Catholics are on course to outnumber Anglicans in Britain, with the growth spearheaded by younger churchgoers who outnumber their Anglican brethren by more than two to one, a report by the Bible Society reveals.
A “quiet revival” in UK Catholicism appears to be occurring, especially among those age groups referred to as Generation Z and younger Millennials, reports The Times of London, while noting that Catholics are rapidly catching up with Anglican numbers across all age groups.
It means that Catholicism could soon overtake Anglicanism to become the country’s largest denomination of worshippers for the first time since the English Reformation initiated by King Henry VIII in 1527. Anglicans could even slip into third place behind Pentecostals among churchgoers aged under 35 years of age.
“Our report does not challenge the well-established fact that fewer people in England and Wales are choosing to identify as Christian,” Dr Rhiannon McAleer, director of research at the Bible Society, said. “However, it is the first large-scale study to concentrate not on self-declared Christian identity but on actual Christian practice. By this measurement, the Church is in an exciting period of growth and change.”
The findings come against a backdrop of rampant secularisation across the UK, in which Christians now make up the lowest ever proportion of the population, slipping below half for the first time in 2021 to 46.2 per cent, mainly driven by the growth in people with no religion, according to census figures.
But despite such bleak statistics where the country’s religious denominations are concerned, the new report by the Bible Society suggests that the proportion of people in Britain attending church actually grew by more than half between 2018 and 2024.
The report found that 12 per cent of respondents, equivalent to 5.8 million people, said they attend church at least once a month in 2024, up from 8 per cent, or 3.7 million people, in 2018, with the largest increase among those under 25 years old.
The director of research acknowledged that the growth in congregations was “not a flood” rather more of a “quiet revival”, adding that in the past many who ticked the “Christian” box in surveys or censuses did so because they felt nominally or culturally Christian, but without actually practising his or her faith or attending church.
So while the average Briton is still more likely than ever to be a non-believer, according to the new report, those who do still identify as Christian appear to be “practising their religion more intentionally”, with an increase in the number who say they attend church at least once a month, reports The Times.
According to YouGov surveys commissioned by the Bible Society, which looked at more than 13,000 people in 2024 and 19,000 people in 2018, the growth in attendance has mainly been seen in Catholic and Pentecostal churches. The increase among younger people has been found especially with young men.
According to the surveys, in 2018 Anglicans made up 30 per cent of regular churchgoers aged between 18 and 34 – including all adult members of Generation Z and the youngest cohort of Millennials – while Catholics made up 22 per cent and Pentecostals 10 per cent. By 2024, Anglicans made up just 20 per cent of this group while Catholics made up 41 per cent. Pentecostals are now not far behind Anglicans at 18 per cent.
According to the Pew Research Center, anyone born between 1981 and 1996 is considered a Millennial, and anyone born from 1997 onward is part of the new generation termed Gen Z.
In 2018 the survey found that across all ages, 41 per cent of those who attend church at least once a month were Anglican, 23 per cent were Catholic and 4 per cent were Pentecostal. By 2024, the Anglican share had fallen to 34 per cent, the Catholic share is “now close behind” at 31 per cent, while the Pentecostal share has risen to 10 per cent, the Bible Society report shows.
Figures collated by the Catholic Church in England and Wales also show a rise in attendance at Sunday mass since the pandemic, notes The Times, rising from 390,000 in 2021 to 555,000 in 2023, though they also indicate these are down from pre-pandemic figures of 702,000 in 2019. Catholics have already overtaken Protestants in Northern Ireland, data from the 2021 census shows.
The Times quotes Stephen Bullivant, a professor of theology and the sociology of religion at St Mary’s University in London, who says Catholicism was doing “least worst” out of the major Christian churches as it “benefits from a steady stream of churchgoing immigrants to a much greater degree”.
In 2018, only 4 per cent of 18- to 24-year-olds said that they attended church at least once a month. In 2024 this had risen to 16 per cent, particularly driven by those from ethnic minority backgrounds.
Photo: Circa 1540, A portrait of King Henry VIII (1491 – 1547), an engraving by T A Dean from a painting by Holbein. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images.)