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Church and Cult in Canada
Abstract
This article uses a variety of Canadian data to examine the relationship between secularization and the rise of cults. Many social scientists believe that trends of demystification occurring in major traditional denominations will lead to the near extinction of religion in general. However, we have argued in previous theoretical and empirical work that loss of influence by traditional religious organizations prompts religious innovation and the emergence of new cults. Here we develop statistics on cult activity in Canadian cities and provinces, using such measures as listings in telephone books and in the "Spiritual Community Guide," subscribers and writers of letters to "Fate" magazine, and membership in Christian Science. Our theory receives strong support from significant geographic correlations between these cult measures and weakness of conventional denominations as indicated by the proportion professing no religious affiliation in the 1971 census of Canada. /// Cet article se sert d'une variété de données canadiennes pour examiner la relation qui existe entre la sécularisation et la montée des cultes. Beaucoup de sociologues croient que les courants de démystification qui traversent les dénominations majeures traditionnelles conduiront presque à l'extinction de la religion en général. Cependant nous avions avancé dans un travail précédent d'ordre théorique et empirique que la perte d'influence subie par les organisations religieuses traditionnelles mène à l'innovation religieuse et à l'apparition de nouveaux cultes. Nous présentons dans ce papier des statistiques sur l'activité des cultes dans les villes et les provinces canadiennes en utilisant des moyens de mesure tels que les listes paraissant dans les bottins téléphoniques et dans le "Spiritual Community Guide," les souscripteurs et correspondants du magazine "Fate," et abonnement à Christian Science. Notre théorie reçoit un support important en considérant les corrélations géographiques révélatrices entre ces mesures relatives aux cultes et la faiblesses des dénominations conventionnelles telles que confirmées par la proportion de gens qui ne professent aucune affiliation religieuse lors du recensement canadien de 1971.
... In their Canadian analysis, Stark and Bainbridge (1982) found correlations between cult activity and the weakness of conventional denominations. They probed cult activity using the presence of groups, Fate letter writers, and Chrisitan Science membership. ...
... According to their U.S. findings, such "Nones" perhaps are "the most easily available [category] for conversion to a cult movement" (47). The two researchers concluded that they had found "powerful evidence that cults abound where the churches are weak," and support for their theory that "the decline of traditional religious organizations.., prompts religious innovation in the form of cult activity" (Bainbridge and Stark, 1982:362, 364). It is true that they have documented a cult concentration-weak conventional religion relationship. ...
Stark and Bainbridge have asserted that because of the unique ability of religion to address ultimate questions, secularization stimulates religious innovation. The decline of some religions is associated with the rise of new ones, precisely because the market becomes more open. Stark and Bainbridge have used North American and European data to show that cult activity is in fact most concentrated where conventional participation appears to be weakest. The authors examine three key assumptions of Stark and Bainbridge pertaining to (1) the human need for supernaturally-based answers, (2) the necessity of religion providing those answers, and (3) cult concentration representing inevitable numerical growth. It is argued that these assumptions are precarious, and that the available data suggest not a perpetual religion market but a durable a-science market, produced by the inclination of societies to legitimize the co-existence of non-naturalistic as well as naturalistic explanations. Recent national Canadian cross-sectional and longitudinal data are used to show that cult concentration represents only a necessary condition for the recruitment of the non-religious. While considerable switching to "something" has characterized both Canadians with "no affiliation" parents and those who themselves at some stage were "none," the switching has typically been in the direction of nominal Christianity rather than cult participation. These findings support earlier national data which indicate that an increasing proportion of people-now a slight majority-are rejecting religious meaning systems, old and new, in favour of a-scientific fragments. The authors conclude with a discussion of factors which have contributed to such a preference in Canada and other highly industrialized societies.
... This sub-sample made it possible to explore the possibility that the growth patterns of these newer congregations might differ from the earlier, somewhat more "routinized" evangelical churches. In 1971In , 1982 we met with church personnel and went over the church list additions, name by name. New arrivals were classified as coming into the churches through one of three pathways:(1) reaffiliation, where the individual was regarded by the church as a Christian upon arrival (e.g., transfers); (2) birth, where the new member had at least one evangelical parent or guardian prior to age ten; and (3) proselytism, where the person did not fit into either of the first two categories and in effect came from outside the evangelical community. ...
