Sales of the Bible are rocketing in Britain, figures show, with publishers crediting the increasing spirituality of Gen Z.
There was an increase of 87 per cent between 2019 and 2024 — from £2.69 million to £5.02 million — over five years, according to figures compiled by SPCK Group, the Christian publishers, using transaction information from Nielsen Book Data.
Nielsen said that sales of its broader category of “Bibles and liturgy” had increased from £7 million in 2019 to £8.1 million in 2024, up from just £5 million in 2008.
While generally sales of fiction works are increasing, those of non-fiction books have been declining: Nielsen recorded a 6 per cent fall from 2023 to 2024.
However, books about religion are bucking this trend. A spokeswoman for Nielsen Book Data said: “Spending on religious books in total last year measured £25.2 million, up 3 per cent year-on-year.”
The Bible Society said that its 2018 volume Good News Bible — The Youth Edition, was “by far our most popular”, with sales almost doubling since 2021. It has extra explanations to help readers decipher the meaning of important Bible passages and also includes infographics and space for writing notes.
It is commonly assumed that religious belief has been steadily declining with each subsequent generation. It appears, however, that Generation X, those born between 1965 and 1980, is the most irreligious generation.
A recent survey found that 25 per cent of Gen X identifies as atheist, but that this falls to 20 per cent among millennials, born between 1981 and 1996, and falls again to just 13 per cent among Generation Z, born between 1997 and 2012.
The number of people in Britain who say they have “no religion” is climbing, however, from 15 per cent in the 2001 census to 37.5 per cent in 2021. It is thought that many younger people identify as “spiritual” without necessarily following any of the major religions, which may explain why Church of England congregations continue to show a dearth of children and teenagers.
A survey in January found that 62 per cent of 18 to 24-year-olds said they were “very” or “fairly” spiritual, compared with 35 per cent of those aged over 65.
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Sam Richardson, chief executive of SPCK, said the sales figures showed “we are at the centre of a significant cultural shift regarding matters of faith and religion”.
“Atheism, once considered by modern society to be the view of most rational adults, no longer seems to carry the same weight or appeal,” he said. “Young people — Gen Z, in particular — are statistically far less likely to identify as atheists than their parents.
“Last week Giles Coren wrote a column for The Times with the headline: ‘This Lent, I will turn atheism to ashes’.”
Richardson said that “events like the Covid-19 pandemic and the mental health crisis” had led many people to “think deeply about their spirituality” and want to “draw their own conclusions by reading Christian books in general and the Bible in particular”.
Mark Woods, of the Bible Society, said some of the sales came from “young people buying the Bible themselves, or parents buying for their children” and said some came from “churches buying it for their youth group or their local school”.
He added: “Either way, there’s a very clear increase in demand. This seems to arise from a perception that the Bible has something important to say to young people, and from a desire to make it accessible to them.”
Stephen Evans, chief executive of the National Secular Society, said the figures were “illustrative of the diverse ways in which people in modern Britain derive meaning in their lives” as part of “Britain’s constantly evolving religion or belief landscape”.
He said his body’s remit was to call for a greater separation between religious institutions and the state “to ensure everyone can pursue their own paths without institutional influence or other people’s conceptions of the good being imposed”.
The most popular editions of the Bible were the New International version and the Good News Bible, more so than the King James Bible, he said.
