What's going on with young people and God?

This is a Global Player original podcast. About 10 months ago I My purpose is given by God. In this younger generation, Igonogen Z Gen Alfred. Yeah. The sofa one day closing my eyes and all of a sudden I had a bright white light imprinted in my eyes in the shade. What 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 the 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 NewsAgents. The 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. 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. Young people are restless, I find. They want a cause. He's in Sheffield, at Bramel Lane, no less, home of Sheffield United Football Club. It's nineteen eighty five. And somewhere in that crowd of fifty thousand people is a barely teenage me.

I've come along as a guest of my best friend Sam, whose parents, Anne and Jerry, 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, and for a moment I almost wonder if I will too.

He's hit a sweet spot somewhere between the showbiz and the spiritual. We're young. It's packed, and frankly, in the Sheffield summer of eighty five, not a lot else is going on. It all feels well exhilarating. In 1985, the Berlin Wall had yet to fall. Half of Europe was Soviet control. The free marketeers, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, were joined at the hip. No, it's me, Megan. And we blame materialism. Stock market will be a car park in five years' time. I'll have made a fortune.

rip in the social fabric. Million Americans are out of work. Four decades on. She's not going to be able to do The narrative. Christ remains. Maybe bring faith.

A 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 four and a half thousand 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 UGOV survey says the number of eighteen to twenty four year olds that believe in God has gone from twenty-two percent to forty five percent 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. For 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. About 10 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 Econom Z Gen Alpha. Yeah. I didn't grow up I had an encounter with God in my room a couple of years ago and since then I just Through different in October from 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 five hundred churches coming together from all different traditions, young and old. Uh really with a desire to uh pray and to think and to prepare for a a spiritual awakening in this country. A spiritual awakening in this country? What does that mean?

Mae'n ymwneud â phobl sy'n ymwneud â phobl sy'n ymwneud â phobl, yn ymwneud â phobl sy'n ymwneud â phobl. Uh but we need to think about that and we need to work out how to respond to that and what that means. And uh there is a sense I think people are waking up spiritually, they're realizing yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n mynd.

uh the historic Christian gospel uh 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 ymwneud â'r un o'r un o'r un o'r un o'r un o'r un o'r un o'r un o'r un o'r un o'r un o'r un o'r the young people are are rejecting at this point. A a recent Ugov poll showed that if you're under twenty five you're fifty percent less likely to be an atheist than your parent.

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 ten 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. Um, my parents I'd say are a little bit spiritual but wouldn't r really classify themselves as anything. And um Yeah, just a lot of coincidences started to happen and we start to think, Okay, is there something else out there? Or is it just on us us on this planet? Nearly one year ago she, and her now fiance Marcos had been has discovered God.

Was it something that changed for you? Was it an a an accident or was it No, I think it was just some personal things but also just being in your early twenties, 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. You mean us in bad news? Yeah, but everything, yeah, bad and good and um I think we're just so I'd I'd like to say that our dentist is quite

um 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.

Um, 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, so But yeah, my my feel is that um I would never want to

in my eyes smart and I would would never want to get drunk again. So if I took you through a a normal day Um, 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. Um 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 fifteen minutes just I'm just gonna spend some time with God. Put m 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 being doing it is just having a conversation and is just sharing, as I would with a friend, is sharing with Jesus what I'm going through, um, asking him for help and guidance. Um so 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.

Um that's obviously a massive change. I'd never picked up a Bible my life. Has it changed your politics? Has it changed how you think of yw'r rôl o'r state, yw'r rôl, yw'r rôl, yw'r rôl, yw'r rôl, yw'r rôl, yw'r rôl, yw'r rôl, yw'r rôl, yw'r rôl, yw'r rôl, yw'r rôl, yw'r rôl, yw'r rôl. In terms of abortion it's 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 like different contexts that are going on.

So 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. Yeah. What about um homosexuality? Does that Mae'n ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r hyn.

dark s point in my life I was yeah, I was I was just s a bit lost and I remember sitting down on the sofa one day, closing my eyes and all of a sudden I had a 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 uh yeah, Monique came back from work and I said, Monique, um this happened and uh that's how the ripple effect began.

Monique's partner was a high flying athlete who was expecting to go professional. I put all my cards sort of on uh going to university at Loughborough, doing sport at a high level and sort of reaching Olymp the Olympics. and through no fault of my own I'd given it everything from the age of ten years old, now twenty-three. 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.

