Just in case you've been able to miss the deluge of excited Christians sharing the news, Mouse is referring to an opinion poll survey of 10,000 people in the UK which has found that the generations appear to be becoming more spiritual. The survey was first reported in The Times, which headlined that Gen Z were half as likely to consider themselves atheist as their parents.

The survey has been pounced on by some Christians, eager to demonstrate that the current generation of young people are open to conversations about faith and suggesting that this might be the prelude to a revival in the UK.

Well. Perhaps.

The first alarm bell for Mouse was that the survey, with an impressively large sample size, is not actually available for us to review. We don't know the exact questions asked and we are not able to see the data tables behind the headlines. We don't know how the data was collected or the demographic breakdown of the sample. Mouse is always suspicious of a survey when he can't see the exact wording of the question asked or the actual data.

The second alarm bell is that the survey was conducted for the purposes of publicising a book - The Devil's Gospels, by Christopher Gasson. So what we're evaluating here is a survey where we can't see the questions or answers, which was constructed to generate publicity.

Nevertheless, let's take a look at the information that is available from this survey with an open mind. Gasson has written up his key conclusions from the survey in a stand alone report. In the introduction, Gasson writes:

Mouse would suggest that Gasson's expectations were somewhat out of line with most of the recent evidence, if that was the case. There has been no evidence of increased atheism for a long time. That said, the evidence has strongly indicated a growth in 'nones' - those affiliating with no religion.

However, Gasson's data does appear to have a counterintuitive conclusion. It appears to show that younger generations consider themselves more spiritual and more religious than older generations. This leads to the paradoxical conclusion that despite the nation becoming less committed to religion steadily over time, younger generations are becoming more committed to religion than older generations.

Now, Mouse will suspend his suspicions that some of this may be caused by the exact nature of the questions asked and take the finding at face value. How can this be true?

In 2022 a survey asked the UK population about belief in God, heaven and hell and came to another paradoxical conclusion - that younger generations were both less religious than older generations, but also more likely to believe in heaven and hell.

It was a puzzle that the Policy Institute looked into in a fascinating article by David Young, who asked:

Young's solution to the puzzle was a simple analysis of demographics and the impact of immigration. In essence, the younger the generation the increasing proportion of the population is made up of first or second generation immigrants, who come from relatively more religious backgrounds than the UK population into which they have settled. As Young explains:

In particular, Young showed how the increased British Muslim population amongst younger generations moved the needle on belief in Heaven and Hell. While the headline showed that Gen Z were more likely to believe in Hell than any other generation, this is not true when Muslim respondents were excluded.

So what has Christopher Gasson discovered in his survey?

The increased religiosity and 'spirituality' of Gen Z are most likely not a fundamental change in values of younger people, but more likely simply reflect that a greater proportion of this generation come from more religious immigrant families.

Many Christians assumed that the increase in 'spirituality' could be a stepping stone towards commitment to faith. But it is more likely that it is, in fact, a stepping stone in the other direction. Children of immigrant parents who come from a religious background are less likely to follow the faith when they are growing up (and trying to fit in with their mates) in a society which is largely faithless.

It is possible that this demographic phenomenon explains the whole of the effect that Gasson has found. Or perhaps there is an element that young people are more open-minded than older people. After all, Gen Z are aged between 11 and 26 - the ages when teenagers and young adults are discovering themselves and finding their own way in the world. This may explain why the report claims that younger generations are much more likely to have taken a greater interest in religion and spirituality in recent years. 

Mouse is not without hope that there will be a change in the direction of travel with regard to faith in the UK. But he is not yet convinced that he is seeing it happen. The best evidence appears to simply show that the reason for changing beliefs in the generations is due to demographic changes. As David Young concluded, "The pattern we see in Gen Z emerges not because of changes in the combinations of beliefs held by Britons, but changes in the composition of who Britons are."