Death By A Thousand Cuts: Gen Z and That Quiet Revival

Although, some of it doesn’t seem especially quiet at all. Videos online show university students worshipping and praying into the early hours of the morning. Forrest Frank isn’t only trending on my Instagram, but also made an appearance at the top of the US billboard charts. Recent FA Cup winners Crystal Palace made headlines as a number of their players openly spoke about their Christian faith.

But behind the reels and the hashtags it does seem that, quietly, something has begun to shift within attitudes in the West towards the Christian faith, particularly in the UK. Recent research shows that this is especially true of Gen Z. In April, The Bible Society published its findings after surveying around 13,000 Brits about their perspectives on churchgoing, prayer, and the Bible.

Its findings were pretty remarkable, concluding that ‘young adults are more spiritually engaged than any other living generation.’ Most notably,16% of 18-24 year olds say that they attended church at least monthly, indicating a 12% increase since the last research undertaking of this kind, in 2018. Young men’s attendance has increased even further, from 4% to 21%. This age group is also more likely to pray regularly, with 40% saying they pray at least monthly.

This data seems to go against everything that British Christians (and indeed the majority of Brits, irrespective of faith) might have predicted for the future of the church, and the faith of the nation. For many years it’s been a seemingly foregone conclusion that church attendance would inevitably continue to decline, and Christians would irretrievably become a minority group in the UK.

And yet – here they are. 

Gen Z. Turning up at churches, opening their Bibles, questioning their belief systems and being more likely to believe that there is a God than any other age category.

And there’s a real sense in which we should have seen it coming.

Arguably, Gen Z has had an experience like no other. While it’s true that they haven’t lived through war, and that they live in a country that offers them a level of equality and opportunity which – on paper at least – would have been unimaginable for many previous generations, there’s something about their circumstances that’s left them exhausted and beleaguered. 

Perhaps it’s because many of them spent a number of their formative years social distancing and in ‘bubbles’, their secondary education irreparably disrupted. Perhaps it’s because current interest rates mean that they’re likely to pay around twice as much in mortgage repayments as Millennials and Gen X.

The Hard-pressed Gen Z

Or, it could be because they are the first generation to have never known life without the internet, mobile phones and social media, giving them access to a 24/7 news ticker of violence, the ideology of identity, and volatile political discourse. Interminably contactable and chronically notified via their phones, Gen Z are hard pressed on all sides, and would appear to have little to be cheerful about in terms of the big, practical stuff of life.

But I think there’s more to it than that. Gen Z has also, until recently, been defined by its stubborn adherence to complete moral relativity. Back in 2018, the Impact 360 Institute published research which had found that only 34% of Gen Z thought that lying was wrong. And a similar number believed that what is morally right or wrong depends on what each individual believes. 

Gen Z, more than any other, is the generation that has been sold the lie that they can be whatever, and whomever, they’d like to be. That there is no objective truth. That they must decide for themselves what is right or wrong, good or bad, damaging or profitable. 

That God has nothing to say to them about their lives and how they live them. These blurred moral foundations have contributed to worsening mental health that goes even beyond the damage done by Covid and the financial crash. 

Their religion of moral relativism has left them awash with worldviews and moral frameworks, and drowning in spiritual confusion. It’s no wonder that 1 in 3 18-24 year olds report symptoms of depression, anxiety or both.

For Gen Z, it really is a case of death by a thousand cuts. Not just little, niggling cuts either; deep, damaging wounds of the kind that need immediate attention.

Recently I’ve been reading Jeremiah. There’s a verse in Chapter 2 that caught my eye: “they have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.” (v13 ESV.) These cisterns were storage tanks for water, often cut into the ground. They held water for towns and cities, water necessary to sustain life. 

About this, the commentator Meyer writes, “The hewer thinks he will obtain sufficient supplies to last him for life. At best, however, the water is brackish, wanting the sparkle of oxygenated life; hot with the heat of the day.”

Now I know that, contextually, Jeremiah is speaking to the nation of Judah as they faced destruction by the Babylonians (we’ll circle back to that later), but doesn’t this verse sum up so much of what Gen Z has been doing? Placing their hope in things that cannot satisfy, that cannot quench their thirst for real, meaningful, Biblical truth about who they are, and who they might be if they gave their lives to Christ? 

They have dug their own cisterns, and been encouraged to do so by a post-Christian world that celebrates secular forms of satisfaction. And those cisterns, as Gen Z has discovered, cannot hold water.

What should we, as Christians, be doing to welcome and encourage Gen Z as more of them begin to arrive through the church’s doors? The Bible Society research makes some key recommendations, one of which is for Christians to take hold of the opportunity to share their faith with others who don’t know Christ. 

According to the Bible Society, 47% of 18-24 year old non-churchgoers agree that it’s a positive thing for Christians to talk about their faith with non-Christians, and 31% of them say they’d attend church if invited by a friend or family member. 

Do My Beliefs Match My Actions?

And this prompts me to ask: do my actions match my theology? Do I act, at work (for instance) as a believer whose life and attitudes are shaped by my Christian faith? Do I speak of Jesus, or seek my own good and reputation? Because the church in the West might be accused of having become far too comfortable in this regard. 

If we are honest, we too had bought the line that Christianity was in inevitable decline, and we’ve been tempted to withdraw into our (mostly pretty easy) lives. To my shame, I’ve almost found myself surprised by the fact that Gen Z are dissatisfied with what the world offers them, as if I haven’t known all along that only the gospel can satisfy. 

In his recent article for The Critic, writer Ben Sixsmith asserts that ‘religious triumphalism would be premature.’ And he’s right. There is, it could be argued, much work to do before we claim revival.

The commentator Meyer had more to say about those cisterns. Here he is again: “he hath set himself with infinite labour, to hew out cisterns of gold and silver, cisterns of splendid houses and reputable characters, and lavish alms deeds, cisterns of wisdom and ancient lore.”

He got me. That’s me right there. And isn’t it so many of us? Placing our faith in Jesus + a comfortable home? Jesus + reputation at work? Jesus + church initiatives? Jesus + anything that stops us from getting uncomfortable and really getting out there to share the gospel with the non-believers that we encounter every day?

Am I willing to do the work on my own sanctification, to study and understand God’s word, to fellowship regularly with other believers even when it might be hard, and to be ruthless in uprooting besetting sins? 

Will I then be bold enough to tell others who come to church for the first time about what the Bible really says, and about who Jesus really is? And is my life lived in such a way that they might actually believe me when I tell them?

For Gen Z, the cisterns they built have cracked and run dry. The water that they were drinking , as Jesus tells us in John 4 is woefully insufficient, and they’re “thirsty again.” They’re looking for living water. It’s only when Gen Z (and any other non-Christian) drinks of the water Jesus gives them that they will “never be thirsty again.” 

I think that sometimes I’m guilty of not caring enough about this, content am I with my own life, or caught up in its worries. I need reminding of this just as much. But we have the opportunity of a generation to stand on the promises of the Bible and declare them to a thirsty generation. Let’s not miss it.