LEICESTER, United Kingdom – Is religion growing among young people in Northern Ireland? A new survey says 18-24-year-olds are more likely to have a “very positive” attitude towards religion than any other age group, even those over 65 years of age.

Commissioned by The Iona Institute, the survey said 30 percent of the younger community held the positive view, with only 4 percent holding a “very negative” view.

The poll showed more of the younger group also have a very positive attitude towards the Catholic Church – 17 percent – than all of the age groups above them.

Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom, although the Catholic Church – along with most other religions – covers the entire island, including the Republic of Ireland.

The North has been historically divided between majority Protestant and minority Catholic communities. Growing secularism in the United Kingdom and rising numbers of Catholics have been contributing to demographic change.

The poll

The Iona Institute poll is based on a representative sample of 1,200 adults and was conducted by Amarach Research.

In the 2021 census, nearly 70 percent of the Northern Irish population considered themselves Christian. Catholics were just over 42 percent, while Protestants were nearly 17 percent Presbyterian; just over 11 percent the Anglican Church of Ireland; a little over 2 percent Methodist, and nearly 7 percent other Christian congregations.

The Iona Institute said one of the survey’s major findings is that Northern Ireland can no longer be viewed as being simply divided between Catholics and Protestants, since the “nones” – those who say they don’t belong to any religion – have become a major force.

The Iona Institute survey “is the first major poll of attitudes to religion in Northern Ireland in many years,” the Director of the Iona Institute, David Quinn, told Crux.

“One big thing it shows is that the North cannot be thought of in Catholic versus Protestant terms anymore because now we have a lot of ‘nones’, that is people who don’t belong to any religion. They have a ‘plague on both your houses’ attitude,” Quinn also said.

“In the future, there will probably be fewer ‘cultural Christians’ around, that is, people who say they are Christian but don’t practice. Instead, society could be divided between those who believe in religion and those who don’t believe, with little in between, that is between the religious and the ‘nones’,” Quinn said.

“This seems to be what is happening in both the North and the South. The overall conclusion, however, is that religion is not disappearing, contrary to past predictions,” he added.

At a glance

Some major findings of the Iona survey are:

• 28 percent of those sampled say they are Catholic, 14% say they are Presbyterian, 11% say they are Church of Ireland, while 36% say they don’t belong to any religion (the ‘nones’). The rest belong to other Christian Churches or other religions;
• 40 percent of Catholics in Northern Ireland are regular Mass-goers (double the percentage in the Republic of Ireland);
• 56 percent say they are religious and/or spiritual (a slightly lower percentage than in the Republic). 39% say they are neither religious nor spiritual, while the rest say they don’t know;
• While the 18-24-year-olds are the most likely to have a “very positive” view of religion, half say they are neither religious nor spiritual, indicating this age group is quite polarized on religion;
• 51percent of those surveyed say they pray, 44% said they attend religious services (which does not mean regularly), 33% meditate, while 38% read religious or spiritual books such as the Bible. (Only 18% of those in the Republic do so);
• The 18-24-year-olds are more likely to pray and read or watch religious content than the 25-34-year-olds;
• 49 percent of respondents view Christianity favorably, versus 23% for the Catholic Church and 30% for the Protestant Churches (probably indicating hostility towards the institutions);
• The scandals are a major driver of unfavorable attitudes towards the Catholic Church;
• The most unfavorable attitudes towards religion in general are among the non-religious;
• The poll also shows that Catholics are better disposed towards the Protestant Churches than vice versa.

“The fact that some kind of revival of interest in religion is occurring among the youngest age group surveyed should encourage all the Churches,” Quinn said.

Not an outlier

“It is not an outlier finding because polls elsewhere have seen the same thing. Maybe a growing subset of young people are concluding that secularism isn’t really giving satisfactory answers to life’s big questions,” he said.

Asked by Crux about the differences between Northern Ireland and the Republic, Quinn said he wasn’t sure there is much difference, “except insofar as there are a lot more Protestants in the North.”

“In both parts of the island, we see a lot of negativity towards the Churches from the non-religious, but we also see revived interest among a minority of Gen Z. We also see a drift by some towards ‘spirituality’ as distinct from organised religion,” he said. “So there are all kinds of things going on, but they do not point towards the total triumph of a secular worldview or anything like it.”

“Richard Dawkins,” Quinn said, “will be very disappointed.”

Quinn noted in both parts of Ireland, there has been significant liberalization in certain social attitudes. Both the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland have liberalized laws governing abortion, allowed same-sex marriage, and are aiming to bring assisted suicide to their countries.

“The more liberal Churches welcome all this, but we note that most of the young people becoming interested in religion do not tend to have liberal views,” he told Crux.

“We didn’t ask about this in the poll, but if you talk to Church leaders dealing with young people, they will tell you this. These young people are often reacting against the liberalism of some of their peers and in particular the ‘boomers’,” he said.

Quinn says the poll shows that the continued decline of religion “is not inevitable.”

“We see a big uptick in interest in religion among the 18–24-year-olds, in line with polls in Britain and elsewhere such as ‘The Quiet Revival’ one. I think this is incredibly significant. A growing number of young people see that secularism cannot answer life’s big question,” he told Crux.

Follow Charles Collins on X: @CharlesinRome