In July 2024, for reasons he still struggles to explain, Taiaroa became interested in Christianity.
A descendant of Ngāti Tūwharetoa and Ngāti Apa, he had until then been deeply suspicious of the faith tradition, seeing it as emblematic of the colonisation of Māori. But despite feeling like a “traitor”, he asked to borrow a Bible from his grandmother, a lapsed Christian, and started reading the Gospels.
As he did, his hopelessness began to shift.
“I think on some level I just got really sick of being in a pit,” he says. “I was tired of not looking for answers, tired of being like this. There was a desperation for everything to mean something.”
For the next six months, he says, God spoke to him through scripture and prayer, culminating in a radical conversion in his bedroom one morning, where he experienced what he now understands as the Holy Spirit.
“It felt like fire and lightning all over my body – it was intense.
“ It was the first time in my life I was just overcome with real, true joy and peace … Drugs give you that artificially, but to feel the real peace that God gives for the first time, I’d never felt anything like it.”
Taiaroa started attending church and gave up drugs and heavy drinking. After years of drifting without hope or a purpose, he now feels he has something to live for.
“It’s a complete 180. Instead of hating people, I want to get better at loving them. Instead of being apathetic, I want to have more of a heart for people.
“It sounds weird, but grass looks way greener than it ever has, the sky looks way more blue and has more mauri [life force] … and I actually have a hope, a tangible hope.”
Ratoma Taiaroa turned to Christianity after his life hit rock bottom.
The tide turns
For decades, the overriding narrative about religion in New Zealand has not consisted of stories like Taiaroa’s. It has been one of decline.
Christianity has fallen from the heights of a century ago, when more than 85% of the population considered themselves Christian, and further still since 2013, when those who identified with the faith still outnumbered those of no religion.
By the 2023 Census, not only had Christianity become a minority belief but the non-religious (51.6%) had for the first time surpassed those affiliated with religion of any kind.
Recently, though, a counter-narrative has begun to emerge. Stories like Taiaroa’s – of young people increasingly returning to the churches their parents and grandparents vacated – are now cropping up all over the West.
Dubbed the Quiet Revival, this supposed trend was derived from a 2025 Bible Society UK report which suggested that Gen Z – those born between 1997 and 2012 – were driving a spectacular resurgence in church-going in Britain.
Based on a survey by analytics firm YouGov, church attendance among Britons aged 18-24 had quadrupled from 4% in 2018 to 16% by 2024, with young men responsible for the largest share of that growth. The report’s subsequent bullish claim that it had “bust[ed] the myth of church decline” spawned global headlines and energised the Christian community worldwide.
But the methodology behind it – an online survey that paid participants for their time – soon drew intense criticism, as other research pointed in the opposite direction. Last week, facing mounting scrutiny, the Bible Society retracted the report after YouGov admitted its standard quality controls had not been applied and the data was “faulty”.
Dr Lynne Taylor, a senior lecturer at Otago University, who collects New Zealand church attendance data and researches contemporary faith formation, said she was “unsurprised” by the retraction, as the reported change in church-going was “considerably more extensive than seemed reasonable”.
But she believes the report’s central premise – that there has been a change in the social and religious climate – is still legitimate.
Victoria University’s Dr Geoff Troughton, a historian who researches contemporary religious change, says there is not yet strong enough evidence to suggest the “Quiet Revival” is occurring either here or abroad.
But he believes the pervasiveness of belief in a revival stems from a “relief from embattlement” among Christians, who are tired of being told the faith is in decline.
“The overwhelming story for Christians over the last 60 years has been ‘we’re losing people every year’, so any feeling the mood might be different is met with understandable relief and anticipation.
“There’s a culture and discourse that’s bedded into a lot of Christianity, that the great hope and aspiration is revival – and so you’re looking for it.”
Religious historian and Massey University emeritus professor Dr Peter Lineham thinks there has been a revival of spiritual awareness.
Religious historian and Massey University emeritus professor Dr Peter Lineham agrees that what we’re witnessing probably isn’t quite as dramatic as the term “Quiet Revival” suggests.
“Perhaps what we are seeing is remarkable impacts, but in specific places or largely in-house events. That’s to say they’re confined to one church or one denomination.
“But we are certainly seeing a greater awareness of spirituality in society. That’s the phenomenon that should be highlighted, because there is a feeling that secular society is bereft of any spiritual resources, and is struggling.”
The God-shaped hole
Regardless of the demise of the Bible Society report, the interest it generated in a potential spiritual revival has been a catalyst for renewed focus on the religiosity of young people, which does appear to be shifting.
While the overall picture is unclear, with some international studies suggesting young people are still falling away from religion, others hint at signs of life.
In the United States, Gen Z is bucking a decades-long pattern of rising secularity, with young Americans now attending church services more frequently than millennials or younger Gen X-ers. Attendance at US Roman Catholic churches, in particular, is surging.
Across the Tasman, many more young people are attending church and identifying with Christianity. An Australian Community Survey found 39% of men and 28% of women aged 28 and under now call themselves Christian.