Yn ymwneud. Yn ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud. Yeah. Now he's big on prayer. Through our conversations with my partner Monique, um we went to church and we go it you go and we were handed a a Bible and we also handed a little booklet which is which was called uh Ask About Prayer and it was all about prayer and um I went home that evening for the first time and prayed.

Um and it was very strange. You know, I was talking to a being and, you know, Hello, um, God uh and it was really strange but you know what began to happen? Every single prayer that I prayed? became true. Um I was actually raised by a single mum, so my dad was not in my life. I'd only met my dad once at nineteen years old, never saw him again, ever again and My second Sunday service, I was actually there and um 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, Um, okay, God It's obviously that thing. It's obviously that side of my family. Can you um I just prayed 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 twenty four hours later, I received a out completely out of 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 uh 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 um 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, I know what Rydyn ni'n ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r Faith. I mean at the moment you've had a really good run.

Yeah, 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 aunt 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. Um yeah. Camilla in her twenties

has a similar tale. I live with a chronic condition, so that's still very much a present reality and he just gives meaning. Jesus is with me and I feel his presence. Counselling. I mean, is that how you think of it or 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 and yeah, I've reaped so many benefits out of that. Um but Jesus is not like a self help uh type of, you know, practice and so on. He he guides my life. Once you surrender your whole life to God. Mae'n ymwneud â'ch chi, yn ymwneud â'ch chi, yn ymwneud â'ch chi, yn ymwneud â'ch chi. Um and so yeah, he's 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 I think a lot of my experience from social media, and it's not to say that there's not some amazing, you know, Christian voices out there. There definitely are. Um but I think my experience was um that it wasn't it wasn't useful for me. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean it was it was bad for you. It was disruptive for you, wasn't it? Yeah, I suppose in my experience, yeah, it w it was it was something that I suppose was perpetuating this continual search for purpose, search for meaning that it wasn't quite like Um didn't really feel real, you know. And I think that's that's one thing that this younger generation are

Really going after is 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 touty influencers whose sway on TikTok has been immense No one does, at least not to us. For now it all makes sense. A life lived online by kids born into the world of the touch screen, 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 Yn ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r hynny. year, uh the cover ups, the resignations, the covering up of child abuse or sexual abuse.

ac yn unrhyw, mae'n unrhyw person sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n. the the evil and the covering up of evil. in all expressions of the institutional church, not just the Church of England, uh, i is is appalling and um has to be rooted out and has to be addressed. and as a minister of the gospel I often feel feel deeply ashamed about those um those scandals and

I'm dealing with c trying trying to care for victims on quite a regular basis. Um uh but we can't uh then um just take that and ignore all the good that the church has historically done and continues to do. I wonder how it changes um the sort of big issues that we think of that that sort of bring the Christian moral and religious space together, for example in the US. three years. Do you think that that is something that's coming here? Would you welcome that?

discussion here. Well well in the last month we've seen the exact opposite. Uh uh our pol uh uh our Parliament has has passed highly progressive votes on both end of life. uh and uh uh abortion. So um Uh if we did see some uh you know uh 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.

Yeah. Well uh the gospel of Jesus Christ is good news for everybody, whatever their sexual orientation, political viewpoint, or or whatever. And the churches here at Wildfires would seek to be welcoming spaces for everybody.

Some parts of the church, as you know, are liberalising and redefining marriage around, you know, gay marriage and so on, and others aren't. Uh w m my church, we we we are not liberalising on that because we're trying to work out how do you stay in tune with a global church and a historic church. um uh you know, uh y majority of Anglicans now are Africans. I mean how how do you actually uh 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.

Uh with a global church, I think it's two point four 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, uh eighteen to twenty four now, but they retain their Christianity into

coming decades, could you see the UK becoming less abortion friendly, less end-of-life friendly? Uh Rwy'n meddwl, byddwch chi'n mynd i'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw. ymwneud â phobl ymwneud â phobl ymwneud â phobl ymwneud â phobl ymwneud â phobl ymwneud â phobl ymwneud â phobl ymwneud â phobl. I'm not for a moment questioning the church, I'm just trying to work out.

ymwneud â hynny'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd ymwneud â llawer o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd.

are Christian. I mean that the the roots of 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 on the if we're talking politics. But But of course Christians tend to be more um 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.

