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Conservative Protestants and Religious Polarization in Canada
Abstract
Reginald Bibby has recently argued that polarization is the best way to describe the religious reality in Canada. There is, in his view, a stable religiously active pole, a shrinking nominally religious middle, and a growing non-religious pole. Others have documented a similar trend in other Western countries. This paper examines evidence for religious polarization in Canada using data from Bibby’s Project Canada Surveys and other sources, with special attention paid to a prominent subset of the religiously committed: conservative Protestants. Evidence of polarization is weak for Canada as a whole. Instead, the data trends are consistent with religious decline. Even the conservative Protestants are not growing, nor showing evidence of increased conservativism.
... A protracted trend of religious decline implies that the differences between the religious and the nonreligious should shrink overtime. Religious polarization, on the other hand, entails increasing cleavages between the actively religious and the nonreligious (Kaufmann et al. 2012;Reimer 2017;Stonawski et al. 2015;Wilkins-Laflamme 2016. Furthermore, with the growth and vibrancy of secular movements (Baker and Smith 2009), the unaffiliated cannot be treated as a monolithic group who adheres to the same worldview and lifestyle. ...
... Hence, stabilization in size, rather than a continuous growth, is also possible for the secular groups. The combination of these two factors will perhaps intensify the emerging polarization of the Canadian religious landscape (Bibby 2011;Reimer 2017;Wilkins-Laflamme 2014. The concept of religious polarization is one of the newest developments in the scientific study of religion in Western countries (Achterberg et al. 2009;Kaufmann et al. 2012;Ribberink et al. 2013;Wilkins-Laflamme 2014). ...
Using several cycles of the Canadian General Social Survey covering cohorts born from the early 1900s onwards, this paper examines how religiosity and secularity associate with fertility in Canada. The analysis shows that among multiple dimensions of religiosity, religious attendance is the strongest predictor of higher fertility in the country. For the latest cycle conducted in 2011, three mutually exclusive groups of secularized women are compared with the actively religious in their fertility behaviour and intentions. All these secularized women are found to have lower fertility rates compared with the actively religious. Among them, the strictly seculars, a proxy identifier for the atheists, have the lowest fertility and the highest likelihood of remaining childless. Various implications are discussed.
... The second (H2) is that secularization is instead shifting the whole distribution of religiosity without ever leading to bimodality. It could be that, with an increase in the amount of variance in religiosity that is characteristic of secularization, this change may be a matter of stretching the distribution toward the lower end, rather than people of intermediate religiosity moving toward both extremes (Reimer 2017). ...
We define two types of religious polarization and investigate the extent to which they are present across European countries, based on data from the 2008 to 2017 European Values Study and hierarchical linear modeling. The first type is polarization by religiosity, with declines in the middle ground between the actively religious and the nonreligious as secularization reaches an advanced stage. The second type is issue polarization, with the religious and secular taking different positions on a range of socio-political values, including social conservatism and ethnic nationalism. We find limited evidence of bimodality in the distribution of religiosity. We find more evidence, however, of issue polarization between the religious and secular in Europe, especially in social conservatism. Religious polarization should thus be understood as a multidimensional concept where one dimension may be more prevalent than others in society.
... 17 Previous studies identify that individual ideological extremism affects the level of affective polarization as citizens attribute more negative views on parties with whom they have ideological disagreements (e.g., Gidron, Adams, and Horne, 2020;Ward and Tavis, 2019). In addition, an individual's religiosity may affect the individual level of polarization because religious conflict is one of the major sources of affective polarization (e.g., Reimer, 2017). ...
Political protests increasingly play a critical role in shaping politics in democracies. What political consequences did the growing global protest cycle bring about within democratic countries with unrest? Drawing on social identity theory, I argue that protest events, which targeted specific parties or leaders, would serve as a focal event that enhances voters’ attachment to partisan identity. Targeted protests provide open information containing a specific political message about targeted candidates or parties to the public. Accordingly, exposure to protests may activate and reinforce pre-existing partisan identities and ultimately trigger affective polarization at the mass level. To examine this argument, I use cross-national survey data to test whether protests targeting ruling parties increased the level of mass polarization among 38 democracies between 1996 and 2021. The findings have implications for understanding the impact of protests on voting behavior and the process of polarization in democracies.