This article will consider missionary work performed in Manitoba and Eastern Canada, and how The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints progressed toward integration into Canadian society as another established minority religion searching for potential new members. By navigating through their Canadian settings, Latter-day Saint missionaries adjusted themselves and their Church to local expectations and environments, and constructed a new home for Mormonism in Canada. Three ways that Latter-day Saint missionaries negotiated their place in Canada include evolving relationships with the Canadian public through missionary encounters, renting meeting spaces from fraternal organizations and then constructing their own meetinghouses, and organizing local, auxiliary organizations that aided non-members. The Canadian context, the Latter-day Saint missionary experience, and the growth of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Canada, reveals a process of negotiation. There exists a tension between integration and otherness. Latter-day Saints balanced this tension by on some levels maintaining their distinctiveness, while at the same time blending into Canadian expectations. How the Latter-day Saint missionaries responded to these barriers, the challenges related to communicating with the Canadian public, finding spaces to congregate, local leadership roles, and participating in different aspects of Canadian society, tells a story of a new religion integrating into a new environment.
Social scientists typically are trained to prefer a single methodology, hence they commonly identify themselves as experimentalists, survey researchers, participant observers, or demographers and they predicate their research on the basis of their methodological commitments. It is common to hear them wonder what they should do a survey on next, what experiment they could do, or what social scene they might observe.
Social scientists typically are trained to prefer a single methodology, hence they commonly identify themselves as experimentalists, survey researchers, participant observers, or demographers and they predicate their research on the basis of their methodological commitments. It is common to hear them wonder what they should do a survey on next, what experiment they could do, or what social scene they might observe.
En contexte canadien, un type de données a été sous-employé dans l'étude des tendances religieuses contemporaines: les données ecclésiales. Cet article détaille les avantages et les limites de telles statistiques en analysant l’évolution de certains indicateurs clés de l’Église Unie du Canada au cours des quatre dernières décennies. Des données de membership, de baptêmes d'enfants et de funérailles se retrouvent à l’étude. Celles-ci sont comparées avec des données démographiques provenant de quatre régions canadiennes. Les résultats indiquent que presque toutes les statistiques de l’Église Unie sont en déclin par rapport à la société en général depuis les années 1970. Toutefois, il existe des variations régionales, notamment dans les provinces de l’Atlantique qui sont caractérisées par des déclins moins importants et plus tardifs.
In the Canadian context, one type of data has been underutilized in the study of contemporary religious trends: church collected statistics. The present article explores the advantages and limitations of such data by analyzing the evolution of key church indicators of the United Church of Canada over the past four decades. Figures regarding church membership, child baptisms, and funerals are examined and compared with demographic data from four Canadian regions. Results show that virtually all United Church statistics are in decline with regard to larger society since the 1970s. However, there are regional variations, most notably in the Atlantic provinces, which show later and lesser rates of decline.
l'attrait des sectes religieuses non-chrétiennes est-il inversement proportionnel à la religiosité de la population? Stark et Bainbridge ont montré qu'une telle relation existe, tant aux Etats-Unis qu'au Canada. Leurs sources de données canadiennes (listes d'abonnements et d'auteurs de lettres aux revues de sectes, listes de chapelles colligées à partir de botins de sectes et téléphoniques) étaient peu conventionnelles, et avaient donc les défauts de leurs qualités. Le présent article met à contribution une source plus conventionnelle, le recensement canadien de 1981, et confirme l'existence d'une forte relation entre irréligiosité et attrait des sectes religieuses non-chrétiennes. Au Canada et aux Etats-Unis, l'affiliation aux Eglises chrétiennes est prédominante à l'est, alors que l'on trouve le plus souvent des personnes sans affiliation religieuse sur la côte ouest et dans les régions près des Rocheuses.
In a 1982 article and in a subsequent book, Stark and Bainbridge established that in Canada cult receptivity is positively correlated with regions of irreligion and inversely correlated with areas of more traditional religious commitment. This analysis was based on a number of rather circuitous empirical indicators and for the most part, ignored available census data on cults. The present article looks at the same question raised by Stark and Bainbridge using Canadian census data and confirms their finding. It goes beyond their work by looking at whether sects and cults in Canada are directly or indirectly correlated with each other.
