Terina Hine on why increasing numbers are searching for a heart in heartless conditions

There appears to be a religious revival taking place in England and Wales. After decades of decline, church goers are filling pews, and not just for Christmas or Easter.

According to a recent YouGov survey, church attendance has increased by 50% in the last six years, with the largest growth not among the grey-haired, hedging their bets in hope of an afterlife, nor among couples competing for school places for their offspring, but among young people aged 18-24, and especially young men.

This rise is most notable in the Roman Catholic and Pentecostal Churches (in fact the gap between those identifying as Catholic and those identifying as Anglican has almost closed over the last few years).

Following years of negative press over child abuse within the conservative Catholic Church (something Justin Welby’s response to the CoE’s own abuse scandal revealed was spread across Christian denominations), the late Pope tried to move Catholicism out of the dark ages.

He saw himself as a voice for the oppressed and downtrodden. He rejected some of the pomp of his office and tried to be more welcoming and understanding towards those Catholicism had previously rejected as sinners, making moves to welcome divorcees, gays and trans people.

He appointed women to senior roles in the Vatican, although firmly ruled out the ordination of women and abortion remained a no-go area. Politically, he intervened in some of the major social questions of our time, forcefully speaking out against the genocide in Gaza and calling for a ceasefire from the start.

He was supportive of refugees and opposed to the war in Ukraine, again calling for a ceasefire. He spoke out about the climate crisis and of how environmental damage was inflicted on poor countries by the rich. None of this would have been lost on young people seeking solace in religion from the world’s ills.

But why are young people seeking solace in religion? They grew up in a world where religious observance was frequently ridiculed or deemed ignorant, are well educated and are often from families where parents and older siblings rejected religion.

Some suggest it is to do with a rise in right-wing influencers who permeate their hateful misogynist, homophobic and racist ideology with Christian references, such as Andrew Tate’s brother Tristan or Jordan Peterson, but this does not correlate with the YouGov survey report. According to YouGov, most of the gen-Zers interviewed were liberally inclined, their belief based more on social activism than reactionary ideology.

These are young people born at the beginning of the century, their birth years bookended by 9/11 and the financial crash. The world they inhabit has been one of perpetual war and economic crisis.

Over the last six years, they have experienced a global pandemic isolating them from their peers, war in Ukraine and the threat of nuclear Armageddon, genocide in Gaza, a second Trump election, the purge of Corbyn, climate catastrophe and a global economic collapse. They went to university as student debt levels exploded and they have watched a political class abjectly fail to provide any answers.

Religion, as Marx famously said is ‘the opium of the people’. The church most commonly aligns itself with the state and economic elite, supporting capital by providing hope and dreams for workers whose daily life is full of hardship. But this opium does not just pacify potentially rebellious workers, it also relieves pain and suffering, acting as both consolation and justification in this hard life.

Marx referred to belief as the ‘sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions.’

In our heartless world, where self-harm, anxiety and depression have soared among the young, where between 2010 and 2015, suicide rates among ten to fourteen-year-old girls and boys increased by 167% and 92% respectively, the search for a heart in religion is understandable.

In this month’s Counterfire freesheet