WHY GEN Z IS SWAPPING SNAPCHAT FOR SPIRITUALITY

In a society rocked by a social media-induced mental health epidemic, young people are looking to religion for meaning. Claudia Cockerell pulls up a pew and meets the people making Christianity cool again

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There's warm applause as Archie Coates takes to the stage. He's wearing an unbuttoned shirt over a white tee, black jeans and box-fresh trainers. He speaks into a headset microphone, looking like a centrist dad giving a Ted Talk. "It feels like we're always on the verge of some collective panic attack," he tells the crowd. "And I love that the very first words of the resurrection are not 'tah-dah!'" - at this point he does jazz hands - "but they're words of comfort."

Coates is not giving a Ted Talk, but the Easter address at Holy Trinity Brompton (HTB), an Anglican church in South Kensington where he is lead vicar. His sermons are all livestreamed on YouTube and have The Diary of a CEO-esque titles like "Step into your calling" and "Everyone's a leader". This one is called "How is Easter relevant today?". The congregation is multi-generational, and there are a notable number of young people.

Among them is Reuben Larkin, a 23-year-old model who posts moody pictures of himself in sharply tailored suits for his 365,000 Instagram followers. Every week he goes to HTB for Sunday service and occasionally plays the drums in the church band. They don't do hymns, though, he tells me: "They kind of sound more like Coldplay."

Larkin is part of a wave of Gen Z churchgoers. A survey called The Quiet Revival, commissioned by the Bible Society and conducted by YouGov, found that 16 per cent of 18 to 24-year-olds go to church at least once a month, up from just 4 per cent in 2018. They are now the second largest demographic in attendance behind the over-65s.