There are opinion polls that are so striking they change history. Many Britons will remember the YouGov poll in September 2014. It was the first poll in the Scottish independence referendum campaign to show the Yes side ahead by 51 per cent to 49. That poll shocked SW1, panicked the Cameron government, and led to ‘The Vow’ – the last-minute promise of further devolution if Scotland stayed in the UK. And lo, ‘No’ scraped home, and Britain staggered on.
Then there are polls that go beyond striking into ‘whoah, can that possibly be true?’ territory. Polls so unexpected they feel world-changing. The same company, YouGov, has produced just such a poll. It shows that religious belief among 18 to 24-year-olds has tripled in just four years, from 16 per cent to 45 per cent.
Can that possibly be true? And if it is true, what in God’s name is going on? Most of us have spent our lives in a world of increasing secularism and irreligion: if that is abruptly reversing, what might it mean? Scrying deeper into the polling entrails – this is a biannual poll of British religious belief – throws up caveats. Firstly, the sample of 18 to 24-year-olds is actually a small subsample of the wider British population. Such subsamples are notoriously wobbly – but not without utility.
Also, it seems like some publications have cherry-picked the data. They have chosen to highlight January 2025 as the endpoint, yet the most recent poll (6 August 2025) is less startling: the 45 per cent of ‘believers’ comes down to 37 per cent. Meanwhile, significant questions have also been levelled at YouGov’s earlier claims of increased churchgoing – which derive from this same sequence of polls.
Nonetheless, the basic data show that something holy is going on. Look at the overall figures. In August 2019, a total of 39 per cent of young people believed either in God/gods or a ‘spiritual greater power’. At the same time 42 per cent declared total atheism – no beliefs at all. The youthful atheists had a narrow but clear majority.
Now, in August 2025, a total of 55 per cent of young people believe in God/gods or a spiritual greater power, and just 32 per cent are convinced atheists. The believers are in the majority – by some distance. And this is not just a shift in polling maths, but in conviction: a recent report, separate from YouGov, found young believers are now significantly more zealous and personally committed to their faith than their grandparents’ generation.
Verily, there is something afoot, so we need to explain it. Given the timespan involved, 2019–25, one obvious contender is Covid. A worldwide plague that killed perhaps 20 million people, and terrified billions – leaving economies reeling – was bound to shake minds. There is evidence that previous plagues increased religious devotions. After the Black Death, parts of Europe saw spikes in sacred fervour – penitential processions, flagellant movements, apocalyptic cults.
However, the Black Death, according to some historians, also left survivors more cynical and anticlerical, more willing to experiment with heterodox ideas. At the same time, the common people saw priests dying in their dozens – and wondered why God did not save them. A few thinkers (e.g. Norman Cantor) have argued that the Black Death sowed the ideological seeds of the Reformation.
Other plagues display similar patterns: increased devoutness in some, yet a new aversion to the church (or the synagogue, temple, mosque) in others. Maybe plagues simply amplify tendencies already in place.
Maybe we really are seeing young British people – depressed by the bleakness of materialism, alienated by AI and smartphones – returning to spirituality
What else could be at work? The 2020s have not lacked for mind-bending and often depressing drama, from Ukraine to Gaza to Trump/Biden. Then one can look at the climate-changing planet – and the misgoverned UK – and see chaos, and hopelessness. The one sovereign remedy that religion offers is hope.
Others would point to large-scale immigration of people from more religious cultures – but even migration on the biblical scale of the Boriswave – when His Majesty’s Government used the Book of Exodus as a policy document – does not explain the extraordinary leap of faith in the YouGov data.
Finally, we live in an age of wild, weird fashions which sweep around the world with passionate intensity, sped by social media and TikTok influencers, which then fade just as fast. These fashions can be as bizarre as fidget spinners or Labubus.
Perhaps all this sudden desire for higher powers and whispered prayers is Labubus elevated into a lifestyle: smells and bells for some, Zen and ayahuasca for others. It is noticeable that if you break down the increase in religious belief by class, it is the affluent and the fashionable – ABC1s – who have become more susceptible to faith. The working-class CDE have not budged, and remain stubbornly sceptical. Maybe we have here the ultimate in luxury beliefs: when you run out of sourdough ideas, you consider your soul. And all that velvet and incense is a seductive aesthetic.
However, given that this is an article on religion, I prefer to end on a piously upbeat note. It is, after all, quite possible that the YouGov polling is correct, and is showing a genuine revival in religiosity. Maybe we really are seeing young British people – depressed by the bleakness of materialism, alienated by AI and smartphones – returning to spirituality, and perhaps to the storied and consoling Christian faith of our ancestors.
If that is happening: praise be. The United Kingdom is in a tight old spot, as we all know. We face a long road to regaining our cultural self-confidence. But if we are to retrieve our national purpose, a crucial element of this will be rediscovering what it means to be Britons, what makes us special – and part of that is our identity as an offshore Protestant island with noble Catholic roots. Put it another way, we need to notice, once again, that on our extraordinary national flag there are three Christian crosses: exquisitely unified into a fourth.
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