Revival and nationalism

 

There is an unavoidable ongoing relationship between nationalism and Christian revival in the UK. I’m writing just after the latest Tommy Robinson Unite The Kingdom protest in London.

Remember, I’m left-leaning politically. I’m naturally minded to oppose excessive nationalism and jingoism, so I have to ‘unbias’ myself as much as I can.

One of my friends recently said, “I thought it was more British to be critical of nationalism”. I did too. In my book I conclude that Christian nationalism, though it is exclusive itself (specifically of immigrants and other minorities), is a position a person can take and which has often been taken in the past. The right are constantly telling the left that we are not inclusive at all (basically when we exclude them). And the right hate to be called far right or racist. But still, I simply have to acknowledge that God does not exclude patriots.

There is a sense in which revivalists want the best for their country. The love of country is not divorced from revival. If we want things to get better here (as many of us do) and we look to God for help in that, then we are kind of patriots too (despite our criticisms).

Is Tommy Robinson a Christian? And is any politician who claims to be a Christian necessarily really a Christian? Or are they using the faith to gain support? To woo the believers’ votes (or money)? I’m not convinced that Reform Ltd or Restore are really going to make things better or that their policies are even that radical. Anarchy is more radical. Farage once said: “No-one loves this country more than me.” Is that true? Does anyone else love Britain more than Nigel Farage? Anyone? I wonder if Nigel was lying?

You know, I’m getting bogged down. I’ll cut to my point. I don’t really like the manipulations of nationalists but concede that they shouldn’t be excluded from any revival. Nor, by the way should immigrants here. Or Muslims. Or Jews. Or Hindus. Or anyone else. Maybe politicians should, but that is an ongoing debate. But we are all under God, who does not discriminate.

The right are constantly telling the left that we are not genuinely inclusive at all. Maybe we should prove them wrong? Try to love the unlovable and all that? Love our political enemies?

But I’m getting bogged down. What some of us want to see is not more integration of faith into right-wing nationalism but a genuine, inclusive revival for all. A revival which will help and heal the UK. The UK is never going to be in unity. I’m sorry, but it isn’t. But things can get better here. ‘Believe in better’ as the Sky tagline says.

Or else watch the Disney Channel until this whole thing blows over.  (As an aside, some of the Disney Channel is quite dark you know?)

Anyway, I’ve got my eyes, ears and nose peeled for anything else necessary to be written about.

Preferably a big miracle, God.

Turning Wine into Water?

“Imagine making a batch of wonderful wine, but then finding that there was a small amount of contamination that had got into the vat, and then into the wine before anybody noticed. You basically have to throw it all away and that’s what we realised needed to happen and that’s why we withdrew the report. And it’s also why we were very clear that when we withdrew the report, we were NOT saying that the findings were wrong, rather we were saying that the study could no longer be treated as statistically reliable. ”

So said the CEO of the Bible Society on 30^th April in a YouTube hosted webinar titled ‘The Quiet Revival one year on – what’s the story?’

A lot of people in the chat were interested to know what the Bible Society would say following the withdrawal of the increasingly infamous Quiet Revival report.

The attendance varied between 400-500 people throughout the one and half hour session.

The description of the event read: ‘Hear from Paul Williams, our CEO, and a whole host of guests sharing their insights from different contexts, including Dr Rachel Jordan-Wolfe, Amanda Bedzrah, Bishop Mike Royal and Swarzy Shire.’

And we did.

In a pre-recorded segment, Stephan Shakespeare CEO and co-founder of YouGov intoned (from far away in space and time): “It was so disappointing to discover that the research we conducted for you didn’t live up to the standards we set for ourselves and that you expect from us. I want to re-iterate that YouGov takes full responsibility for the outputs of the original 2024 research and we apologise for what has happened… I thank you for your understanding.”

The Bible Society, being offered a free re-survey has accepted YouGov’s apology and is running the survey again in “the next couple of months” (alongside commissioning other survey providers.)

