THE national media are failing to look beyond “traditional streams” of the Church and struggle to describe “contemporary” expressions of Christianity, a new report suggests.
There is “still a deep misunderstanding of contemporary expressions of faith and the value those within the Christian community can add to meaningful public discourse”, it says.
The report, Christianity in the Media 2025, published on Wednesday, was commissioned by Jersey Road, a communications agency that works with Christian organisations. During the 12 months from December 2023 to November 2024, it used the professional media-monitoring platform Agility PR Solutions to identify and collate online news articles from UK media specifically relating to Christianity. Each week, the 100 articles with the most impressions or potential views was chosen, and this produced a total of 5200 stories.
The Roman Catholic Church was the subject of 1247 articles and the Church of England 846. The Pentecostal Church was mentioned in fewer than one per cent of the stories. The statistician Dr Peter Brierley has estimated that Pentecostal attendance grew by more than one third between 1980 and 2015, while attendance more than halved in the Church of England.
Among the report’s recommendations is that national journalists should look beyond more established churches and “uncover new stories of people finding meaning and purpose in those settings”.
“Ironically, there does seem to be greater literacy around more ancient and traditional Christian practices, but how to describe more contemporary expressions appears to be more challenging. Finding a syntax to describe these would not only present the stories more accurately, but would also honour those for whom these practices are deeply intrinsic to their lives.”
Both the RC Church and the Church of England received about twice as many negative mentions as positive ones in the sample of articles studied. The report says that “politics and culture war issues were key sources of stories,” and that stories about Christianity and politics were “twice as likely to be negative than positive”.
In total, more than 20 per cent of the 5200 stories conveyed a positive impression of Christianity, a little more than 30 per cent were negative, and the remainder were “neutral”.
The most common theme across all 5200 articles was “personal faith” (1635). More than one quarter of these referred to the faith of public figures, and the report speaks of a “significant trend in celebrities being happy to speak publicly about their faith”.
Analysis concluded, however, that 350 of the stories under this theme were negative in tone. They included reports on “controversial Christians” such as Russell Brand and people recounting stories of “personal experiences of the damage the Christian faith has caused their lives”. In total, 420 stories mentioned abuse.
In 2023, Jersey Road was employed by Soul Survivor after allegations were made against Mike Pilavachi (News, 7 September 2023). The report published this week acknowledges that the media have been been “instrumental in exposing abuse and institutional failures within the Church”. It says that the Church must commit itself to “good governance, prioritising ethical leadership and robust safeguarding structures to prevent future scandals and abuse”. It should also “lead with transparency and prioritise building trust over protecting ‘the brand’”.
In an introduction to the report, the chief executive of Jersey Road, Gareth Russell, writes that the purpose of the research was not to demand that the media present an “unrealistic representation of the Christian faith in the UK.
“The conjecture (that has been found to be in most parts accurate) was that the full picture, the lived reality of Christians and the impact they are having in the UK, is often under-reported. Our hope is that going forward the media will continue to hold those who abuse power to account, but that they also celebrate and elevate the stories of those making a real difference and who are motivated by their faith.”