... The USA is the most religious industrialized country in the world by a large margin (Fahmy 2018), and findings addressing the USA may not be applicable to other countries. To this point, Canada is not well represented in the atheism-health literature, partially because it tends to be less religious than its American neighbour (Reimer 2017). However, religion still plays a substantive role in the lives of millions of Canadians, and it would be a mistake to equate "less religious than America" with "not consequentially religious". ...
An overlooked reason to study atheism and health is that it provides a reasonably strong test of the broader religion-health relationship. Using data from the 2011/2012 Canadian Community Health Survey (n > 8000) I explored the health differences between atheists and eight categories of religious identities (nonreligious, Anglican, Baptist, Christian, Protestant, Catholic, United Church, and All Others). Surprisingly, results showed no substantive differences between atheists and non-atheists for self-rated health, emotional well-being, and psychological well-being. In contrast, results showed substantive and consistent differences between atheists and non-atheists with respect to social well-being. Results appear to suggest that while religious groups report superior scores on health proxies relative to atheists, this does not translate into substantive health differences.
... This pattern is referred to as religious polarization (Wilkins-Laflamme 2014;Bruce 2016). In parallel, the social and attitudinal cleavages between the religious and the nonreligious is reportedly deepening (Hout and Fischer 2002;Putnam and Campbell 2012;Ribberink et al. 2013;Reimer 2017). For instance, using recent Canadian data, Wilkins-Laflamme (2016 finds rising cleavages in attitudes towards public religion between the growing segment of the unaffiliated and the more stable portion of the highly religious. ...
The present paper, using recent and nationally representative data from the Canadian General Social Surveys, is concerned with the association of religiosity with work-life balance satisfaction. The association of both private and public aspects of religiosity with work-life balance satisfaction is assessed. In addition, based on multiple questions on religion and spirituality, the sample is divided into six mutually exclusive categories of very religious, average religiosity, nominally affiliated, liminal, privately-spiritual, and strictly-secular. This typology, rooted in the recent religious scholarship, allows for a meaningful comparison across the growing and diverse segment of secularized individuals. The results point to a positive relationship between retaining ties with organized religion, as opposed to private spirituality or strict secularity, and work-life balance satisfaction. Various venues of explanation are explored.
... Wilkins-Laflamme (2014), using Canadian, British, and American data, report an emerging religious polarization in certain regions of all three countries. Most recent scholarship continues to debate the accuracy of the polarization characterization of the Canadian religious landscape (Reimer, 2017;Wilkins-Laflamme, 2017). In both the United States and Canada, the largest homosexuality-affirming church is the United Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches (UFMCC), initiated in 1968 (Warner, 1995;Lukenbill, 1998). ...
The cumulative weight of evidence supports that religious involvement has a positive association with subjective wellbeing. This association is found to vary by cultural context, gender, and age. No large scale study exists regarding the effects of sexual orientation on the association between religiosity and subjective wellbeing. This article, using nationally representative Canadian data from 2010 to 2014, fills this gap. As a prelude, the sexual orientation-related differences in religiosity, also not previously examined using Canadian data, are assessed. Both gay males and lesbians are found more likely to be unaffiliated than their heterosexual counterparts. The association of religiosity with subjective wellbeing is found to be positive, though small, for heterosexuals of both genders and for gay males. No statistically significant effect is found for lesbians. Various venues of explanation are explored.
At risk of oversimplification, the central global conflict today is not so much between East and West or between the West and the rest, but rather between a secularizing element and a fundamentalist element within each national or cultural or religious entity, the former abetted by globalization, the latter by the conservative reaction to it. At its most basic, the argument of this paper is that the energy of the secularists and the fundamentalist factions will be spent on wresting power from each other, while in the shadow of that conflict – as the wind shakes the trees – counter-cultural Christ-followers sacrificially serving will winsomely gather their fruit. It is a hopeful perspective, in anticipation of both increased shaking and increased harvest. This argument is set within the context of Ralph Winter's ten epochs of redemptive history.
Google Trends data on search volumes of high profile atheist public figures are used to assess their relative reach among different types of seculars in Canada. The user query data mined from Google Trends are complemented with an extensive set of information extracted from the Canadian General Social Surveys of 2005 to 2016. The analysis shows that the reach of high profile atheists is positively correlated with the presence of strictly-seculars, a proxy for the atheists. The investigation produces no statistically significant correlation between the presence of other types of seculars, namely the unchurched believers and the nominal affiliates, and the search volumes for high profile atheists. This exploratory finding suggests that the influential atheists likely “preach to the choir,” catering to like-minded individuals, at the exclusion of those with relatively close but differing views on religion and spirituality.
