I was fascinated to sit in a meeting with some of the top marketeers in America a few months ago. As a part of the project we were working on one of the executives gave a brief run-down of the generational preferences in the West.
I couldn’t help but notice that the gospel of Jesus Christ preached with conviction and clarity and lived our with incarnational authenticity, covers all the generational preferences with its goodness, beauty and truth.
Perhaps it is no surprise then that we are living through a Renaissance of belief in God in the English speaking world with so called secular cities and young people under the age of 25 leading the charge.
Britain once known as a bastion of the New Atheism, and fast declining churches is at the forefront of this surge of interest in God, with university cities and commercial districts of London leading the way. According to the Bible Society research published in March 2025 there is a dramatic increase in church going particularly amongst young men. In 2014 just 4% of 18-24 said they attended church and this has risen to 16% overall and from 4% to 21% with young men. The Bible Society is calling this a “Quiet Revival.”
My entire professional life has been focused on public Christianity and apologetics. In the last twenty-five years I haven’t seen a climate like we are experiencing today. People are awake and open to God in Board rooms, Parliaments, Universities and the cutting edge centers of Tech innovation.
Tom Holland touches on his own story in his bestselling book Dominion but it really only sank in for me when talking to him before interviewing him in London last year. When I asked him what sparked the Dominion thesis (that everything good about the West is a legacy of Christian faith) he explained that the animating drive behind his quest initially – was the outrage of the “me too’. He realized that the suffering of women mattering, at all and the sexual exploitation of the weak by the strong being concerning – that was peculiarly Christian.
How extraordinary to have lived through an era in the church when the sexual exploitation of women and male young people mattered so much that it could usher in an intellectual quest to rediscover Christian faith on the part of those who didn’t believe but mattered so little to institutional church leaders that victims and advocates needed to be intimidated and cast out. How very like the God of the Bible it is to see that just as a reckoning came in the corruption and misdeeds of the church, the very same thing women mattering… and young people mattering….which has always been a hallmark of the gospel – arose as a reason for public intellectuals to consider Christianity.
We find ourselves living and ministering in a time of enormous openness to the gospel. A few weeks ago I went from speaking to leaders in business, politics and academia about te Christian faith to a gathering of 1000s of Gen Z Christians in East London hosted by the Awakening Project. These young people were gathering for worship, teaching and prayer, and they stayed awake through the watches of the night to pray and seek the face of the Lord. The awareness of the holiness of God in the room was profound, marking us with his glory, the weight of the glory of God was deeply felt as young people repented, forgave those who had harmed them and wept in the presence of God. This Renaissance of belief is being accompanied by the presence and glory of God as he visits his people. What a time to be alive and serving in the Church.
Dr Amy Orr-Ewing is Theologian in residence at Saint Church Hackney and Renaissance, as well as Distinguished Scholar at Wheaton College, Illinois.
