For anyone who has spent the last decade worrying about the future of the Church in Britain, the latest findings from Bible Society make for genuinely encouraging reading. Something is shifting among young people — and it is not a small or marginal movement.

Bible Society commissioned YouGov to map changes in the spiritual landscape across Britain, and the results of what they are calling the Quiet Revival are striking. Among adults aged 45 to 55, belief in God has continued to decline. But among those under 25, the trend has reversed: young people have gone from being the least likely generation to believe in God to the most likely. Church attendance among the youngest adults is now approaching the levels seen among those over 65 — the generation that returned to church in large numbers after the pandemic.

What is driving this? The evidence points, unexpectedly, to the Bible itself. Fusion, a student outreach organisation working on university campuses across the country, has distributed 1,500 free Bibles to non-Christian students in the last two years. Their workers describe scenes that would have seemed implausible a decade ago: students who have never been to church picking up a Bible, reading it independently, and arriving at a local church having already encountered Jesus in its pages. Two students at different universities, working independently, began reading from Genesis rather than the New Testament — and by the time they reached Exodus, they were convinced it was all true. They turned up at their local churches asking what to do next.

Pippa Elmes, a leader at Fusion, puts it simply: "Students want Bibles. They want to read God's word for themselves." Her colleague Roscoe adds: "We're seeing a scriptural revival. Students want Bibles and they want to see what happens when they read them."

Perhaps the most practically useful finding for local churches is this: a third of non-Christian young adults say they would go to church if a friend invited them. The barrier, in many cases, is simply the absence of an invitation. The Quiet Revival report has, in Roscoe's words, "blown up the hunger for working with young people in local churches" — giving congregations the confidence that local mission is not only possible but timely.

For churches wondering how to engage the next generation, the message from this research is both challenging and hopeful. The openness is there. The hunger is real. The question is whether the Church will extend the invitation.