Numerous studies suggest that polarization best describes the religious landscape of a growing number of Western countries. While a consensus is gradually emerging regarding the definition of religious polarization, no quantitative measure has been proposed to capture the concept. The present research note proposes two indices for the concept of religious polarization so that its degree can be compared across populations and its evolution can be traced over time. The proposed approach is applied to the US data of 2008–2016 and the Canadian data of 2008–2015. The relative ranking of the degree of polarization emerging from the computation of these indices accords with the previous literature, which has relied on the interpretation of distinct trends. These applications demonstrate the aptness of these indices for measuring religious polarization, as defined in the recent religious scholarship.
With a decisive Liberal party electoral victory in 2015, observers are now wondering if religious conservatism's role in the Canadian political landscape is waning. Using data from the Canadian Election Study (CES) from the years 2004 to 2015, we find that respondents’ attitudes toward same-sex marriage and women working outside the home have moved left on the spectrum among both the general population and more religious voters. However, this does not go hand in hand with a decline in the effect strength of religiosity on the Conservative vote, which remains significant across the five federal elections examined in this study. Conservative religious voters now make up a smaller share of the adult population, but their issue positions on sexual morals and gender roles, along with the wider conservative value orientation these issues represent, remain important in their vote choice.
How do Canadian congregational and denominational leaders in Catholic, mainline, and conservative Protestant settings perceive and define what constitutes a flourishing congregation? Drawing on interview and focus group data with over one hundred leaders across Canada, we bring to description the perceptions, narratives, and experiences that church and denominational leaders hold about flourishing congregations. We highlight three central findings: (a) there is a divide between those who believe that flourishing entails numeric growth and those who do not; (b) depending on the Christian tradition in question, there are several partially overlapping and conflicting pictures of what constitutes a flourishing congregation, evident in three overarching domains and several subsequent dimensions—organizational ethos (clear self-identity, leadership, innovation, and structure and process), internal factors (discipleship, hospitable community, engaged laity, and diversity), and outward variables (evangelism, neighborhood involvement, and partnership); and (c) supernatural discourse figures into how leaders discuss flourishing congregations over and against secular or human-controlled narratives. We draw on cultural sociology, notably discussions on group boundaries (between Christian traditions, within Christian traditions, and between Christian and non-religious organizations), to describe and explain the similar and dissimilar cultural narratives that Catholic, mainline, and conservative Protestant leaders hold about flourishing congregations. We then encourage social scientists to pay greater attention to how leaders themselves perceive and define a flourishing congregation, including the narratives and boundaries that contribute to leader constructions of reality.
Religiously unaffiliated Canadians have been persistently more likely to reside in the western provinces. In parallel, the degree of religiosity of the affiliates has been generally higher in the low affiliation provinces of the west. This pattern has led some scholars to characterize Canada as religiously polarized. However, in the literature, a quantitative measure of polarization is lacking. Moreover, religious polarization, a rather vividly debated characterization, is not by itself an explanation for the patterns. The present article, using the Canadian General Social Surveys of 1985 to 2011, contributes to the debate in three ways. First, this article establishes the robustness of the geographic discrepancies in unaffiliation rates and the degree of religiosity in Canada. Second, this study proposes and computes a quantitative measure of polarization. Finally the article explores the role of free-rider exclusion as an explanation for the patterns.
The digital divide refers to the differential patterns of Internet access adoption and usage across different segments of populations. The digital divide has been linked to demographic variables such as age and gender, and socioeconomic characteristics such as education and income. Using a nationally representative Canadian survey (N = 27,223) conducted in 2013, this paper investigates whether religiosity has an independent effect on the digital divide, accounting for the previously validated predictors of Internet use. Religiosity is found to negatively associate with Internet access and activity, controlling for a large set of characteristics such as age, ethnicity, education, and income. The religiosity-related gaps in the usage patterns appear to indicate lifestyle differences for those without any tie with religion compared with the individuals of average religiosity. For the very religious, the gaps indicate that they utilize the Internet for social networking less than others. Various implications are discussed.