The rest of the webinar passed pretty much as you may expect with some people saying that despite the withdrawal of the quantitative data, they had seen some qualitative evidence of a revival and that there is now more openness and curiosity about Christianity. Someone mentioned that independent Bible sales stats really have increased in the last couple of years by well over 100%. Others spoke of churches seeing new members and more people getting baptised. Another spoke of a new church member who had had a dream about Christ recently which was so visceral that he had become a believer in a day. There was also the obligatory very vocal Humanist in the chat, chagrined at the lack of apologies.

The main question lingered in the air though. ‘So, is there a Christian revival, or the leading up to a revival – or not?’ Water cannot be turned to wine without a miracle from God. It either remains water or becomes wine. I’m thinking an expensive Merlot.

I was struck once again at our capacity to make something so inherently interesting, so incredibly boring. Turning wine into water.

My question was not read out in the webinar so I put it to the Bible Society by email…

Why was the Bible Society seemingly the ONLY organisation apparently affected by the YouGov error?

Mark Woods, from PR in the Bible Society replied:

"First, we don’t actually know whether this is the case or not. My understanding is that it was quite a laborious process to find out what had gone wrong with our survey, and it was only because it was subject to such intense criticism that the work was undertaken. If there wasn’t this incentive in the case of other surveys YouGov wouldn’t have done this."

I asked: To what extent is the truth of the matter that the Quiet Revival was all just YouGov's bodge-up?

"You’ll have to decide that for yourself. We repeatedly asked them to check their working. We delayed the release of the report for three months while we went back to them again and again with questions. Every time there was a new criticism we contacted them again. There was lots of supporting evidence in terms of a rise in conversions, vastly increased Bible sales etc, to support the thesis of a rise in churchgoing, which gave us some confidence that YouGov hadn’t got it wrong. We don’t think we could have done more to check it."

Is there a Christian revival or not in the UK? Or just a possible lead up to one?

"It depends on what you mean by ‘revival’. We specifically said in The Quiet Revival that this was not a ‘traditional’ revival in the sense of packed churches and supernatural phenomena – hence the ‘Quiet’ revival. Whether there is a rise in churchgoing in absolute numbers we don’t yet know, and we won’t know until our next report – probably in the autumn. We do know though from other public sources that there is a change in the spiritual atmosphere, with a greater receptivity to and curiosity about religion, particularly among young people. There are many stories about churches seeing growth, organisations like Alpha seeing unprecedented interest etc. Whether this is revival depends on your definition of revival! Personally I’d prefer to talk about opportunity, openness, a ripe harvest."


I will try to report more on any important, new developments to do with the whole subject (not just the quiet revival report).

A Note and Update

I have decided not to unpublish my book following the retraction of the Bible Society's Quiet Revival report.

Instead I will post again here when anything new or significant happens on this subject.

My reasons are because the book is relying on qualitative data and not quantitative data.

There are simply too many stories from too many people to not believe that 'something' is going on, whether that be the US 'vibe shift' or the many reports from believers in the UK saying that there is a new openness among many towards faith issues. That's without even going into the huge increase in Bible sales etc.

I'm including the following description to the book to reflect the recent changes...

Is there, or isn’t there, a Christian revival about to happen in the UK? The statistics say one thing; the stories say another.

This book captures the heart of that national debate, weaving together a mosaic of perspectives ranging from hardline sceptics through to all kinds of believers. It is an exploration of UK faith in a fractured, digital age. While the data may be contested, the human search for meaning is undeniable. This is the story of a nation searching for its soul, told through the eyes of those who are living it.

I will post again here when I have anything new to report...

Current, Important Story For You

I think you might call this, in literary terms, for Christian believers in the UK... a black spot. The point at which things are at their worst.

To elaborate - what has happened is that the Bible Society who basically said that Christianity in the UK is increasing (after decades of it not doing so), have suddenly said that their report on the revival is flawed. They, under pressure, have retracted it. There was an error, according to YouGov, which they used to gather results. The 2024 YouGov survey (very strangely and increasingly oddly only affecting the Bible Society’s commission) was, seemingly, marred by human error and technical glitches.

