The hint is “describe themselves as Christian” as the Christian population shrinks due to more people not calling themselves Christian at all, the true believers become a bigger share of the remaining Christian pop, which leads to an illusionary increase in regular churchgoing
It’s really important to understand this distinction, or else folks will draw the wrong conclusions (and reading through the comments, it seems like many are).
Young people are not becoming “more religious” or more Christian. Young people are still leaving Christianity in droves and each generational cohort is less religious than the previous one. On top of that, the whole thing about young people leaving the church but then coming back after getting older isn’t really holding either.
This data takes one subset - people who identify as Christian - and trying to gauge how more or less devout they have become. Frankly, when I was a Christian I wouldn’t have considered going to church once a month all that devout anyway. But I think it is showing that young people who were already “in the tent” and crucially remain in the tent while tons of other young people are leaving it are by one measure becoming more devout.
The idea that all Gen Z and Alpha are becoming a bunch of TradCath Crusader LARPers is a total myth that feels real when you are way too online.
It doesn’t measure a question of “do you identify as Christian”. It assumes that about someone who goes to church once a month for the purposes of the title. They asked everyone a multiple-choice question of how often they went to a regular church service.
The population sampled in the poll is the general population of the UK.
Especially because these younger groups are less likely to self describe as christian. Whereas in the older groups, its normal to still consider yourself christian even if you haven’t been to church since Easter 1999
Yeah it’s unclear. Not that it couldn’t be real, but there’s no source and the phrasing is weird.
I read it as being percentages of the whole population of each age category, not just of christians themselves, but your comment made me second guess for a minute
That doesn’t make sense. Yes, a higher proportion of the Christian population are zealots, but fewer people calling themselves Christian definitionally means a lower percentage.
this graph is the share of “christians” attending church. if the “culturally christian” or nominals stop IDing as christian then they aren’t on that graph anymore so the portion of regular church-goers increases.
You’re misreading it. The base is even stated in the bottom corner, it’s the “whole population”. The percentage is people who meet both criteria, i.e. being self-identified Christians and going to church monthly, which is also what the phrasing at the top suggests. Atheists, Jews, and Buddhists are on the graph in the same grouping as Christians who don’t attend church at least once a month (and anyone who attends a “church” regularly but isn’t Christian, not that there are many of those). The percentage is people who meet the two conditions and everyone else is the remainder. A constant zealot population would only be a larger percentage in terms of the number shown on the graph if the overall “whole population” shrank by more than the zealot population, not if nominal Christians go to church less (which shrinks the percentage shown).
For the poll to be coherent they have to take into account the shifting demographics of the overall Christian population since 2018, if you have a group of 100 Christians with 30% being zealots in 2018 and by 2024 ten became ex Christian and 30 zealots became 40 zealots
Then you can torture the poll to give you the above results by simply not taking into account the fact the overall population has shrunk while churchgoing among the remaining population has gone up in percentage, despite the fact it’s gone down in absolute numbers
The hint is “describe themselves as Christian” as the Christian population shrinks due to more people not calling themselves Christian at all, the true believers become a bigger share of the remaining Christian pop, which leads to an illusionary increase in regular churchgoing
It’s really important to understand this distinction, or else folks will draw the wrong conclusions (and reading through the comments, it seems like many are).
Young people are not becoming “more religious” or more Christian. Young people are still leaving Christianity in droves and each generational cohort is less religious than the previous one. On top of that, the whole thing about young people leaving the church but then coming back after getting older isn’t really holding either.
This data takes one subset - people who identify as Christian - and trying to gauge how more or less devout they have become. Frankly, when I was a Christian I wouldn’t have considered going to church once a month all that devout anyway. But I think it is showing that young people who were already “in the tent” and crucially remain in the tent while tons of other young people are leaving it are by one measure becoming more devout.
The idea that all Gen Z and Alpha are becoming a bunch of TradCath Crusader LARPers is a total myth that feels real when you are way too online.
It doesn’t measure a question of “do you identify as Christian”. It assumes that about someone who goes to church once a month for the purposes of the title. They asked everyone a multiple-choice question of how often they went to a regular church service.
The population sampled in the poll is the general population of the UK.
Especially because these younger groups are less likely to self describe as christian. Whereas in the older groups, its normal to still consider yourself christian even if you haven’t been to church since Easter 1999
Yeah it’s unclear. Not that it couldn’t be real, but there’s no source and the phrasing is weird.
I read it as being percentages of the whole population of each age category, not just of christians themselves, but your comment made me second guess for a minute
Your first reading was more reasonable if you look closely at the wording.
That doesn’t make sense. Yes, a higher proportion of the Christian population are zealots, but fewer people calling themselves Christian definitionally means a lower percentage.
this graph is the share of “christians” attending church. if the “culturally christian” or nominals stop IDing as christian then they aren’t on that graph anymore so the portion of regular church-goers increases.
You’re misreading it. The base is even stated in the bottom corner, it’s the “whole population”. The percentage is people who meet both criteria, i.e. being self-identified Christians and going to church monthly, which is also what the phrasing at the top suggests. Atheists, Jews, and Buddhists are on the graph in the same grouping as Christians who don’t attend church at least once a month (and anyone who attends a “church” regularly but isn’t Christian, not that there are many of those). The percentage is people who meet the two conditions and everyone else is the remainder. A constant zealot population would only be a larger percentage in terms of the number shown on the graph if the overall “whole population” shrank by more than the zealot population, not if nominal Christians go to church less (which shrinks the percentage shown).
@CyborgMarx@hexbear.net so I’m not copy/pasting my response.
I think you might be right, but it’s hard to say for sure without access to the survey itself.
wack.
For the poll to be coherent they have to take into account the shifting demographics of the overall Christian population since 2018, if you have a group of 100 Christians with 30% being zealots in 2018 and by 2024 ten became ex Christian and 30 zealots became 40 zealots
Then you can torture the poll to give you the above results by simply not taking into account the fact the overall population has shrunk while churchgoing among the remaining population has gone up in percentage, despite the fact it’s gone down in absolute numbers
Wrong. It’s because Hozier got popular again recently for some reason.
I mean, if we’re talking about that kinda church…