For at least the past ninety years, some social critics have charged that religion imprisons women in traditional sex roles and denies them access to high-status occupations. This article uses census data from the United States in 1930 and 1970, and from Canada in 1961, to explore this question, focusing especially on the professions of banker, lawyer, physician, and industrial manager. The critique of religion was not supported by American data, while the Canadian data did give strong support. After considering subsidiary hypotheses, we concluded that the influence of religion on occupational sex roles varies greatly, dependent upon the secular forces channeled through religion and on the form and direction which religious organization takes.
Au moyen d'une comparaison entre les Etats-Unis et le Canada, cet article veut illustrer la valeur de la recherche comparative entre nations. Les nombreux états, colonies et commonwealths des deux Amériques offrent un laboratoire précieux pour la recherche comparative. Une question intriguante se pose au sociologue: quels sont les facteurs qui maintiennent les légères différences entre deux nations ausi semblables que les Etats-Unis et le Canada anglais? On compare le Canada et les Etats-Unis selon les quatre pattern variables: exécution-qualité, universalisme-particularisme, orientation personnelle-orientation collective, et égalitarisme-élitisme. On conclut à une orientation des valeurs centrales aux Etats-Unis se rapprochant plutôt du modèle d'exécution-univer-salisme-égalitarisme-orientation personnelle. On relie l'orientation différente des valeurs au Canada anglais à un passê contre-révolutionnaire, à un besoin de se différencier des Etats-Unis, à l'influence d'institutions monarchiques, à une tradition anglicane dominante, à une colonisation plus dirigée et moins individualiste. Quelques aspects de la vie sociale qui distinguent les deux pays sont rattachés à ces différences dans les valeurs centrales, par example le melting-pot aux Etats-Unis et la mosaîque des ethnies au Canada. On discute des problèmes d'une identityé canadienne qui consiste en une réaction contre les Etats-Unis et ses valeurs. Depuis quelques décennias, on en est venu au Canada ainsi qu'ailleurs à considérer les Etats-Unis comme pays conservateur, ce qui pourrait entraîner les Canadiens à se définir autrement.
The International Psychic Register
- Mcquaid
- Donald
McQuaid, Donald A. 1979 The International Psychic Register. Erie, Pennsylvania: Ornion Press.
Toronto: The United Church Publishing House. Porter, John 1965 The Vertical Mosaic Silcox, Claris Edwin 1933 Church Union in Canada New York: Institute of Social and Religious ResearchMust all religions be supernatural?" In The Social Impact of New Religious Movements
- Edmund Henry Oliver
Oliver, Edmund Henry 1930 The Winning of the Frontier. Toronto: The United Church Publishing House. Porter, John 1965 The Vertical Mosaic. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Silcox, Claris Edwin 1933 Church Union in Canada. New York: Institute of Social and Religious Research. Singh, Parmatma (Howard Weiss) 1974 Spiritual Community Guide, 1975-76. San Rafael, California: Spiritual Community Publications. 1978 Spiritual Community Guide, 1979. San Rafael, California: Spiritual Community Publications. Stark, Rodney 1981 "Must all religions be supernatural?" In The Social Impact of New Religious Movements, edited by Bryan Wilson, pp. 159-177. New York: Rose of Sharon Press.
Networks of faith: interpersonal bonds and recruitment to cults and sectsSecularization, revival, and cult formationTowards a theory of religion: religious commitmentSecularization and cult formation in the jazz ageCult membership in the roaring twenties: assessing local receptivity
- Stark
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Stark, Rodney and William Sims Bainbridge 1979 "Of churches, sects and cults: preliminary concepts for a theory of religious movements." Journalfor the Scientific Study of Religion 18:117-131. 1980a "Networks of faith: interpersonal bonds and recruitment to cults and sects." American Journal of Sociology 85:1376-1395. 1980b "Secularization, revival, and cult formation." The Annual Review of the Social Sciences of Religion 4:. 1980c "Towards a theory of religion: religious commitment." Journalfor the Scientific Study of Religion 19:114-128. 1981 "Secularization and cult formation in the jazz age." Journalfor the Scientific Study of Religion 20:360-373. n.d. The Future of Religion. (forthcoming) Stark, Rodney, William Sims Bainbridge and Lori Kent 1981 "Cult membership in the roaring twenties: assessing local receptivity," Sociological An-alysis42:137-161. Statistics Canada 1974 1971 Census of Canada. Ottawa: Queen's Printer.
The heathen Canadians
- J E Veevers
- D F Cousineau
Veevers, J.E. and D.F. Cousineau 1980 "The heathen Canadians," Pacific Sociological Review.