianity to a particular nationalist agenda”, but said there was also evidence of people “searching for purpose and identity and belonging”. He has invited protestors to meet their local priests, saying of the Church of England: “I think it’s a huge mission opportunity to talk about the gospel.”
• No sex, no booze, we’re off to church: Gen Z have found God
Chris Wickland, a pastor at the Living World Church in Titchfield, Hampshire, has encouraged Christians to attend Robinson’s marches. He hands out flyers bearing a Union Flag and a crusader, declaring: “Our church is home for patriots.”
He said he saw young men come to his church who disliked “modern-day liberalism”, felt Britain was “denying its own culture”, and worried that “Christianity is being kicked to the kerb”.
He said some young men came to faith after initially saying: “I don’t really get the whole religion thing, but I’m coming to church because I feel like I need to support Christianity in some way.”
Unite the Kingdom gatherings, increasingly feature people with wooden crosses or Crusader costumes
JACQUELINE LAWRIE/LNP
What does the data say?
The proportion of people who identify as Christian fell below half for the first time in the most recent census while the proportion who have “no religion” has rocketed.
But surveys have found that Gen Z, aged from 14 to 29, are much less likely to identify as atheists than their parents.
It has prompted theories that there may be a renewed openness to spirituality among young people, with signs of an increasing interest in everything from wicca to paganism, and that the militant atheism once popularised by Richard Dawkins has fallen out of vogue.
• Most of Britain’s non-believers were raised as Christians
There was surprise when a YouGov survey for the Bible Society last year suggested 16 per cent of those aged 18 to 24 now attend church monthly, up from just 4 per cent in 2018. It was even higher, at 21 per cent, among males. This would equate to hundreds of thousands of young men suddenly having become churchgoers.
The Humanists UK group queried the findings, pointing to experts including David Voas, a professor of social science at University College London, who expressed scepticism at such rapid social change, pointing to a “mountain of evidence, some of it very recent, pointing to religious decline”.
The Church of England and Catholic Church have embraced the idea of a revival, though data from both show that, while attendances are bouncing back after the pandemic slump, they remain below 2019 levels and are plateauing.
A YouGov tracker shows, however, that the proportion of 18 to 24-year-olds who believe in God rose from 22 to 37 per cent between 2019 and 2025, overtaking in 2023 the proportion who “do not believe in any sort” of god, which fell from 42 to 32 per cent.
Young people today are less likely to have inherited a “weak strain of cultural Christianity” from their parents, said Bullivant. Instead they see religion as a lifestyle choice that chimes with their personal views or benefits their mental health, a recent study found.
• Catholics outnumber Anglicans two to one among Gen Z churchgoers
This may make them see faith as something “new and interesting”, Bullivant said. It may also make them more willing to discuss their faith openly, said Spencer. “There’s a sense in which herd immunity to Christianity is probably wearing off in Britain,” Bullivant suggested.
Will any of this translate to more bums on pews?
Rob Barward-Symmons of the Bible Society conceded that he found it a “real surprise” to see survey results suggesting a surge in young churchgoing men, but said it “chimed with some of the shifts and movements” being seen in some parishes.
“Only time will tell,” Arora said.
“You’re not going to turn up at church and there’s suddenly 500 of them,” Bullivant said of young men. “[In many churches] it is going from none to a few. But that is a big shift, proportionately.”
