In this talk from the CBC Revive 2026 Conference in London, Gareth Russell, founder of communications agency Jersey Road, shares the findings of a major year-long study into how Christianity is covered in the UK news media, and what churches and Christian organisations can do to shape that story for the better.
Is the media narrative around Christianity really as bleak as it feels, or are we missing where the real opportunities lie? Drawing on the analysis of over 5,000 news stories, Gareth reveals where coverage of Christianity is genuinely improving, why traditional media still matters more than ever in the age of AI, and how a shift is already under way on the ground, even when the official statistics haven’t caught up.
In this talk you’ll discover:
- Why personal faith stories are some of the most powerful tools Christians have for shaping public perception
- How celebrities speaking openly about their faith are changing the conversation among younger people
- Why the Church of England remains under such heavy media scrutiny, and what that means for the wider Church
- The difference between managing a reputation and stewarding one, and why that distinction matters in a crisis
- Practical advice on choosing spokespeople, building relationships with journalists and knowing which publications are worth pitching to
Whether you work in broadcasting, church communications, journalism or simply want to see Christianity represented more fairly in the media, this talk offers a grounded and encouraging look at where the opportunities really are. Watch the video with Gareth Russell below or read the edited transcript.
Christianity in the News Media
Gareth Russell, CBC Revive 2026
Well, everyone loves to follow John Lennox. I think the schedule says something about managing your expectations, and yeah, it’s just me. My name is Gareth Russell. Some of you know me. We’ve been around as a communications agency for 16 years, and some of you in the media, certainly in the early years, would have received annoying emails from me constantly asking whether you’d run this story or that one.
Thankfully, we now have a team who know what they’re doing, so they’re no longer pestered by me. We also have some clients in the room, which is great to see. We’re thrilled to be here today and to celebrate what CBC is doing.
Just to give you a sense of why we started Jersey Road. When my wife, Andi and I started the agency, we felt that the news, and particularly mainstream media coverage of Christianity, was misrepresenting our faith. We felt the narrative wasn’t representative and we wanted to change it, with better stories and good news stories. We wanted to help Christians become thought leaders on issues that matter to society. We wanted to help the Church and Christian organisations become world class at saying sorry when they had abused power or messed up, while making sure they weren’t a doormat when there was a malicious attack and they were not in the wrong. And we wanted to help those who had a platform to use that platform for the Kingdom.
That’s why we set up Jersey Road. We’ve been going for 16 years now and we’ve learned a lot along the way. We have a team of about 20 people spread across the country and we work mainly in the UK, the US and Australia. The question we wanted to ask when we did this research was how Christians, and the Church we belong to, are represented in the news media.
I’m sure you’ve all got thoughts on this, and if you don’t, you’re probably in the wrong industry. We’ve been pitching these stories for 16 years, and we’ve had a sense that the narrative has been both narrow and stereotyped. Some of you may remember the APPG report from a few years ago, which concluded that the media are illiterate when it comes to religion and present stereotypes rather than people’s lived reality.
We wanted to try to redress that balance, so we did a deep dive into what mainstream news coverage of Christianity looked like over a year, to see if it could give us ideas about how to influence the narrative. You might ask, in an age of AI, influencers and social media, does traditional media actually matter any more? The answer is yes, and not just because I’m talking to you. Traditional media are now seen as a primary source of valid and valuable information by the large language models that shape the information people see online. News is one of the key channels. Some studies say 62 per cent, others say 78 per cent, of the content produced by large language models comes through earned media. If anything, earned media is becoming more important, not less.
As a communications agency, we subscribe to an industry standard media monitoring tool, which is incredibly expensive and incredibly unpredictable. We used it to analyse 5,200 pieces of online news coverage relating to Christianity between December 2023 and November 2024, focusing on the top 100 stories each week by number of impressions.
Our researcher then reviewed those stories to identify the key themes and sentiment. The top themes were personal faith, the Catholic Church, the Church of England, politics, leadership, public figures, culture wars, America and, lastly, abuse.
The majority of stories were neutral in how they portrayed Christianity. Anyone who has used a media monitoring system will know its sentiment analysis isn’t reliable, so we manually reviewed the sentiment rather than relying on the tool. Sometimes it would simply classify a story about Trump as negative because he featured in it, rather than because the portrayal of Christianity was actually negative, so we assessed each one by hand. 45per cent of stories were neutral, a third were negative and just over 20 per cent were positive. So there is work to do to change perceptions.
But we also found where the opportunities are. Faith is deeply human, and that came through clearly in the coverage. Individuals’ personal relationships with their Christian faith were the most common theme, with nearly a third of stories referring to the role faith had played in someone’s life, and those stories tracked more positively than negatively, 28 per cent positive against 21 per cent negative. Unsurprisingly, given the media’s interest in celebrity, more than a quarter of those stories referred to the faith of celebrities or public figures.
