History lesson
Those born in the 1950s changed our churches
Not enough babies. That’s what population expert Enid Charles concluded in her report on the 1941 national census. Population growth was stalling.
But by the time Charles’ report was published in 1948, it was already clear her prediction was wrong. Something momentous had begun – the Baby Boom.
The end of the Second World War in 1945 and the return home of Canada’s soldiers kickstarted a surge in the birth rate that lasted into the 1960s.
From the Boom came the Boomers – the largest, safest, healthiest, most prosperous, most educated generation up to that point in Canadian history. (Most Western societies experienced their own baby booms in this period.)
In his absorbing book Born at the Right Time: A History of the Baby Boom Generation (University of Toronto Press, 1996), historian Doug Owram dates the Baby Boom in Canada from 1946 to 1962. Because those born in these years had very different lives than their parents and grandparents, but many shared experiences as a group, their emergence marks a turning point in Canadian history.
The previous two or three generations had lived through danger and hardship – two world wars, the Great Depression, the totalitarian menace of fascism and communism.
The Boomers, though, spent their childhood and teen years in the most prosperous era Canada had ever experienced. Between 1945 and 1973 Canada enjoyed almost uninterrupted economic growth, low unemployment and a doubling of the living standard allowing many families to purchase suburban homes, cars, appliances and televisions. It was an era of relative peace and security.
It was also an era of institutions – unlike their parents’ generation, the majority of Boomers were born in hospitals and attended high school. They were about four times as likely to attend university.
Although there are always exceptions when describing a whole generation, in general these experiences gave the Boomers a new set of values and made them a force for change, especially in their teen and young adult years.
Where their parents and grandparents had been cautious, Boomers were optimistic and open. Instead of conformity and tradition, Boomers were drawn to self-expression, progress and experimentation. Rather than duty, hierarchy and authority, they prized authenticity, equality and shared decision making.
The Boomers’ sheer numbers, new values, and affluence made them what Owram calls a shock wave that transformed every aspect of society in turn as they passed through the stages of life, remaking notions of child-rearing, education, what it means to be a teenager – and today, writing a new playbook for aging and retirement.
Inevitably, the Boomers also transformed Canadian religion.
Their parents took them to mainline churches in large numbers, leading to a frantic building boom of United, Anglican, Presbyterian and Catholic churches in all those new suburbs. But as they reached their teen years, Boomers’ indifference to traditional expectations and desire to find their own path took them out of those churches in droves.
They also tended not to impose church attendance on their own kids, making Boomers the last generation in Canadian history of which the majority attended church regularly as children. This exodus of Boomers hollowed out the mainline churches and helped secularize Canadian society.
Evangelicalism was not as deeply affected because evangelical Boomers tended to be raised in homes and churches oriented more strongly to traditional values.
But the Boomers reshaped Canadian evangelicalism too, at least partially. As they moved into positions of church leadership from the 1980s onward, Boomer Evangelicals put the accent on positivity, authenticity, self-expression and openness.
The pivot in the centre of gravity of evangelical worship from traditional hymns to contemporary worship songs (roughly 1985– 2005) was also a shift toward Boomer musical tastes and these Boomer values.
The increasing evangelical focus on teens and young adults, not only as the future of the Church, but as the innovative leading edge of the Church today, was a characteristically Boomer idea.
Perhaps the shift from expository Bible preaching in favour of topical, application-focused sermons owed something to the Boomers too.
Whether you see mostly gains or losses in that legacy – and undoubtedly there are some of both – there is no denying the Boomers have shaped Canadian religion as they have shaped Canada as a whole.
Boomers’ indifference to traditional expectations and desire to find their own path took them out of those churches in droves.