The Catholic Church in France is also booming; it baptised more than 17,800 people at Easter last year – the highest figure since records began. Over 10,000 were adults, up 45% on the previous year, with under-25s accounting for 42% of that group.
Ireland, the Netherlands and Finland are all experiencing a notable rise in Gen Z church attendance and religious affiliation, too. Finland has seen nearly three-quarters (73%) of its young people confirmed in the Evangelical Lutheran Church.
Taylor says Gen Z is turning to Christianity to find meaning, purpose and belonging. They are also worried about the future of the world, and finding an “insufficiency of answers” in secularism.
“[They feel that] scientific and wholly rational explanations of our world are not actually sufficient for the yearnings deep within them, so there must be something else.”
Lineham believes loneliness is another key driver. Covid weakened peer relationships among Gen Z, he says, leaving them “with a real void in their lives”.
Finding a healthy church can thus be “enormously positive” because they are treated as people of significance and become part of a community.
The view from Aotearoa
Poor monitoring and record-keeping by churches and minimal data collection by government agencies make it difficult to tell whether or to what extent a Quiet Revival is taking root among Gen Z in New Zealand.
With Stats NZ opting last year to scrap the Census, which recorded residents’ religious identification every five years, that picture is unlikely to become clearer.
But churches in Aotearoa are awash with anecdotes of young people returning to faith, and excitement about a Quiet Revival has become a regular topic in Christian media, church services and conferences.
There is some basis for this increased optimism. Research commissioned in 2023 by the Wilberforce Foundation, a Christian philanthropic organisation, found Gen Z Kiwis were the most likely generation to self-identify as either religious or spiritual (72%).
Just 18% of the population views Christianity negatively, with younger generations warmer to it than their elders. Gen Z is also most likely to believe in something beyond the material world, life after death, and that their spirituality influences their health.
An international study from Christian research firm Barna backs this up, labelling Gen Z the “open generation” on account of their unusual receptivity to God, spiritual conversations and scripture.
This openness appears to be translating to pockets of growth in New Zealand.
Evangelical group Catalyst Movement oversaw the establishment of 30 new “Jesus clubs” in high schools in 2025, taking its total to 150; while 24-7 Prayer NZ recorded 40,000 hours in prayer rooms across the country last year, more than doubling its previous record set in 2022.
Across the country, churches report a renewed interest in faith.
Reuben Porter, pastor of Crossroads Church in Palmerston North, has seen the number of young adults at services grow from about 75 to between 100 and 250 in a matter of years. He says this generation seems less worried that having a faith is seen as weird, so are bolder in inviting friends along.
“They don’t have the church upbringing, so they don’t come with baggage or preconceived ideas. They come with an openness to what God’s doing.
“We’re seeing a lot more young people come who’ve got no experience of church. They’re like, ‘We found you online, watched your services and just had to come.’ These are pretty remarkable stories that would’ve been rare 10 years ago.”
Ōrewa Baptist Church, north of Auckland, is noticing a similar pattern. The average pre-Covid service there would have seen about 380 people walk through the door; now congregations are regularly topping 500, and have exceeded 600 twice this year.
Pastor Mark Poole says this has been driven by its burgeoning young adult and youth communities. He’s adamant that growth is happening “in spite of us”, and the church isn’t doing anything special to attract them.
“This is something that’s happening on a wider scale.
“We’re having more people stop by and say, ‘I know I don’t know you, but can you pray for me?’ In the last three or four years, we’re seeing increases in baptisms and church membership.”
The Baptist Church nationally is bouncing back after a couple of lean post-Covid years.
Attendances have increased for the third consecutive year, and the number of baptisms has jumped 23% to 876 in the year to 2025. Half of these (51%) were of people aged 25 and under.
These figures are still down on pre-Covid numbers, but Taylor says she wouldn’t have expected growth to continue for so long if it were just a post-pandemic bounce.
Baptist Youth Ministries (BYM) Easter Camp numbers have grown by 42% in the past two years, and more than 4000 campers are at Northern Easter Camp in Hamilton, BYM’s largest, this weekend.
‘Like a switch has flipped’
The Cathedral of St Patrick and St Joseph in Auckland.
Catholic Church attendance also appears to be surging.
The Catholic Enquiry Centre (CEC) said more than 300 people had made contact in 2025, two-thirds of whom were exploring Catholicism for the first time, returning after time away, or wondering how to become Catholic.
“In other words, most people contacting us are on a faith journey – curious, hopeful, sometimes unsure, but open.”
The Auckland diocese, in particular, is flourishing. The average weekly Mass count in the region jumped 8.5% to nearly 40,000 in the year to 2024; and 350 people were baptised at St Patrick’s Cathedral on Easter Sunday last year – a figure described by Lineham at the time as “astonishing”.
The diocese confirmed the 350 figure was “significantly more” than in previous years. This Easter Sunday, another 660 people across the country, including 450 in Auckland, will officially join the Catholic Church.
