"At twenty-six, I knew that miracles and religious experiences were not real. That prayers did not do a thing. That the end of life was synonymous with finality, and to imagine otherwise was a hopeful and misplaced delusion, that churches were as useless and beautiful as dinosaur bones” – so Lamorna Ash describes her scepticism in the introduction to her new book Don't Forget We're Here Forever: A New Generation's Search for Religion, our Welldoing Book of the Month for June 2025. And yet, what starts as an "unserious" journalist’s investigation to write a piece about two university friends, both comedians, who both recently converted to Christianity, becomes an utterly sincere, nearly four-year-long, thoughtful and thought-provoking journey. 

Over the course of several years, Ash travels the country, spending time with the gamut of Christian denominations: "Catholics, Orthodox Christians, Quakers, Pentecostals, conservative Evangelicals, liberal Evangelicals, high to low Anglicans, Anabaptists, Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, non-denominational Christians, self-professed mystics, and those who only on certain days called themselves Christian." She focuses primarily on her own age group, those in their 20s and 30s. Indeed, it seems there is a rise in young people turning to Christianity. A recent survey carried out by YouGov and the Bible Society showed that there has been a 50% increase in church attendance over the last six years in England and Wales, and that young people 18-24 are the second largest demographic in attendance. 21% of men and 12% of women aged 18-24 say they attend church at least once a month.

What’s driving this change? "Every present-day conversion story recounted to me over the last few years had its own unique coordinates”, writes Ash. “But they also had a shared underscore: the roar of our communal wanting for our lives not to be meaningless, for our future and the Earth's future not to be wholly doomed." Perhaps especially today young people are struggling from a lack of trust in institutions, post-pandemic loneliness, yearning for lasting relationships in the time of dating apps, divisive political tensions, the self-commodification rampant on social media – I certainly see this in the young adults that I work with in my therapy room. They desire depth, substance, meaningfulness; it seems so hard to find. To take up the search for themselves, risky and fraught with challenge. And, importantly, something that most of them feel they would have to do alone, without a clear community to draw from.

For myself, I wonder why Ash’s somewhat epic journey struck such a chord. I am not religious by any standard definition of the word, and yet I’ve long pondered how – despite this – I can feel I somehow have a kind of religious attitude. For me, it is easy to embrace that there are bigger things at play, mysterious things that we can’t fully grasp. But I’ve never felt the need to search for God-as-figurehead or God-as-creator. Instead, what has always compelled me is a sense of what can exist between people, what it means for everything to be connected – and what it means to feel disconnected. A fundamental sense of disconnection, from self, from environment, from others, seems to me to underscore a wide range of human suffering. Ash too wonders throughout what God might be and where she might encounter “Him”. Is He visible as the wind in trees, or will a religious experience – and I won’t offer any spoilers here – be much more explicit than that, as it has been for some of her interviewed converts? Is God what exists between people? “You might say instead that the act of listening out for what another person needs to hear from us, the very substance of the interaction, you could call that God. Something like God."

Ash's prologue opens with the story of Jacob and the Angel, violently entangled in something that is both a fierce fight and a loving embrace. This story comes up again and again to exemplify the nature of wrestling with faith, acknowledging that it doesn't easily exist without doubt. And indeed, many of Ash's modern converts are people who have come in and out of their faith, and Ash herself – female, queer, liberal – has much to reconcile on her own journey of discovering what formalised religion can and might mean to her. I am moved, from the opening chapters, by the question that seemingly crystallises as: In this world, as I know myself, do I even have the capacity for faith?

I think I understand a capacity for faith – whether religious or a broader sense – to mean something like a capacity to acknowledge uncertainty and live despite it. Or maybe something more specific than uncertainty – the capacity instead to hold seemingly contradictory ideas in mind at once. I think of falling in love – to accept that another person is the most important thing in the world, and to know that you will lose them, and that that loss could be – will most likely be – sooner than you hope. To love, despite this. To be in touch with both belief (self-belief or other) and anxiety; with faith and fear. And maybe those aren’t so far apart; they both require a belief in things that you largely can’t see, that might dwell inside you, quietly or loudly, always marked by your subjective experience. I believe in something akin to confession; that is, in the transformative potential of having the parts of you that you find the darkest and most inarticulable witnessed, and being accepted in return. It's part of what I value in the work I do.

You can see in the way I’ve written these sentences, that I can't pretend self-assurance; these are not fully-formed thoughts. And I wouldn’t necessarily want them to be. Maybe humility is the whole point. There are things I cannot know. I see this as part of the faith that Ash is seeking too, one that holds uncertainty and movement.

Without wanting to share where Ash’s journey takes her, I’ll leave you with the musings of one of her interviewees, Helen: "I truly believe everyone follows a faith. Like Jesus said, "Everyone serves a master." You cannot serve two. It only makes a mess. And so, if not God, I would serve... Honestly, I would serve myself. I would put my faith in my own ego, in ambition, in consumerism, in capitalism. They are as strong a force as any faith, which tries instead to love, to give yourself away for others. And what I have little doubt about is that, if not God, then I would be beholden to something else." And so, even if you know God isn't for you, is it worth asking yourself: What are you beholden to? What do you believe in?

Don’t Forget We’re Here Forever: A New Generation’s Search for Religion is a wise, nuanced and moving exploration of modern-day faith in young people in the UK, and the importance of belief for all people. It is also lyrically and beautifully written. It’s our Welldoing Book of the Month for June 2025 – you can see previous winners here.