Earlier this week, 24-year-old Londoner Lou was chatting on a dating app, when the subject of her religion came up in conversation. The man she was talking to, she says, got “really confused. He was like, ‘So you’ll only date a Christian… isn’t that really restrictive?’” Her response? “I think it’s actually liberating not to think that I’ve got endless amounts of choice, that actually, I have a specific idea of who I want to spend time with. It’s not because I think someone who’s not a Christian is any worse [than me], it’s more because he just fundamentally will have things in common with me. But he found that really weird.”
From Monday to Friday, Lou works with influencers in the world of social media; on Sunday evenings, she heads to a weekly service at her “huge” church in the capital. The session is for worshippers in their twenties and thirties and is usually attended by about 350 people; it is just one of five Sunday services hosted by her church, which has a total congregation of around 1,000. Her faith impacts all aspects of her life, shaping how she tackles office politics and providing her with consolation when dealing with bereavement. Twenty-nine-year-old photographer Susannah Alltimes, meanwhile, says Christianity gives her “hope, peace and purpose”. She goes to church twice a week, and describes it as a community “filled with very gifted creative people”; her calendar gets filled with “weekly Bible studies, prayer dinners, worship nights with other local churches”, as well as social gatherings with church friends, like “going to our church brewery for quiz night [or] celebrating friends’ book launches”.
