It’s Trending…But is Christianity True?
The following article is written by Jo Frost, Executive Director of OCCA The Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics.
Have you ever changed your tech set up? Bitten the bullet and changed from iPhone to Android, or gone from a PC to a Mac? It’s a nightmare! All the habits, rules, and processes you’re used to, don’t work anymore. Apps and programs you use are no longer compatible, and everything is in a different place. Shifting operating systems is destabilising, disruptive and disorienting. You realise how much of your world is dependent on it, and when that system changes – everything else changes as a result.
What is true on the micro is also true on the macro. Our society isn’t changing its tech set up, but it does appear to be going through something of a paradigm shift – a metaphysical paradigm shift – and we’re it seeing play out in so many spaces.
For years we have been fed stories that the church is in decline, Christianity is dying out and that we are living in a post-Christian era. For years we have seen our society view Christianity at best as irrelevant and worst as immoral. But if we look around us, we may discover that’s not the operating system of today. The world of cynics, sceptics and new atheists has given way to the spiritually curious. We have long-known stories of believers who have been tempted to doubt – but also now we are seeing doubters being tempted to believe.
The undeniable fact is Christianity is trending.
- According to the ‘Belief in Britain’ report, Gen Zs are 2.5x more likely to be religious than boomers.[1]
- Bible sales in 2026 are up by 134% since 2019 according to publishers SPCK.[2]
- Researchers from St Mary’s University reported that almost a quarter of Brits with no religious affiliation say prayer forms a part of their life.[3]
- The Biggest album of 2026 so far, Raye’s This Music May Contain Hope is saturated with Bible references, lyrics about praying and faith and God.
- The biggest podcasts in the world, like Joe Rogan and Diary of a CEO (DOAC) host apologists and have had multiple conversations about the plausibility and relevance of Christianity.
- Elite athletes are talking about reading the Bible and praying as part of their medal attempt preparations, whilst footballers openly talk about leading times of prayer for the team before matches.
- Love Island and TOWIE stars are getting baptised.
- OnlyFans stars and New Atheist philosophers are chronicling their spiritual journey towards Jesus with increasing openness.[4]
Meanwhile my social media feed is full of people sat in their car talking into their phone about how they woke up that Sunday morning and just felt like they had to go to church… so they did.
Something has changed. Something is different. We are living in a new paradigm.
Why are so many people suddenly turning to faith?
So, what is fuelling this resurgent interest in spiritually in general and Christianity and the gospel of Jesus in particular?
A few theories have been posited, and I wonder if any resonate with you?
Some scholars have suggested that COVID, which prompted an increased awareness of our own mortality, has caused a collective existential crisis, prompting people to explore meaning and purpose in deeper and more religious ways.[5]
Others posit that because our social behaviours moved online during COVID, you could explore faith individually in greater depth and at your own speed. Digital spaces allowed for new forms of engagement and experimentation for people open to faith for the first time. People could watch church anonymously, without having to awkwardly attend in person. You could listen to lectures, sermons and other religious content for hours, diving down rabbit holes of information like never before. You could pray and worship in your own room and experience faith in private before you took it public.[6]
Other academics suggest that it’s not just COVID, but a hyper-chaotic crisis-ridden society that is fuelling anxiety, isolation and uncertainty especially amongst young people.[7]
Christianity provides structure, stability, hope and community when such things seem in short supply elsewhere.
Then there is a growing body of researchers exploring the idea that, as truth and reality are increasingly weakened and undermined – particularly online – people are seeking alternative anchors for truth and knowledge. In a world saturated with fake-news, post-truth narratives, and AI generated content, reliability itself can no longer be taken for granted. Young people are increasingly seen to be rejecting augmented realities in favour of going analogue, and rebelling from the digital grind to seek forms of authentic and real human experiences, where religious authorities and Christian institutions may be seen as the pinnacle of such endeavours.[8]
I wonder if this new paradigm we find ourselves in might be characterised as one of disillusionment. Is this a moment in which the fictions and fallacies of a purely empirical world, built on human prowess and the promise of perpetual progress, have begun to crumble? We can no longer deny that our world is harsher, more fragile and more finite than we want to believe. And when we are confronted with these truths, then all the habits, rules, processes we use have to change.
And whilst this confrontation is once again disruptive and disorienting, there is something to be said for the gift of disillusionment.
Jesus was always in the business of shattering expectations
Jesus’ ministry was full of disillusioning acts. He upended the Pharisees expectations by healing the marginalised (Mark 3:1-6, Luke 14:1-6), welcoming the outcasts (Luke 15:1-2, Luke 2:15-17), and shielding the shamed from violence (John 8:1-11). He flipped the crowd’s expectations by speaking with authority yet refusing the trappings of power (Matthew 7:28-29, John 6:14-15). He even destroyed the dreams of his own disciples by refusing to overthrow Rome or act as they had assumed God’s chosen one would (Luke 24:19-21, Acts 1:6-7, John 18:36). He repeatedly shattered what people thought the Messiah was going to look like[9], what they thought the Messiah should do (Mark 8:31-33). What they thought the Messiah would say (Luke 4:18-28).
Jesus’ time as Messiah on Earth was not to wage war but to bring peace, not to subjugate but to serve, not to kill but to be killed. For people, then and now, to even begin to recognise who Jesus is and what he was sent to accomplish, we all have to be disillusioned.
The cross: The most disillusioning moment in history
The cross is the ultimate disillusioning act. On the cross the Emmanuel of Christmas, the ‘with-us’ God becomes the ‘for-us’ sacrifice. On the hillside, reality was laid bare – humanity revealed for who we are and Jesus lifted high for us to see who he is.
I wonder if the last few years of hyper-crisis, as exhausting and traumatic as it has been, is also a gift for people. Is this moment an invitation to let go of the fictional reality we are trying to will in existence for ourselves, in exchange for what God has for us?
References
- Christopher Gasson, ‘Belief in Britain: A Look into the Religious and Spiritual Landscape of the Nation’ The Devil’s Gospels Report, 2025
- Laura Barry, ‘Why People are Turning Back to the Bible’ spckpublishing.co.uk 13th January 2026
- https://www.stmarys.ac.uk/news/2025/a-quarter-of-nonreligious-britons-pray-report-from-st-marys-reveals
- Ayaan Hirsi Ali, ‘Why I Am Now A Christian’ www.com, 11th November 2023
- Simon Dein, ‘COVID-19 and the Apocalypse: Religious and Secular Perspectives’ in Journal of Religion and Health, Vol.60, pp5-15, 2021
- Monica Cornejo-Valle and Borja Martin-Andino, ‘Elastic Rituals: A Multi-Religious Analysis of Adaptations to the COVID-19 Crisis’, Religions 14 (6), 2023
- Shilpa Aggarwal, Judith Wright, et al. ‘Religiosity and Spirituality in the Prevention and Management of Depression and Anxiety in Young People: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis’, BMC Psychiatry 23, 729, 2023
- Emily Maskell, ‘Is 2026 the Year of Analogue?’ dazeddigital.com, 23rd January 2026
- Isaiah 53:2-3 read comparatively with Matthew 11:26
Learning More
OCCA The Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics was established in 2004 to raise up the next generation of evangelist-apologists. By 2021, around 350 emerging evangelists from around the world had studied on the OCCA one-year programme. This course equipped each of them to share and defend the gospel message and to come alongside others to help them with their intellectual objections and heartfelt concerns about the Christian faith. Subscribe to our weekly newsletters to see our latest articles from our team of speakers.
Jo Frost