The real estate wealth disparities associated with religious identity have rarely been investigated in the literature. Such investigation is important, since the benefits of investment in an owner-occupied residence expand beyond individual wealth accumulation. Homeowners have a greater incentive to invest in their neighbourhoods and are more engaged with their local communities. These individual incentives engender social benefits. Using the Canadian National Household Survey of 2011, this paper examines how religious identity associates with the patterns of real estate wealth accumulation in Canada. Three interrelated outcomes of homeownership, value of the dwelling and the likelihood of carrying a mortgage are considered. The differences among a number of religious groups are non-negligible and impervious to the inclusion of controls. In accord with the US patterns, conservative Protestants are found at a disadvantage in real estate wealth accumulation. Jews, the highest earning group, are found to have a lower likelihood of homeownership, compared with most other groups. But, conditional on owning, Jews have more valuable homes. Muslims, the lowest earning group, are found the least likely to own. But, conditional on homeownership, Muslims are less likely than all other groups to carry a mortgage. Sikhs are found to statistically significantly differ from Hindus, in their homeownership rates and the value of their dwellings. Various explanations are explored.
In recent years, there has been a growing argument that the end product of secularization may not be a disappearance of all things religious, but rather a polarization between a larger secular group in society and smaller religiously fervent and active communities. Yet, there has been little empirical testing of this theory in contexts of advanced secularization. The aim of this paper is to fill this gap by studying individual belief and religiosity trends over the past four decades in Great Britain, searching specifically for evidence of the population splitting more and more between religious ‘nones’ removed from all forms of religion, and actively religious individuals characterized by strong beliefs and favourable to the public involvement of religion. Analysing descriptive statistics from the 1983–2012 BSAs as well as more detailed models from the 1991, 1998 and 2008 BSAs, we find growing differences in levels of beliefs and attitudes towards public religion between the increasing proportions of unaffiliated and, in recent years and among younger cohorts, more stable proportions of religiously committed individuals. The remaining religiously committed generally have stronger beliefs and more favourable views towards religious leaders influencing politics in 2008 compared with 1991, and the unaffiliated, less favourable views towards public religion.
Reginald Bibby, professor of sociology at the University of Lethbridge, is well known for his longitudinal research on the attitudes and behaviours of Canadian adult and teens with respect to religion and society. In his latest book, Beyond the Gods and Back: Religion's Demise and Rise and Why It Matters (2011), Bibby builds on his previous survey findings, including his most recent 2005 adult and 2008 teen survey data, to offer a more precise account of Canadian religious and social values in an ever-changing information and global age. Bibby's guiding thesis is that "when we look at the trend data for everyone – the involved and non-involved alike – what we see is a pattern of growing polarization . . . people are either involved or not involved in religious groups, either identify with traditions or do not identify with any, and are either theists or atheists" (pp. 46, 51). To set the context for the polarization thesis, Bibby uses the opening two-and-a-half chapters to summarize his earlier developed secularization and revitalization arguments. Briefly, Canadian religious groups experienced significant declines in weekly attendance and religious authority following the 1950s, declines that Bibby attributes in large part to changing immigration patterns away from Western (and Christian) Europe, along with broader cultural and value shifts among baby boomers. These include shifts from dominance to diversity, from obligation to gratification, from deference to discernment, and from homes to careers (see Bibby 1987, 1993, 2006). Bibby (2002 and 2004) then surprised many when he offered the revitalization thesis based on 1995 and 2000 survey data. He was more optimistic about the fate of religion in Canada because of increases in weekly attendance patterns among teens and conservative Protestants, along with the slowing of numerical and percentile declines in weekly attendance in mainline Protestant and Roman Catholic settings. He also highlighted that many Canadians who do not currently attend religious services weekly say they would attend more frequently if only religious groups would adjust the way that they supply religion (e.g., livelier music and more relevant preaching). Bibby's polarization thesis, the focus of chapter three, incorporates elements of both the secularization and revitalization theses. Bibby builds his case around three common measurements of religiosity: religious service attendance, religious identification, and belief in God or a supernatural being. In each of these areas, Bibby compares his data from over thirty years and shows that Canadian teens and adults are increasingly polarized between the "religious" and "non-religious" ends of what he identifies as the "polarization continuum." For example, in 1984, 23% of Canadian teens attended religious services on a weekly basis and 28% never attended religious services. In 2008, 21% attended weekly and 47% never attended (p. 45). In terms of religious identification among Canadians aged fifteen or older, 2001 Canadian census data reveal that 43% identify as Roman Catholic (compared with 45% in 1991), 29% as Protestant (compared with 35% in 1991), 6% with non-Christian religious traditions (compared with 4% in 1991), and 16% have "no religion" (compared with 12% in 1991). When asked if they believed in God or a higher power, 54% of teens responded, "Yes, I definitely do" in 1984, and 6% said, "No, I definitely do not." In 2008, 37% stated, "Yes, I definitely do," and 16% indicated, "No, I definitely do not" (p. 49).
