Gen Z and God: Is the Church Answering Young People's Prayers? (Lamorna Ash)

**Sophia Smith Galer** (0:00)
Hi, I'm Sophia Smith Galer. I'm a writer, journalist, and next week, your host on Radical.
I'm going to be talking to David Runciman, an honorary professor of politics at the University of Cambridge about his very radical proposal, lowering the voting age to six. No, not 16, six.
When David first proposed his idea, it was met with interest, incredulity, and ridicule. But he argues it can help fix the generational divides in our society as well as rebalance a democratic system that he argues favors the old. Clearly, we're going to have a lot to talk about, so we want you to join in the conversation with your radical questions for David. Please leave us a WhatsApp voice note on plus four four three three zero one two three nine four eight zero. Or you can email us on radical at BBC dot co dot UK. I will be back with you very soon. But now on with the week's episode.

**James Marriott** (1:15)
Hello and welcome to Radical, conversations about the underlying forces reshaping our world and the radical ideas that could define the future. I'm James Marriott. I'm a writer for the Times newspaper and, as you might remember, a former guest on this podcast. This week, I want to talk about something that has intrigued me recently. The relationship between young people and religion. In recent British history, Christianity has been rapidly fading away. The Christian church has drifted from the center of national life towards its margins, as churches have emptied and the authority of religious leaders has waned. The story we usually hear is that Christianity is an anachronism, an outdated and rather dusty system of belief that is becoming less relevant to each passing generation. But not everyone agrees. In her 20s, the writer Lamorna Ash spent years meeting and documenting the experiences of today's generation of Christian converts, young adults who've turned to the church for answers to their very modern anxieties.
She spent a year traveling around Britain and immersing herself in a dizzying range of religious experience, places and communities to find out why young people from all kinds of backgrounds are looking for God. She went to evangelical festivals, she went to Quaker meetings, she stayed with monastic communities and went on a silent Jesuit retreat. She began her journey as a curious and rather sceptical observer. But as she went along, things got increasingly personal, and she started to see the appeal of Christianity for herself. Lamorna documented her experiences in her book, Don't Forget We're Here Forever, which asks what Christianity might offer that secular society cannot.
I want to ask her what answers younger generations are finding in Christianity for the problems in their lives. Are they searching for meaning, or are they looking for ritual, community, and certainty in a disorienting digital culture that often leaves us lonely, anxious, and unsure of what to believe? And is this the beginning of a genuine religious revival, or just a good old-fashioned rebellion against the modern world? So I hope you enjoy my conversation with Lamorna Ash.
Lamorna, thanks so much for joining us on Radical.

**Lamorna Ash** (3:31)
Thank you for having me, James. It's good to be here.

**James Marriott** (3:34)
I wanted to start by asking you, what first got you interested in researching young people and Christianity?

**Lamorna Ash** (3:41)
It started in 2021, when I was looking for a piece to write in just a classic jobbing journalist looking for something exciting.
I heard this story about two guys who had known from University, who are a comedy double act, and they both simultaneously converted to Christianity, and decided they wanted to become priests. From a very secular friendship group, or definitely a very secular background, to me, this felt so wildly surprising, so against what I thought my generation was, that I reached out to them, and then started interviewing them about their faith, and became, in a way that hadn't been for quite a few years, completely fascinated with everything they were saying, most of all with the mechanics of a conversion, like what it really means to convert, and you're looking at figures like Paul, who had a sudden moment, or Augustine, the sudden moment, all these slow conversions, or conversions that then have sort of backsliding. And I followed them for like a year almost, interviewing them about their faith, as it accelerated, took them in new directions, caused their lives various upheavals, and then from there, I was just like, oh, if this is happening with two people I know, there must be other people. And also I got obsessed with, I don't think I really understood how many denominations there were, and I was sort of doing all these charts of like, I'd like to speak to a Quaker and Eastern Orthodox and a Baptist and an Anabaptist. And so it just went from there and just became something that, yeah, completely took over my brain.