Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth.

For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street.

Have reports of a revival of Christianity in the Western world been, to paraphrase Mark Twain,

greatly exaggerated? Last week, the Bible Society of the UK pulled down a much discussed report that had suggested

that the nation was undergoing what they called a quiet revival. On their website, CEO Paul

Williams admitted that, and I quote here, the 2024 survey sample on which our report,

the quiet revival was based, was faulty. It can no longer be regarded as a reliable

source of information about the spiritual landscape in Britain, end quote. Well, the data in question

had been compiled by market research group UGov, who recently acknowledged that it had not

employed the usual quality controls and had included responses that are now known to be

fraudulent. In their own statement, the UGov CEO said this, quote,

UGov takes full responsibility for the outputs of the 2024 research, and we apologize

for what's happened. We would like to stress that the Bible Society has at all times accurately and

responsibly reported the data we supplied to them. The Bible Society report, which had coined the

phrase quiet revival, was issued in April of last year. It claimed that, and I quote,

church decline in England and Wales has not only stopped, but the church is growing, as Gen Z leads an exciting turnaround in church attendance.

A few months later, Times columnist James Marriott published a lengthy essay describing the young converts filling UK churches.

What Marriott called in the essay a comeback for Christianity is, he said, due to a

backlash against secularism, set against the backdrop of global turmoil and a search for lost

meaning and connection. Even then, Marriott had written that the Bible Society report had already

been bitterly disputed. And yet, he continued, and I quote,

Christianity undoubtedly has a new energy, and Christianity's status in public life is much improved.

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