The Independent interviewed me a couple of months ago and wanted the story to be about whether Tommy Robinson was the reason Christianity is growing in the UK. The journalist asked if I thought young men were coming back to faith because of him. I said I think young men are coming back to faith because of Bukayo Saka, because of Jérémy Doku, because of Firmino. There are footballers, sportspeople and personalities talking confidently about their faith, and that is a narrative we are genuinely seeing, alongside young men coming back to church. We know the Bible Society Quietr Revival methodology wasn’t right, but things are definitely changing on the ground.
Let me give you a quick example. A few years ago we ran a story based on a study we did with ComRes, which found that young people were praying more than older people. Harry Farley ran it at the BBC and got a huge amount of pushback, much of it from Christians saying that wasn’t happening in their church so it couldn’t be right. The CEO of Savanta ComRes confirmed the methodology was sound, and a year later the Church of England did essentially the same study and found the same thing.
The trouble was, people weren’t seeing it on the ground. When The Quiet Revival Report came out, I saw a difference. Its methodology wasn’t right, but it was still describing something people were experiencing. In our church in Milton Keynes, a man came in last week and said he’d bought a Bible and didn’t know what to do next. That’s happening on a weekly basis. The story is shifting, even where the research behind it wasn’t perfect, and I think that’s partly because celebrities have become much more open about their faith. Stormzy talks about his faith in such a natural way. RAYE does too. The way they talk about Jesus is engaging younger people.
There’s also been a trend of celebrities being happy to speak about how their faith sustains them through troubles and drives their success, and Christians outside the celebrity spotlight have had opportunities to share their stories too, particularly when they have something remarkable to tell. Wrestling, oddly enough, has been a recurring theme. The Daily Mail covered St Peter’s Church in Shipley hosting Kingdom Wrestling, a Christian professional wrestling charity that combines its shows with worship, while the BBC and ITV featured former wrestler Steven Horne, who was ordained as a deacon in the Diocese of Canterbury.
The second point is that the Church of England is very much in the spotlight. Despite the changing face of the UK Church, media coverage focused predominantly on traditional institutions, the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England, rather than newer denominations and streams. The Church of England was mentioned in more than 15 per cent of stories about Christianity, but there wasn’t much good news in them, and there were more than twice as many negative stories about it as positive ones.
Part of this is a systemic issue, because newer streams of church such as Newfrontiers, the Redeemed Christian Church of God and Vineyard, where a lot of the growth is happening, aren’t included in the official attendance figures held by government. That goes back to the religious literacy issue we talked about earlier. There’s also an expectation of moral leadership placed on the established Church. Christian leaders are regularly given a media platform, and heavily scrutinised, because of their position as moral and spiritual leaders, particularly in the Church of England given its role as the established Church and the presence of bishops in the House of Lords. Of 571 one stories referring to Christians in leadership, 40 per cent involved Church of England leaders, many relating to political and social issues such as asylum, abortion and assisted dying.
It will probably come as no surprise that another key theme in negative coverage during 2024 was abuse. We found just under 420 stories about Christianity and abuse in that period, which was actually fewer than the number of stories about personal faith, politics, leadership or public figures. So while abuse can feel like the main media narrative about the Church, it wasn’t that year, and I don’t think it will be this year either. It probably feels that way because the content of those stories is often devastating.
Christian leaders do get an easier time of it at Christmas and Easter, when the media often want good news stories. Just this last Christmas we managed to secure the Salvation Army on the front page of the Daily Mirror, simply talking about the great work they do, and it was the main headline just before the break. The media often invite clergy and faith leaders to contribute thought leadership pieces at that time of year, and we see that as a huge evangelistic opportunity.
Stories about the Church and community engagement were also much more likely to be positive. We found 390 examples of churches making a difference in their communities, helping homeless people, combating poverty and giving shelter to disaster victims. Of those, 187 were positive and only 38 were negative. National and regional media generally won’t cover stories about the Church doing good things unless there is something new or different about them, but when there is, they show up.
We often tell our clients that the media are not the enemy. Wherever the UK is right now, post-Christian or pre-Christian, the media are our greatest opportunity to speak to people outside the Church. A Barna study a couple of years ago found the UK was into a second generation of families who had never been to church, which means no matter how good your Sunday service is, they simply aren’t there. So how do we reach them? That is changing, which is genuinely exciting.