Much of the current debate over secularization in Europe focuses only on the direction of religious change and pays exclusive attention to social causes. Scholars have been less attentive to shifts in the rate of religious decline and to the role of demography—notably fertility and immigration. This article addresses both phenomena. It uses data from the European Values Surveys and European Social Survey for the period 1981–2008 to establish basic trends in religious attendance and belief across the 10 countries that have been consistently surveyed. These show that religious decline is mainly occurring in Catholic European countries and has effectively ceased among post-1945 birth cohorts in six Northwestern European societies where secularization began early. It also provides a cohort-component projection of religious affiliation for two European countries using fertility, migration, switching, and age and sex-structure parameters derived from census and immigration data. These suggest that Western Europe may be more religious at the end of our century than at its beginning.
Much of the current debate over secularization in Europe focuses only on the direction of religious change and pays exclusive attention to social causes. Scholars have been less attentive to shifts in the rate of religious decline and to the role of demography—notably fertility and immigration. This article addresses both phenomena. It uses data from the European Values Surveys and European Social Survey for the period 1981–2008 to establish basic trends in religious attendance and belief across the 10 countries that have been consistently surveyed. These show that religious decline is mainly occurring in Catholic European countries and has effectively ceased among post-1945 birth cohorts in six Northwestern European societies where secularization began early. It also provides a cohort-component projection of religious affiliation for two European countries using fertility, migration, switching, and age and sex-structure parameters derived from census and immigration data. These suggest that Western Europe may be more religious at the end of our century than at its beginning.
For more than two decades political scientists have discussed rising elite polarization in the United States, but the study of mass polarization did not receive comparable attention until fairly recently. This article surveys the literature on mass polarization. It begins with a discussion of the concept of polarization, then moves to a critical consideration of different kinds of evidence that have been used to study polarization, concluding that much of the evidence presents problems of inference that render conclusions problematic. The most direct evidence - citizens' positions on public policy issues - shows little or no indication of increased mass polarization over the past two to three decades. Party sorting - an increased correlation between policy views and partisan identification - clearly has occurred, although the extent has sometimes been exaggerated. Geographic polarization - the hypothesized tendency of like-minded people to cluster together - remains an open question. To date, there is no conclusive evidence that elite polarization has stimulated voters to polarize, on the one hand, or withdraw from politics, on the other.
Analysis of International Social Survey Program (ISSP) data collected in 18 Western countries in 1998 demonstrates that Christian desires for a public role of religion are strongest in countries where Christian religiosity is numerically most marginal. Moreover, Dutch data covering the period 1970–1996 confirm that the decline of the number of Christians in the Netherlands has been coincided by a strengthening of the call for public religion among the remaining faithful and by increased polarization about this with the nonreligious. Religious decline and religious privatization, two of the most crucial dimensions of secularization (Casanova 1994), hence develop dialectically: as the number of Christians declines, the remaining faithful seem increasingly unwilling to accept the “secularist truce”—the secularist contract that guarantees religious freedom yet bans religion from the public sphere by relegating it to the private realm.
Two issues have been especially contentious in debates over religious change in Europe: the unity or diversity of the trends
observed across the continent, and the significance of the large subpopulation that is neither religious nor completely unreligious.
This article addresses these problems. An analysis of the first wave of the European Social Survey (ESS) shows that each generation
in every country surveyed is less religious than the last. Although there are some minor differences in the speed of the decline
(the most religious countries are changing more quickly than the least religious), the magnitude of the fall in religiosity
during the last century has been remarkably constant across the continent. Despite these shifts in the prevalence of conventional
Christian belief, practice and self-identification, residual involvement is considerable. Many people are neither regular
churchgoers nor self-consciously non-religious. The term ‘fuzzy fidelity’ describes this casual loyalty to tradition. Religion
usually plays only a minor role in the lives of such people. Religious change in European countries follows a common trajectory
whereby fuzzy fidelity rises and then falls over a very extended period. The starting points are different across the continent,
but the forces at work may be much the same.
