Merlin Kraft did not set out to start a movement. He runs a social media channel called BibleLadUK, and he began posting videos of baptisms. People kept asking him the same question. "Can I be baptised like this?"
So he organised one. In June 2026, 28 people were baptised on a beach in Plymouth. He posted the footage, then put out a simple invitation online for another gathering at Bigbury-on-Sea in Devon. No tickets. No charge. No booking. Just come.
On the day, 170 people were baptised. They did not come from down the road. A young couple travelled by bus all the way from Leeds. Another person came alone from Ireland. Others journeyed close to 300 miles.
Kraft has stopped trying to explain it in ordinary terms. "I don't pretend to know exactly what is happening in Britain," he said, "but something definitely is." He describes a groundswell, a hunger for Jesus that he did not manufacture and cannot take credit for.
That is the part he keeps coming back to. He did not run a clever campaign or build a following for himself. "I put the invitation online," he said. "God did the rest. And all the glory belongs to Jesus."
One at a time, in the cold water off a Devon beach, 170 people went under and came up again. Not because of a marketing plan, but because Jesus is drawing people to himself, and across Britain more of them are saying yes.