Maybe religion is bridging that gap between adolescence and fully fledged adulthood. Mae'n ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r 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. Hello, 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 Polypoulos, We discuss whether Britain is really ready to go to war with China, as the Defence Secretaries seem 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. Then it sounds like Cabinet went on for ninety minutes.

Actually it's not very long for a recalled cabinet where you might expect quite a lot of argy barge and discussion. And given that they've come out with a kind of firm position, it sounds like it was probably the majority position. I mean 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. but 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.

So 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. 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 um chatting to a uh Church of England vicar just before uh doing this interview and he said make sure you get across a distinction between joining uh and signing up. uh and staying with the church. Uh and their view was very much that um particularly conservative um 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.

uh and problems that uh 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 for the Bible Society which has been used as the main source of evidence for this Uh sort of quiet uh revival and that jump in the case.

What, people kind of rediscovering Christianity but not making a noise about it? Yeah, it's uh uh I think it also plays into the idea that it's going unnoticed. Yeah. Um this idea that there is a growing number of young people uh in particular who are either rediscovering faith, having gone as uh 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. Uh I mean the way you describe it and and certainly the way sort of we discovered it with some of the young people we spoke to It's almost like church's 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 It'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 into religion. So there were a couple of young mothers and it was the experience of having a child that made them turn church. For some of the young men it was sort of almost sort of simplifying life. It gave them a moral framework and in a way to uh look at I mean should we talk uh about some of the young men?'Cause you asked the question about the sort of th the bro culture and the sort of Christian influences now.

I mean, do you think there are these very powerful the sort of the Christian protein shake gang I'm gonna call them, that are bringing young men in? And is that is that Christianity as we would normally uh sort of previously have seen it?

Well it 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 uh society, for instance, they report a rising request for uh the Latin Mass, for instance, a very sort of traditional mass has been a source of Uh, within the Catholic Church. So there definitely seems to be that kind of element of more traditionalism.

If you look at the polling uh that we did in this amongst Gen Z young men, there is around uh 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 um on the pod before, you know, young men feeling left behind, feeling uh 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 um 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

um you know he talked actually a lot about the mindfulness of it, you know, to go to your point about coping with a uh a difficult world. So so I don't think it's all of that group, but there's very clearly a a group within that for whom this is a Well the church represents masculinity. And uh 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 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.

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 ch church.

with where he was as the Lib Dem leader. And I guess the Kate Forbes role at the SNP in in Scotland is is a sort of similar one. I mean, if what we're hearing is young people who are Coming to religion may be a very 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, do you think that changes what happens? I mean d 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 twenty twenty one census was that big watermark moment when it came to religion in the UK when we found that fewer than a majority, only forty six percent in England and Wales identified as Christian. So there's no getting away

from that kind of long term trend towards secularisation. And even if you look at uh the Bible Society's 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 fifty percent mark, right? Yeah, and I think this is this is the wider um you certainly'd get over the the fifty percent mark. And I think this is the wider

pattern because Christianity is one part of the story. If you look at uh I was looking at some data at the makeup of uh Jewish uh schools uh between uh sort of uh Orthodox Uh, Jews, Reform Jews, um uh different types of Judaism, their or Orthodox proportion within those schools rising quite significantly. We also know from the census data that um Islam is one of the youngest religions uh in the UK, quite significantly young.

And what is interesting is when you dig in there was some uh research that UK and a change in Europe did which found that the typical effects which are more liberalising in other religions, so education, age, weren't as prevalent. in Muslim communities, so uh young Muslims with uh a degree or who were younger were were not more likely to be liberal in their views.

w you seem s like you we might have a dual effect here that's going on. Cool. Which is at the one level you have kind of declining overall um rate of Christianity, but you've got a rise in newer religions and within all religions a rise in social conservatism that we hadn't necessarily seen.

how does that play out in our politics, I think is really interesting, and my theory is less I still don't think the proportions are such that we will move to more religion based politics as a whole. But we also know our politics is fragmenting, right? So, you know, we had the Gaza independents elected last year. That was largely on the issue of Gaza, but actually the undercurrents are far deeper. And they, if you look at their voting record, quite socially conservative.