American Evangelicals Today assesses the contemporary social, religious, and political characteristics of evangelical Protestants today, and it does so in light of (1) whether these characteristics are similar to, or different from, the corresponding characteristics of adherents of other major faith traditions in American religious life, and (2) the extent which these particular characteristics among evangelicals may have changed over the past four decades. In addition, it analyzes the extent which evangelicals are divided today, and it does so within the framework of four potential factors that might shape such divisions -- racial/ethnic differences, generational differences, educational differences, and religious differences.
American Evangelicals Today is designed to serve as an accessible, but scholarly, overview of American evangelicals, one that is appealing to all scholars, students, and laity alike. Smidt offers a discussion of the nature of evangelical Protestantism, highlights the particular analytical issues at play when one seeks to determine just who are to be classified as evangelicals, and reveals some of the contradictory findings that can emerge through the use of these different analytical frameworks for defining evangelicals. The volume not only analyzes the current characteristics of evangelicals in light of those exhibited by other religious traditions as well as how evangelicals have changed over time, but it looks toward the future, addressing generational differences and other possible factors for change among evangelical Protestants.
Increasing proportions of religious nonaffiliation characterize most Western societies, although the periods over which these increases have occurred and the speed in which they happen do vary. Consequently, some nations now have larger unaffiliated groups and others much smaller ones. What is less well known is if, in areas where unaffiliated groups are larger, the religious “nones” have become more distinct from the actively religious in their attitudes and behavior. In contexts of advanced secularization, to what extent is the gap greater between the actively religious and the nonreligious when it comes to their views on family life and reproduction, for example? In regards to their levels of religiosity and spirituality in their private lives? Are the unaffiliated more liberal in their attitudes and less religious in their private life? This article sheds light on these questions by analyzing data from over 200 North American, European, and Oceanic country subregions included in the 2008 International Social Survey Programme. With hierarchical linear models, I find that, in areas where the unaffiliated form a larger proportion of the population, the differences between the actively religious and the unaffiliated in family values and personal religiosity tend to be greater.
Based on eighteen surveys exploring the beliefs, attitudes, and behaviour of over 100,000 Canadians, Kurt Bowen assesses the state of Christians and their churches in Canada at the close of the twentieth century. Christians in a Secular World argues that the religiously committed still differ from their fellow citizens psychologically and in their family life and political outlook. Bowen warns that as the ranks of the committed continue to shrink, we may begin to witness a weakening in the civility and social fabric of Canada. Bowen also assesses the role of religion in public education, the financial liability of Canada's churches for abuse suffered by Aboriginals in residential schools, the status of women clergy in Protestant churches, and the debates over abortion and gay and lesbian marriage. He takes issue with those who claim that on-going widespread involvement in various privatized forms of religiousness indicates that religion is changing rather than declining. The book concludes with an assessment of the major challenges that Christian churches in Canada confront today.
Religious life in Canada has changed dramatically in recent decades due to secularization and the population shifts resulting from urbanization and immigration. New varieties of pluralism have emerged, entailing massive changes in a culture once assumed to be almost uniformly Christian. God's Plenty examines the religious landscape of Kingston, Ontario, in the twenty-first century. The rich religious life of Kingston - a mid-sized city with a strong sense of its history and its status as a university town - is revealed in a narrative that integrates material from sociological and historical studies, websites, interviews, religious and literary scholarship, and personal experience. In Kingston, as in every Canadian city, downtown parishes and congregations have dwindled, disappeared, or moved to the suburbs. Attendance at mainline churches - and their political authority - has declined. Ethnic diversity has increased within Christian churches, while religious communities beyond Christianity and Judaism have grown. Faith groups have split along liberal and conservative lines, and the number of those claiming to have no religion - or to be spiritual but not religious - has increased. Yet amidst all this, religion continues to be evident in institutions and public life and important to the lives of many Canadians. God's Plenty, a ground-breaking contribution to the study of religion in Canada and a model for future community-based research, is the first overview of the religious topography of a Canadian city, telling the story of various faith communities and adding to the study of religious diversity and multiculturalism.
