Exploring Canadians’ evolving faith
Fewer people in the pews, but many worship
Beneath Canadians' widespread abandonment of places of worship and their negative view of even the word “religion,” a new poll has found a solid core of faith that continues to shape the country.
The survey conducted by the Angus Reid Institute in partnership with Faith in Canada 150 grouped respondents into four categories according to their answers on a range of questions gauging their beliefs and religious practices.
“We have a society that has a secular government and there is a general assumption of faith being very private,” said Ray Pennings, executive vice-president of think tank Cardus. “On the other hand, when you actually take a look at everyday society, the majority of people are people of faith to one degree or another, and faith informs and influences many of the ways we deal with each other on a day-to-day basis.”
The poll classifies 21 per cent of Canadians as religiously committed, meaning they hold a strong belief in God or a higher power and regularly attend religious services. At the other end of the spectrum, 19 per cent of Canadians are pure non-believers.
It is the swath in between, equally divided between what the pollster terms “privately faithful” and “spiritually uncertain,” that offers the greatest insight into Canadians' beliefs and practices.
The privately faithful, 30 per cent of respondents, “are people who actually believe in God, believe in heaven, believe in an afterlife,” said Angus Reid, the institute's founder and chairman. “They have largely not been involved in organized religion. They will go to funerals and weddings and that sort of thing, but their faith is largely a private matter, and it's really driven by their prayer. They pray on a regular basis.”
The spiritually uncertain, also representing 30 per cent, “seem to be a bit confused about where they want to be,” Reid said. “On some issues they kind of side with the non-believers, but they haven't given up totally on everything.
“They ... believe that there's a God, but they're uncertain about the role of God.”
The poll is part of a multifaith effort initiated by Cardus called Faith in Canada 150, which aims to highlight the role religion has played historically and continues to play in Canada. The initiative, which has a budget of roughly $1-million, was denied federal funding as part of official 150th anniversary celebrations.
Results of the online poll offer reason for organized religions to be concerned. “The word 'religion' itself has become a little bit of a fourletter word,” Reid noted.
When given a series of words and asked whether they had a positive or negative meaning, only 25 per cent of respondents said religion was positive, while 33 per cent called it negative. The words “forgiveness,” “morality” and “mercy” received the highest positive scores, while “evangelism” and “theology” were the lowest.
“Some of the discomfort about some of the language does pose a challenge to faith leaders that perhaps they have not been as effective as they should at explaining themselves to their fellow citizens,” Pennings said.
The poll found significant variations across Canada's regions. In the Prairie provinces, roughly 30 per cent of respondents were classified as religiously committed, compared with just 14 per cent in Quebec and 19 per cent in British Columbia. Reid said B.C. is “in many respects the most godless part of Canada,” with 27 per cent of its people falling into the non-believer category.
Quebecers, while not committed enough to attend church, have not completely severed their deep religious roots. Only 18 per cent are non-believers while 36 per cent are spiritually uncertain and 32 per cent are privately faithful.
“It's not that Quebecers have totally given up on God,” Reid said. “They have given up on religion.”
Across Canada, immigrants and visible minorities are much more likely to be religiously committed. Visible minorities made up 16 per cent of the sample group but accounted for 29 per cent of all religiously committed respondents.
“The march toward secu- larism that has dominated Canadian society for the last couple of decades appears to be in a bit of a reversal and will be reversed over time if these trends continue, because clearly population growth is coming from immigration,” Reid said.
Pennings said it would be a mistake to think that just because church pews have emptied, religion can be ignored.
“We've conditioned ourselves to think that faith is extremely private and personal and not something to be talked about in polite company,” he said.
“The reality is we do that at our peril. Faith shapes how we relate to each other, and if we're going to prosper as a society in the future we need to understand each other in a context of increasing faith diversity.”