Religion in Canada

[Glacier]

Note: This is NOT a thread about your personal opinion toward religion. Please discuss the topic in a neutral tone. Yes, I know I'm hopelessly naive!

I once half jokingly stated that Kelowna was one of the most godless places in Canada using religious affiliation, but in truth when we look at BC it has one of the highest numbers of people going to church. In another thread I made the observation that the three "Bible Belts" in BC were one of the few places that voted to keep the HST, but in reality a Bible Belt in BC is still less religious than a typical place east of Calgary.

This map is 10 years out of date, but gives you a give indication as to how many people actually go to church (temple, etc.). Kelowna, along with the Smithers/Vanderhoof and Lower Mainland areas, are the only place where more than 25% go to church in BC.

RelAttendance.png

If you are interested in exploring trends with the most recent census data included, you can check out this page. If you just want to see the cool graphs without clicking, here are two:

PF_13.06.27_CanadaRelLandscape-02.png

PF_13.06.27_CanadaRelLandscape-111.png

[cliffy1]

What is there but personal opinions? What any of us believes is the truth is only relative to the individual. Once those "truths" are articulated, they just become your opinion to the next person. So, where do you want to go with this "Religion in Canada" thread if personal opinions are not welcome?

[Thinktank]

You can't talk about religion in Canada without talking about money.
Without money there would be no religion. Donations to churches are tax deductible.
Every single moment of our lives - we need money. No matter how much money we have - we need more.
God and money go together. there are more scriptures in the bible about money than prayer. Actually
I'm not sure about that last statement.

Here's some info on a typical huge church in Canada: Evangel Tabernacle

Receipted donations $2,201,943 (64%)
Non-receipted donations $61,076 (2%)
Gifts from other charities $325,300 (9%)
Government funding $70,761 (2%)
All other revenue $785,551 (23%)
Total revenue: $3,444,631

http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/ebci/haip/srch ... eng.action

[Glacier]

What is there but personal opinions? What any of us believes is the truth is only relative to the individual. Once those "truths" are articulated, they just become your opinion to the next person. So, where do you want to go with this "Religion in Canada" thread if personal opinions are not welcome?

I was hoping to talk about religion from a neutral standpoint. As in how religion is changing or how it varies across the country. Opinions on those things are okay. What I do not want is another thread that goes down the road of "everyone who believes X is an idiot." Or "religion X is better than religion Y."

[Thinktank]

What's there to say about religion? It's all the same.

Some guy stands up at the front and says things he's not quite sure about to a bunch
of other people who don't really care what he said to them anyway.

It's all the same.

[cliffy1]

I was hoping to talk about religion from a neutral standpoint. As in how religion is changing or how it varies across the country. Opinions on those things are okay. What I do not want is another thread that goes down the road of "everyone who believes X is an idiot." Or "religion X is better than religion Y."

From what I see, it seems that religion is on the way out, maybe in a hundred years or so but ... this is where it gets difficult. Science to some degree has become a religion, with dogmas, adherents, followers... etc. Then there are those like Alliance churches and Pentecostals who say they are not a religion but a spiritual movement, despite the fact that they have all the trappings of a religion. So I think we are treading in very murky waters here unless we have a clear definition of what religion is.

[zookeeper]

I read an article this morning that states church attendance is actually on the increase in Canada, not from the Canadian born but from the immigrants coming here. Catholics, Protestants, Muslims and the faiths followed by East Indians are seeing a rise in attendance, the article stated that countries with lower immigration (Scotland, Presbyterian ) and a few others are decreasing .

[cliffy1]

I read an article this morning that states church attendance is actually on the increase in Canada, not from the Canadian born but from the immigrants coming here. Catholics, Protestants, Muslims and the faiths followed by East Indians are seeing a rise in attendance, the article stated that countries with lower immigration (Scotland, Presbyterian ) and a few others are decreasing .

Churches have been losing ground for decades. Must be a new trend.

[Glacier]

Churches have been losing ground for decades. Must be a new trend.

Something like 25% of Canadians weren't born in Canada, so immigrants are becoming increasing more important (statistically speaking). For sure it's a new trend. Church attendance went up from 1920 to 1965, then down from there until now.

[cliffy1]

So are Mosques and Sikh temples considered churches in these stats?

[Thinktank]

So in 1989 when I was going berzerk with another group of religious similar people to myself
two or three times a week, twice as many people in the Atlantic provinces and Quebec were also doing
the God-thing, as one of my goofy non-religious friends put it. And now only one in four people are willing
to put in the effort of church attendance and phony smiles and singing religious songs for the small financial gain they might get by doing business with other church people - and Quebec went absolutely non-religious with not much more than one in ten going to a church.

But all those statistics don't mean a thing. They're worthless. All it tells us is that in Quebec, a lot of Catholic churches must
have closed down in the last twenty five years. But I don't care how many people attend church. What I'm worried
about now is how many people can I trust, and it looks like you can totally trust about 2% of people. Proving
the bible is correct when it says the wide open road goes nowhere good.

[Glacier]

So are Mosques and Sikh temples considered churches in these stats?

Yes, I believe I was sloppy in language. By church I meant religious service of any kind, but Christianity is also benefitting from immigration. Here's another phenomenon that I've noticed in Canada. We know the old stereotypes of the secular city and religious rural, but today the opposite is true for the most part because new immigrants most to the big cities. Kelowna is the largest city in the BC interior, and has the largest "religious service" attendance. Vancouver and the Lower Mainland is also quite high by BC standards.

I've mentioned this before about how federal ridings with high numbers of non-religious folks tend to go conservative. The reason for this is that these areas are largely white blue collar types of places with mining, forestry, and farming being the mainstay industries.

PoliticalPartySupportBynonreligiosity.png

But since Quebec is mostly nominal Catholic, it makes more sense to exclude Quebec from the chart. Doing this gives the following result:

PoliticalPartySupportBynonreligiosity2.png

[OREZ]

So the map says, "monthly religious attendance" meaning we're definitely talking about organized religions and participation in their meetings. Right? Not people seeking spiritual truth, enlightenment, growth, what-have-you.

[Glacier]

So the map says, "monthly religious attendance" meaning we're definitely talking about organized religions and participation in their meetings. Right? Not people seeking spiritual truth, enlightenment, growth, what-have-you.

Yes, and that brings up a good point. Traditional religion has been in decline while individual spirituality has risen. I know that church attendance peaked in the mid 1960s at about 50% in the States and probably closer to 55% in Canada, but has since dropped significantly since then, especially in Canada. At the same time, people like my parents who came of age in the 1960s joined the New Age movement, which is sort of mix of native spirituality, eastern religions, and Christianity. They say it's a sort of "best of" type of thing.

So while "church attendance" doesn't tell us the whole picture it does tell us how many adherents are nominal as opposed to practicing, which in turn tells us what the next generation will likely look like religiously. It tells us nothing in terms of political direction.

On that note, here is an interesting article: Christians 'more likely to be leftwing' and have liberal views on immigration and equality

[OREZ]

Interesting, in the article it says that the research,

rubbishes the assumption that faith groups tend to be more conservative

It sure seems to me like this would actually be a new trend though. I'm pretty sure it used to be opposite with especially protestant church-goers being almost certain to be politically conservative. I wonder how much that's changed.