Uh in the comments. And you're not getting that same Tim Farron. um Kate Forbes scrutiny. Do you get the same in some other uh areas? You know, we know that You know, w what's interesting about some of the areas of London uh which have a higher Afro Caribbean um population, traditionally Labour, but probably out of step with Labour on lots of social issues as well. So does that lead to a shift?

So I think rather than us seeing, you know, an overall trend in one direction, I think this is gonna further fragmentation, uh, in politics. And you are going to likely get uh more of the pattern of groups like the Gaza Independent selected who have a particularly um you know c come from a particular religious uh background. But we don't we're not looking

to our leaders to have faith. I mean people aren't asking Nigel Farage, who is, you know, arguably of the most conservative, if he's a churchgoer. No they don't ask Trump, quite frankly. No e exactly. I don't think that that is going to be the pattern there. What will be interesting though is the extent to which the pitch of socially conservative parties can be we're not, you know, uh we're not necessarily practising um, you know, Christians ourselves.

But we are going to make British society return to more of a traditional Christian moral foundation. And we did find in our polling there's certainly appetite that for that for some people, this idea of Britain going back to a country governed by kind of

traditional Christian uh or replace Christian with, you know, Jewish, Islamic morals. Some people will hear that and kind of think of the Orban model in Hungary, where Christian was basically or is basically something of a dog whistle for white and immigrant free. I mean, of course it doesn't mean that you think one if you believe in the other. But do you think there is political capital to be made then in sort of talking about

a return to Christian values. I think do you think that's what the phrase will will start to mean? I think there are undoubtedly some uh voters who will take it to mean that. They will take it to mean turning the clock back in all sorts of ways, so on social issues, on immigration, on our economic model, like genuinely a return to the past.

The reason that I don't think it will be successful or as successful as it may have been in other places is because we already have such a high degree of, you know, uh diversity and demographic plurality in uh the UK and actually what is driving a lot of the religious revival

are uh people from migrant communities themselves. So it is i it is quite different that way. Ca and the other thing which does seem to be happening, particularly on campuses He's less than it is Christianity pitted against other religions.

But it's more this sense of I think what's become known as pluralism as permission. Yeah. So the idea that oh I see, you know, um Muslim students practising their faith. Actually it's more acceptable for me as a Christian to practise my faith. It's more acceptable for me, you know, to uh practice my faith more overtly perhaps or visibly in a way that I wouldn't have done. It was so interesting. Some people in your focus group talked about these atheists.

And you suddenly sort of heard the sense of like the othering are the non believers rather than the different religions. That's a shift, right? It was very much that. And actually they talked in the focus group a lot about meeting people from other religions and that being useful and helpful for exploring

their own faith, but it was atheists where not not all of them, but but some of the group certainly, you know, if there wasn't us versus them, it was atheists. And it was interesting. Uh there was one young guy who was very articulate in his description of his faith, but he But he basically said, Look, well, the atheists have had their way. Um, you know, they've adopted the Dawkins mantra. Look what's happened to the country. Look at things like crime.

Um just on that note, I mean I was sort of joking with you last night, I was like last time I looked the mafia were quite religious. Is there any correlation between more religious places And and less crime. I mean, is there a correlation between atheism and crime? It d it doesn't look uh like it. So I've only um had a cursory look at this. But what what it looks like the data shows is that

If you are uh someone of faith, it looks like there is a small statistical effect in terms of you being less likely to commit crime. But when you abstract that up to a community or a country level, that effect disappears and whilst you might get in some very theocratic state Less low level crime, you get a lot more state violence um on the other hand. So it's a trade off there. So at the individual level perhaps a little bit, but then you've got to remember that there are lots of

confounding factors uh in there as well in terms of the link between relig religiosity and wealth, um, you know, and levels of education in terms of where you live. Luchill, more in common, absolutely fascinating. Thank you. Thank you. And that is pretty much it from us for this week, thanks to our production team of the news agents: Arvin Badewell, Natalie Inge, Georgia Foxwell, Michaela Walters.

Shane Fenley, a special mention to our producer on this feature, Anna Georgovic, and our cameraman Rory Simon. Our executive producer is Louis Dagenhart, and our editor is Tom Hughes. I'm off for August, but the team will be back on Monday. See you then. Thanks for listening, and have a great weekend.