Carl Willers argues that a new Church of England report on why young adults are joining its churches should be read as a rebuke, rather than a reason for self-congratulation.
When I was 24, I was already an alcoholic; drinking a litre of whiskey a day, drink driving most nights, and utterly lost.
What made this moment in my life more tragic is that I had already spent thousands of hours and thousands of pounds scrambling far and wide, experimenting with various techniques, philosophies and disciplines to help pull myself up out of the pit I’d found myself in.
What’s even more tragic is that despite this extensive quest, I was never once presented with Jesus Christ as the solution.
I was therefore unsurprised when I recently learned that my experience overlaps with the journeys of many other young people within the Church of England.
Such journeys are chronicled in a new report titled ‘Understanding Young Adult Journeys to Faith in the Church of England’.
As it says on the tin, this new report, researched by Theos and published by CofE, is seeking to answer the question – what is bringing young people into the Church of England?
It turns out that the answer is rather inconvenient to the Church of England.
The greatest commandment: thou shalt not pollute
The report indirectly highlights that there is currently a vast chasm between the problems young people are facing as they seek refuge in the church and the priorities of the Church of England at large.
People are not turning to the CofE because of its commitment to net zero, generous immigration policies, and slavery reparations.
In fact, not a single person in the entire report cites these as reasons why they joined the CofE.
But if you look through all the testimonies within the report, there is one thread that appears more than any other – the very thread that ran through my experience.
Brokenness.
A life devoid of meaning, loneliness, hearts crushed by the weight of a broken culture and lifestyles, and nothing solid to plant their feet on.
Here are a few examples from the report:
“Five months ago, I was in the worst, darkest possible [point in my] whole life. I didn’t want to wake up the next day. That’s because I just came out of mental illness, and came out of a relationship because of that. I just wasn’t well. I’ve been on a lot of antidepressants.” Jake, 22
“I think people generally see it as the world is going so terribly wrong and these people have got something going right that their lives changing in a positive way and how can I get that? How can I have that kind of structure in my life? And I think a lot of people have grown up having sort of, you know, most people my age. I don’t really know anybody who’s Mum and Dad are together or anything like that. They haven’t got that kind of stability that God can give them. So I think people are sort of moving towards that as society is moving away from it.” Abby, 24
“We’re realising the dissatisfaction that comes with the world, particularly a secular world.” Joanna, 22
“The thing that is bringing most [young] people to religion is that existential sense of confusion” Nik, 28
The unfillable void
Many of these young people echo an existential itch within them that they can’t seem to scratch.
An itch that I know all too well.
When I was in my season of searching before Jesus, I remember having a vivid belief in God. I even read books by scientists that would use science to prove that a spiritual force was behind the creation of the universe. I consumed countless books and YouTube videos on ‘spirituality’ and diligently sought a better understanding of these things. I was very open!
And I’m not alone.
Gen-Z is the most spiritually open generation.
It is in this place of existential pain and spiritual bankruptcy that Gen-Z is desperately trying on whatever plaster they can find to fix that pain — whether New Age spirituality, meditation, digital detoxing, therapy, or Jordan Peterson’s vision of responsibility and accountability.
They want answers, they want a blueprint to life, they want a saviour.
So why then did it take me, and others, thousands of hours of searching before I ever heard the gospel of Jesus Christ? Why did I have to learn from random self-improvement videos on YouTube that pornography is bad? Why did I have to get advice on morals from Jordan Peterson?
Because the Church was quiet.
Although the Church has many ministers and members who are faithfully labouring for Christ and his statutes, its leaders’ actions have shown their priorities to be quite different.
The CofE has officially appointed bishops as ‘episcopal leads’ over issues that they deem highest priority of the Church.
The Church currently has bishops officially commissioned to spearhead the following areas:
- Interfaith engagement
- Racial justice
- Environment / climate change
- Sports(!)
- Many others
This may seem a bit excessive, but nothing alarming.
That is until you see what areas do not have a designated episcopal lead.
