“Five times in the last 2,000 years the church has to all appearances gone to the dogs,” said G.K. Chesterton. “In each case it was the dogs that died!”

I have bad news for dogs: the church is making a surprise comeback. At least, there’s a sporting chance it is. I have bad news for the Church of England: we’re lagging behind. We’re missing the boat. We might be the dinosaurs, left mournfully on terra firma whilst Noah sets sail in the Ark.

So what’s happened? You might have picked up news of a big YouGov poll for the Bible Society, tracking attitudes to religion in England. They do this every half decade or so, and the last time round the news was unremittingly grim.

Churchgoing was down across all ages, but amongst those under 35 it was a pitiful 4 per cent. Anglicans, still the largest single group, were 30 per cent of that, which (at 1.2 per cent) was within the margin of error for zero.

I imagine that when they commissioned their poll this time they expected further deterioration. Yet, whilst the 45–65 age bracket is still showing decline, everyone else is rising. The under-25s are up from 4 per cent to 16 per cent and the under-35s from 4 per cent to 13 per cent.

This is a remarkable rise. Even more astonishing is the sex divide. For the under-25s, 21 per cent of men say they go to church whilst only 12 per cent of women do.

And yet the news isn’t great for the Anglicans. We’re down. Down from 30 to 20 per cent amongst the young, whilst our dear friends and brothers in the Roman Catholic Church are cock-a-hoop at discovering that they now sit at 42 per cent. And the Pentecostals are snapping at our feet: a mere two points behind.

Now at this point I’m supposed to say it’s wonderful when anyone finds God and embraces Christ, and I’m sure that’s right. But obviously I’d rather they were Anglican, and we ought to be asking ourselves some pretty sharp questions about why they’re not.

Migration will play a part. But blaming it on migration is just a coping mechanism — not least when we, as Anglicans, have such a clear head start. So, what conclusions can we draw? The first is that a generation which has seen two stock market crashes, a major recession, a land war in Europe and a global pandemic is not a generation which is going to put their trust exclusively in man.

Secondly, we shouldn’t ignore how isolating modern society is. Working from home is great if you have a spouse, a child, a dog and a garden. It’s a very different thing if you have a bedsit and no living room.

Even if you do get into work, the spectral rise of HR has killed workplace socialising. Meeting other people — and meeting people across the age range — is something that is increasingly difficult to do.

Churches are perfect for this, and the data from this poll really bears this out. If you don’t go to church, only 25 per cent of you will say “I feel close to people in my area”; 64 per cent of young churchgoers, by contrast, do.

Why is that? They meet them — at church. And I have found this at my church: people join and quickly find themselves making friends, both in their own age groups and across the spectrum. Many say this is the only place they can do this now.

Read it all in The Critic