The algorithm is funnelling Christian fashion content onto young people’s Instagram feeds, but what really goes on at these stylish churches?
How do you like to spend your Sunday evenings?
Some like to moan, cry, shake, twitch, scream and pound the floor beneath the huge vaulted roof of St Paul’s, an Anglican church just across the street from the Hammersmith Apollo.
If you are into fashion, you may have already seen its neo-gothic arches pop up on your Instagram feed via the video series What People Wore To Church On Sunday, in which stylish influencer Emily Beaney showcases the outfits of its smiling, well-dressed, and overwhelmingly young congregation of West London Christians.
With more than 80,000 followers, Beaney, a former youth minister, sandwiches her Christian content between fit checks and travel videos, aligning church-going and a fashionable lifestyle with such insouciance that viewers may be surprised to learn that only 3.9% of 21-25 year olds in England and Wales identified as Christian in 2021, and the numbers are trending downwards.
On the Sunday that I visited St Paul’s Hammersmith, there was no organ, no pews and no hymns. Instead, a band of stylish musicians played a gruelling series of Mumford-esque folk rock anthems while toddlers ran shrieking down the aisles and young parents raised their hands to the heavens.
As each song invariably crescendoed, an enthusiastic troupe would run to and fro on stage, waving big flags. A painter with her back to the congregation was improvising an abstract scene in response to the music, at one point pausing to flip her canvas upside down before continuing.
There was a guest preacher from an American church at the lectern. Once the bearded-and-beanied band had packed up, Julian Adams, a South African who considers himself an ‘internationally recognized prophet,’ told the congregation that he has “healed incurable diseases.”
He proceeded to ‘sense’ various ailments amongst the crowd, as specific as a woman whose name began with ‘C’ who had received a cancer diagnosis in April of 2023.
Adams also alleged that he could sense someone in the first four rows with a “scratched retina of the left eye,” as well as a woman “near the third pillar” with a “clicking jaw”.
Those who responded to Adams were typically seated in a different area of the church than described or had symptoms which only vaguely aligned with his predictions.
During the prophesying, a young man stood up and, after a few words from Adams, claimed he had been healed and that his hip pain had disappeared. Encouraged by Pete Wynter, the Adidas-hoodie-wearing senior pastor of St Paul’s, Adams led those gathered in prayer, with many worshippers shaking, crying out and convulsing as the sermon reached its climax.
During the service, I spoke to Sam, a friendly young professional who invited me to sit with him in the third row from the front. Sam, who had an irreligious upbringing, came to the church around a year ago after a period of feeling “very angry” with the world, something that changed when the Lord ‘spoke’ to him.
When I asked him if he really believed in faith healing, he claimed to have been “miraculously” healed of multiple injuries in church. He also told me of a friend whose leg had “extended 3cm” after a lifetime of hip issues and leg length discrepancy; “it looks pretty real to me; I’ve seen it!”
As many young adults move to London to find work, places like St Paul’s promise a ready-made friendship group of 20-somethings with happy faces and chic outfits, as well as the opportunity for real religious purpose.
And in London, it’s not just the ‘happy clappy’ churches that are resonating with Gen Z but also the more sombre ‘bells and smells’ sermons on the Anglo-Catholic side of the Church of England.
Writer and Oxfordshire-based Vicar Fergus Butler-Gallie says there were “hundreds and hundreds of people in their twenties” at St Bartholomew the Great in the City of London (famously featured in Four Weddings and a Funeral), and ushers were even “turning people away” from St Giles in the Fields in Camden.
As I stood among the swaying worshippers at St Paul’s – all smiling, arms aloft, eyes closed – it didn’t feel like the Church of England was in crisis.
No-one seemed to worry that their leader had resigned and was yet to be replaced, or that fewer and fewer young people nationwide are attending church.
If you saw a video of this zealous little corner of West London on Instagram, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Anglicanism has a bright future.
Featured image courtesy of Emily Beaney via Instagram