Those not included:
- Tackling family breakdown
- Nation-wide evangelism
- Improving marriage and tackling divorce
- Pornography and sexual addiction
- Abortion
- Tackling social media addiction epidemic
- Freedom of speech
The moral epidemics responsible for extraordinary family and societal breakdown are brushed over by the Church, while ‘sports’ and ‘interfaith engagement’ are given VIP treatment.
The fall from grace
The Church was once the moral authority that upheld the life-giving blueprint for human flourishing nestled within the pages of Scripture.
It encouraged marriage between one man and one woman, a robust sexual ethic, protecting life within the womb.
All things that lead to a healthy and flourishing society.
But somewhere that focus switched. The vigour the CofE once had in promoting the biblical blueprint for living, vanished.
So, the people of England drifted away from what is life-giving – and a cultural death followed.
Out of the Church’s silence grew the problems that plague Britain today – family break down, divorces rising, sexual licentiousness, and babies not given the chance of a first breath.
The absence of the Church’s moral authority is what crippled Britain into a nation that failed to nurture the very broken young people whose stories we hear within this report.
Generations of boys and girls have grown up without a father and millions believe the sin that’s destroying them is good. Most tragically of all, millions of young people don’t know that Jesus died for them – just like I didn’t.
The Church‘s refusal to uphold the moral architecture that was once a firm foundation for our nation has indirectly resulted in the very brokenness, lack of meaning, and mental health problems of the people now walking through its doors.
So while this report could appear to be a self-congratulatory pat on the back to some in the Church of England, it should really be seen as a mirror that points to its failure to uphold God‘s holy and righteous commandments.
While the Church sets up committee after committee on climate change, pornography use among men is causing sexual assault to rise and marriages to break down. Where is the nationwide campaign to educate and support Christians facing these issues?
While the Church welcomes trans clergy, sexual boundaries have been so distorted that over 50% of children are now born outside of wedlock.
And young people see right through it.
A conclusion from a researcher within the report said “the more unapologetic the expression of faith, the greater its appeal. This resonates with our findings.”
The irony is, the very young people the Church is celebrating arriving through its doors, are drawn to the orthodox convictions and moral architecture the Church at large is often not proclaiming.
It’s not too late
We can look at the news and it may seem bleak – because it is bleak.
Young people refuse to work, pornography use starts at 13 on average, and mental health issues are at an all-time high.
But what’s most tragic of all is that most have never heard the gospel of Jesus Christ.
I would know, because in many ways I was the archetypical Gen-Z.
Weighed down by the sin that was sown into me by an English culture increasingly void of God’s life-giving ways.
But desperate for a saviour from that sin.
So desperate that I was willing to spend ten days in complete silence meditating for ten hours a day, practising ancient yogic breathing techniques and taking powerful psychedelic drugs I thought might lead to a spiritual breakthrough.
So desperate that, despite thousands of hours of trying to be my own saviour, I was still enslaved to a litre of whiskey a day to escape the pain.
By all natural means, it would have seemed there were no more paths for me to go down, no more lifehacks to try and no longer any hope for change.
After the therapeutic modalities, the eastern philosophies, the yoga, the meditation, the self-help books, the data driven psychology and the wellness obsession… there was one final stone I had yet to turn over.
The Bible.
To my utter surprise, what I encounter in that book was not another technique – but a person. The Lord Jesus Christ.
That’s when I had my last drink.
That’s why my life turned 180 degrees.
That’s when I realised that although this generation is spiralling out of control at a rate so rapid that no natural phenomena can stop its momentum – the very supernatural God who transformed me can transform them.
Our nation’s only hope
In those following months, I remember being stunned thinking ‘Really? After all these years of searching far and wide, the answers I was seeking are found in the church down the road? In the Bible? In our Christian country?’
And this is the great problem of the Church today.
That we have young people desperate for ‘full fat religion’, but a Church that is so consumed with publicly appropriating the latest cultural trend, that these young people never hear the hope that’s waiting for them, with open arms, in the pages of scripture.
Because the only hope for the future of this country, is that this lost and broken generation encounters the God who came to bind up the broken hearted (Isaiah 61:1).