The Bible Society said: “The error means that we can't rely on the YouGov data, but the amount of corroborating evidence that's emerged during the last year means that we're still confident that there is a Quiet Revival going on, with more young people open to faith, a greater warmth towards Christianity, and churches across England and Wales reporting their own experience of growth.”

Now, against all current convention I actually carry both sides of the story. So, let’s look at the other side on this…

Humanists UK said: “This underlines that the real story of the past decade, and of the 21st century as a whole, has been the growth of the non-religious. The non-religious now make up a majority in the United Kingdom. Unfortunately, rather than grapple with what that would mean for the future of policy-making, we saw that the Quiet Revival report had much the opposite effect, with at least one council making long-term planning decisions premised on the predicted explosive growth of religion among young people. This shows how important it is to have accurate data about demographics to inform national policy.”

The damage is great indeed, after a council made long-term planning decisions based on a supposed big rise in believers. How can we believers live with ourselves after all this destruction?

Seriously though, it’s important - is there a revival in the UK or not? Goodness knows the far-right are also trying to hijack it. The truth matters. It’s important. Just because something is disturbing doesn’t make it true. Why is the truth always seemingly the most disturbing thing? I’m not here to disturb you, just because I can. I refuse to do it. We need healing. The country needs healing. You and I need healing. How are we to heal in the middle of wars and plagues and all of the awful things that are going on? And in the middle of this, we are attacking each other - taking it all out on each other. Who is to blame? Is it me and those like me? Is it the Bible Society? Is it YouGov? God even?... Or something sinister?

This is alternative news. Things are bad. If I have misled you, I am very sorry. Really, I’m not too proud to apologise to you, like ‘Piggy Nicholas’ with the conch shell in Lord of the Flies. My late brother used to call me ‘piglet’. It was sweet. But there really is a beast. There is an enemy and we (believers) are not the enemy. I, my friends and family are not, at least. And neither, by the way, are you.

Either there is a Christian revival going on or there is not. The truth matters.  

Have you ever done YouGov? I have. I did it for a couple of years and it took that long to earn the £50 reward for countless surveys and a lot of personal data given away. You don’t get to choose which surveys you get. So, I question the official explanation. Either way, the Bible Society has had to retract its report, simply because if they hadn’t done so, I guess YouTube would have gone public.

So, the Bible Society has retracted the report, all but apologised for the seemingly misleading information, and now I have to consider whether I will unpublish my book ‘Christian Revival, UK’, which relies partly on this information. Premier, the main UK Christian media outlet now ‘regrets’ carrying reports about the Quiet Revival. The editor is telling us all not to even mention the words ‘Quiet Revival’ again. Humanists UK are, they say ‘vindicated’. They say there is no Christian revival and (by the way)… no God (obs). But in reality, there is, at least, a loving God.

I don’t want to support anything misleading. My whole raison d'etre is to stop misleading things from happening. The pen is mightier than the sword, yes? I care about the truth. Here is a link to the Bible Society FAQs of what is going on here. I’m not going to complicate this - there is either a Christian Revival happening here in the West or there is not. It’s kind of important. It’s not just the UK. I would like to know the truth.

What should I do? Should I also unpublish my book because the Bible Society has retracted its report? Please let me know.

In the meantime, look after yourself.

Book Available From Today

The book from this blog Christian Revival, UK has been launched today and is available from Amazon and elsewhere. I’ve kept the price as low as I can.

It’s a work of spiritual reportage exploring whether a genuine Christian awakening is emerging in modern Britain. The book examines many perspectives: believers and sceptics, economists, politicians and even artificial intelligence. It asks what ‘revival’ means in a fractured, digital world and how faith interacts with politics, culture and the human condition.

I’ve approached the subject as a journalist - curious, balanced and open to doubt. My hope is that it will engage readers who wouldn’t normally pick up a book about faith, but still sense that something deep is stirring beneath the noise. Available from Amazon here, or search for ‘Christian Revival UK Nick White’.