May 20, 2002
Surprise: Religion's gaining strength in Canada
___By Douglas Todd
___Religion News Service
___VANCOUVER, British Columbia (RNS)--Religion is on the rise in Canada.
___Indeed, the experts who predicted Canadian society inevitably would turn secular were wrong. Even the mainline Protestant and Catholic churches are undergoing revival.
___Those are some of the surprising discoveries Canada's leading religion pollster, Reginald Bibby, has unveiled in his new study, "Restless Gods: The Renaissance of Religion in Canada."
___The University of Lethbridge sociology professor's central thesis is that God is more alive than ever in the hearts and minds of Canadians--and if the country's religious groups play their cards intelligently, they're in for an era of renewal.
___Bibby, who has been polling religious trends in Canada for 25 years, found small religions such as Islam and Sikhism are growing steadily. As well, the country's evangelical Protestants have mushroomed to 2.5 million adherents in 2000, up from 1.1 million in 1950.
___Bibby's brightest news for organized religion in Canada, however, centers on how the country's large mainline Protestant and Roman Catholic denominations have finally stopped their 30-year decline and are either stabilizing or expanding again.
___The 58-year-old Albertan scholar and author of eight best-selling books says not long ago many Christians tagged him as "Bad News Bibby" because, even though he was sympathetic to their aspirations, his polls kept telling them their pews were emptying.
___On top of his grim prognosis, prominent sociologists of religion such as Americans Harvey Cox and Peter Berger had begun in the 1960s to follow Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud in predicting religion wouldn't survive the industrialization of society.
___Cox and Berger since have recanted. And Bibby has discovered, based on his latest 2000 poll of more than 3,500 Canadians, a significant rejuvenation of religion is taking place in Canada, both inside and outside the churches.
___Even teenagers are attending religious groups in larger numbers.
___"Secularization has been found to be a myth. The gods seem to be everywhere," said Bibby, who has conducted major national polls every five years since 1975.
___"Canadians not only are believing in God, but in startling high numbers they are talking to God and are convinced that they are experiencing God. Even the 'least religious' are giving off clues they believe in something beyond themselves."
___Of Canada's 30 million people, Bibby's data show self-professed mainline Protestants make up 19 percent of the population; evangelical Protestants comprise 8 percent; Roman Catholics outside Quebec come in at 23 percent; Catholics inside Quebec account for 19 percent; Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists together add up to 6 percent; and those with no religious affiliation account for 20 percent. The remainder refused to answer or were classified as other.
___One of Bibby's most crucial findings is that in the late 1990s the tide stopped going out for Canadian mainline Protestants and Roman Catholics, who continue to make up by far the largest religious groups in the country.
___After decades of decline, the portion of mainline Protestants who say they now attend church at least once a week has risen to 18 percent in 2000 from 16 percent in 1990.
___Weekly attendance among Anglicans has jumped 22 percent, and regular Lutheran attendance has gone up 16 percent, while United Church attendance has stayed about the same.
___"To paraphrase Mark Twain, rumors of the death of mainline Protestantism in Canada have been greatly exaggerated," Bibby said.
___While Roman Catholic attendance outside French-speaking Quebec has remained stable, the most negative finding on religious devotion comes in Quebec, where only 14 percent of the nominal Catholic population attended church weekly in 2000, compared to 26 percent in 1990 and an astounding 85 percent in the 1950s.
___Still, even in Quebec, Bibby sees signs of spiritual life in the fact most people in Quebec still identify with Catholicism and say they're ready to get more involved given the right circumstances.
___In Bibby's latest survey of the spiritual pulse of Canada, 81 percent of Canadians said they believe in God, 74 percent said they pray at least occasionally, and 75 percent said religious groups have a role to play in Canadian life. Although these rates of spiritual activity are somewhat lower than in the United States, Bibby said they're significant in Canada because they've either stayed the same or grown slightly in recent years.
___In addition, Bibby said his polls reveal Canada's large contingent of people who profess no religion--one out of five--is the most unstable of all the groups.
___"No religion" is a claim often made by young people who later switch to a faith, he says. "The category of religious 'nones' is more like a hotel than a home for most people."
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