Immigration from countries with high levels of religious adherence – predominantly the Philippines, India, Tonga and Samoa – has undoubtedly given Catholicism in Auckland a boost, with the 2023 Church Life Survey finding three-quarters (74%) of Auckland Catholics were born overseas.
But Samuel Brebner, the Auckland diocese’s manager of ministries to young people, says immigration alone cannot account for what he’s seeing.
“People are just showing up at our events at a rate that I haven’t experienced previously … it’s almost like a switch flipped.
“We’ll have young people coming along, many of them with no previous experience of the Catholic Church … and they’re curious. When you ask them what brought them here, they reference YouTube videos by Christian influencers or thought leaders that are engaging with the Catholic Church in a meaningful way.”
He says Gen Z appears to be seeking a truth that endures beyond the news cycle.
“In recent years, young people really have seen how temperamental and changing morality can be in the secular space, and I think there has been a yearning or desire for something deeper, something more comprehensively thought out.”
‘There’s got to be more to life’
A yearning for something deeper was at the heart of Palmerston North student Billy Easton’s conversion to Christianity in October 2025.
The 20-year-old had until then led the Bucketheads, an unofficial Manawatū rugby supporter group he describes as a “drinking cult” with a singular objective to get “as silly as possible in the stands”.
“All I cared about was who I was seen with, the sports teams I was making, the girls I was with, how many followers on Instagram I had,” he says. “I put everything into building a social empire.”
One Friday night at the pub, a stranger invited him to church. He showed up, and it prompted some “pretty big questions” about his life.
Not long after, he found himself lost in a dangerous part of Sydney after being booted from an Uber. High and drunk, with a dead phone and no money, he was desperate – and found himself turning to God.
“I had this moment where I was like, ‘All right, if you can get me out of this situation, I’m gonna follow you’ … God was listening, and as soon as I started praying, he delivered me from that situation and got me the help I needed.”
Within two months, Easton had found a church, converted and been baptised.
“I was like, ‘What am I doing with my life? All I’m doing is numbing everything around me. There’s got to be more to life than this.’”
Males dominate return to faith
Young men such as Easton are at the forefront of the supposed Quiet Revival. International data shows Gen Z males converting to Christianity at a faster rate than females, and anecdotal accounts suggest a similar trend here.
Lineham calls the gender discrepancy “strikingly unusual”.
“For the last 300 years, it was always women who were responding to religion – supposedly for reasons of greater awareness of emotions and sensitivity – but maybe a crisis of masculinity is changing that.”
Some have theorised that Christianity appeals to conservative men nostalgic for traditional gender roles. If that’s driving church attendance, it’s a cause for concern, says Taylor.
“It should cause us to pause and think about what this Gospel is that we are presenting. Because the Gospel is good news for all, not just good news for men.”
Ronnie Lam says he became a Christian in response to the murder of US conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Photo / Cameron Pitney
Local church leaders reported an influx of new attendees in the wake of US conservative influencer Charlie Kirk’s assassination last year, with multiple young people citing Kirk or his contemporaries as a gateway to faith.
“I started believing because of what happened to Charlie Kirk,” says Ronnie Lam, from Auckland’s North Shore.
“Once I found God, I found my purpose in life, which is … to be more like Jesus.”
Reiko Pham says trying to lead an honest life turned her to Christianity. Photo / Michael Craig
Aucklander Reiko Pham, 25, first became interested in Christianity through influencer Jordan Peterson’s YouTube videos.
“What I remember him saying that stuck with me is that speaking the truth is the best outcome of how your life will unfold,” she says. “From that point, I just started trying to live an honest life and be really truthful as a person … and the truth is what set me free and brought me to Christ.”
Troughton says conservative influencers are just one factor among many, as is the Christian nationalism driving the likes of the MAGA movement in the US and far-right activist Tommy Robinson’s anti-immigrant rallies in the UK.
New Zealand’s rhetorical equivalent is Brian Tamaki, though Dr Philip Fountain, a senior lecturer in religious studies at Victoria University, believes his influence is overblown.
“The world over, we can trace the rise of populist movements who deploy religion as a code for race, whiteness or anti-immigrant postures … we’d be exceedingly naive to think this isn’t a danger in New Zealand.
“My main sense, though, is that churches are actually at the forefront of welcoming refugees and immigrants … I don’t yet see, in the New Zealand context, a strong alliance between conservative Christianity and an anti-immigrant agenda.”
Whether Gen Z’s return to faith represents the beginnings of a widespread revival or isolated pockets of growth remains uncertain. For church leaders, though, any sign of renewed fervour is encouraging after decades of decline.
“There is a revival,” says Crossroads pastor Porter. “Whether it’s quiet or loud, I’m not sure, but there’s definitely something that’s shifted because there’s a hunger like I haven’t seen before. Call it quiet if you want, but it’s happening whether we like it or not.”
Matt Burrows is a feature writer and the managing editor of xvox, an initiative deepening news coverage on matters of faith and religion.
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