So what do we do with this picture? Every one of these narratives reflects the news values that outlets apply when deciding what to cover. Is it new, is it relevant, is it unexpected, is it shocking or controversial, does it trigger an emotional response? One of my media colleagues judges it on whether someone would see the story and tell their friends about it in the pub. When the Eternal Wall first received planning permission for land outside Birmingham, the Sunday Times ran a double page spread simply because they didn’t know how to categorise it, one million bricks linked to smartphones so people could read prayers, set to become one of the biggest landmarks in the UK. It generated 360 pieces of coverage across the country.
If we want to change stereotypes about the Church and contribute to a more representative media portrayal, we need to understand the rules of engagement. The first thing is to embrace the power of personal faith stories. This isn’t just a media thing or a Christian thing, it’s a human thing. We have powerful stories of redemption, emotion, surprise, humour and quirkiness, all of which add news value, and local media in particular offer churches a real opportunity to speak to their communities.
The second thing is to be aware of the risks of public representation. Media engagement offers visibility, but it carries reputational risk too, so it’s important to be wise and thoughtful even when a story seems positive. Spokespeople matter, so take time to prepare them properly, and if you’re partnering with a public figure or influencer, be careful about who you choose and look closely at how they’ve positioned themselves before. Be selective about which media you speak to as well. Some publications have a track record of negative coverage of Christianity and won’t suddenly warm to you because you have a good story. And if you do face a crisis, remember the crisis itself isn’t the problem, it’s how you handle it. We’ve seen clients come through crises with their brand equity actually improved, but that only happens with planning beforehand rather than scrambling once it hits.
The third thing is don’t squander the opportunities you have. Whether it’s a Christmas message or a political or social issue, find spokespeople who can step into the role the media give them as moral leaders. Many leaders in this room have extra moral authority because they’re embedded in their communities and support the most vulnerable, and people care about that far more than the label attached to it. Christians Against Poverty has “Christians” in its name, and that’s never been a barrier because the organisation is doing great work. So be proactive. Talk about the difference you’re making. The more people affected by an issue, the higher its news value, and we’ve found the Mirror, the BBC and the Guardian particularly open to uplifting stories of social change, so it’s worth identifying the right publications to build relationships with.
And then help the media combat the stereotypes. I think it’s our job to represent the Church in the UK properly, and to think about what we’re doing to challenge the idea that we’re old, homophobic, defined by what we’re against rather than what we’re for, predominantly white, irrelevant and dying. I get frustrated with journalists who carry the title religious affairs correspondent and only ever talk about old buildings, because the Church is so much more than that. What stories are we telling? Do our spokespeople reflect the diversity and energy actually in our churches, or are we inadvertently reinforcing the stereotype ourselves? New or unusual expressions of church life, like the wrestling story, often give churches a genuine chance to capture attention and reshape perceptions. O’Neil Dennis is a great example, someone who spoke into the industry so effectively that the Official Charts Company now categorises Christian music as its own distinct category, purely because of its popularity. That wouldn’t have happened otherwise, and there’s a real opportunity to build on it.
Let’s lead with transparency and integrity. I’ll finish with this. In our sector, the crisis related part of what we do is often called reputation management, and we’ve always been deeply uncomfortable with that label. We don’t think Christian organisations should be about protecting their brand, we think they should be about building trust, so we changed it to reputation governance, because reputation should be stewarded, not managed. That’s not for everyone. We had a prospective client, a church in the US, come to us with allegations they were facing. We asked when the investigation would start, and they said they weren’t planning one, and asked if we were saying we wouldn’t work with them unless they did. We said that’s exactly what we’re saying. We never heard from them again. But that’s how we can be an example, how we can be salt and light to institutions everywhere.
The media have been instrumental in exposing abuse and institutional failures in the Church. Some people call that a spiritual attack. I think it’s God cleaning house, wanting purity in his Church. There are times coverage is malicious, but there are also times when something was genuinely wrong and needed to be exposed. So let’s not be protectionist or defensive. Let’s be transparent in addressing abuse, acknowledge past failings sincerely, take concrete action to back up any public apology, and show a credible commitment to change. Reputation isn’t built in a crisis, it’s built through the ordinary, unglamorous work of the years before it, having a seat at the leadership table, asking hard questions, and sometimes being the person willing to say we need to think carefully about how we handle this.
As an agency, we’ve helped many churches and Christian organisations respond in a crisis, and more often than not those crises could have been prevented, simply by managing the risk earlier rather than waiting for it to arrive. As communicators, we all have a real opportunity to speak into the media narrative, to lead with transparency, to prioritise trust, and to understand the news cycle well enough to serve it better.
Thank you for doing great work, for telling great stories and for leading with integrity. We continue to pray for and support everything you’re doing. Thank you.
Click to find out more about Gareth Russell and Jersey Road in the CBC UK Directory. Also, read more about the CBC Revive 2026 conference.