In Evangelicals and the Continental Divide Sam Reimer finds surprising levels of uniformity among evangelicals on both sides of the border. He shows that both American and Canadian evangelicals share highly similar religious identities, central beliefs, moral and subcultural boundaries, and social attitudes. Reimer found that American evangelicals did not distinguish themselves through greater conservatism or greater commitment but did connect politics and faith to a much greater extent than their Canadian counterparts, while evangelicals in Canada evinced greater tolerance. He argues that these differences point to an enduring importance of national historical and cultural differences, whereas regional differences are not as significant. Using data obtained from 118 in-depth interviews with evangelicals in both countries as well as a representative poll of 3,000 Canadians and 3,000 Americans, Reimer details the inner workings of the evangelical subculture and gives us an understanding of evangelical similarities and differences across the two nations.
Many religious scholars have noted a decline in institutional forms of religion in Canada. With fewer Canadians regularly attending church or following denominational proscriptions, is institutionalized religion becoming a thing of the past? In A Culture of Faith, Sam Reimer and Michael Wilkinson argue that evangelical Protestants continue to show strong allegiance to their congregations. Through a national study, including interviews with over five hundred pastors and an analysis of financial resources, the authors argue that evangelical Protestant congregations demonstrate greater resiliency within a broader context of declining religiosity. According to their findings, weekly church attendance among evangelicals is substantially higher than the national average, church attendees say they get significant enjoyment from their religious groups, youth participation is high, and evangelicals are more likely to volunteer. While there may be signs of decline on the horizon, Canadian evangelical congregations seem to remain vital at a time when most other Christian traditions are waning. A clearly presented study of evangelical beliefs, organizations, leaders, and finances, A Culture of Faith reveals the current strength of evangelical Protestantism and its implications for the future of religion in Canada.
Evangelical Protestants are known as vocal opponents of equal rights for gays and lesbians. Yet there is growing ambivalence among evangelicals who oppose homosexuality but support equal rights. The authors extend the concept of 'structured ambivalence' to explain why tolerance toward gays and lesbians continues to grow, even within subcultures that promote traditional views of human sexuality. The Evangelical subculture has institutionalized competing scripts and expectations about how to "do" religion with regard to gays and lesbians, which creates structured ambivalence at the overlap of social positions and institutions. Using national survey data, the authors find that 35% of Evangelicals have consistently progressive attitudes toward homosexuality, but are less religiously observant. Conversely, 24% of Evangelicals support gay civil unions, even though they are morally opposed to homosexuality. Yet these Ambivalent Evangelicals exhibit the same levels of religiosity as Gay Rights Opponents. Ambivalent support for gay rights has taken root at the core of Evangelical subculture, not just at the margins.
The authors suggest that confusion about differential growth rates among various kinds of churches might be clarified by examining the sources from which churches draw their new members. In the authors' investigation of membership additions to 20 evangelical congregations over a five-year period they found that over 70 percent of the new members came from other evangelical churches (reaffiliates such as migrants or transfers) while nearly another 20 percent were the children of members. Less than 10 percent were proselytes or converts from outside the evangelical community, and even these were primarily recruited from other churches or became members through intermarriage. This finding suggests interesting implications for evangelicals with the specific goal of proselytism. The authors argue that conservative churches may be growing faster than other churches because of their superior ability to retain their children and their mobile members.
Recent theoretical and empirical evidence has been pointing toward a new development with regard to religion in the Western world: one of polarization between secular and religious individuals. Statistical analyses test the existence of such a trend from 1985 until 2009-2010 at a regional level within three separate national contexts: the United States, the UK, and Canada. Repeated cross-sectional survey data are studied by means of a series of multinomial logit and logistic regression models with generated predicted probabilities. The results show the existence of three distinct patterns of trends since the mid-1980s, one of which consists of religious polarization as measured by the present study: the proportional decline of nominal affiliates coupled with no decline or an increase of unaffiliated and religiously committed individuals. This trend can be found in Great Britain as well as in the Canadian provinces of Alberta and British Columbia.
This study instead focuses on culture wars among religious elites-clergy-and tests three aspects of the culture wars thesis: (1) whether cultural wars exist at all among religious elites, (2) whether clergy attitudes are polarized on these issues, and (3) whether religious authority or religious affiliation is more salient in creating culture wars cleavages. Using data from a large random sample of Protestant clergy, we find a substantial amount of engagement in culture wars by all types of Protestant clergy. The amount of polarization is more attributable to views of religious authority (i.e., biblical inerrancy) than to religious tradition. Moreover, polarization among clergy is somewhat more evident on culture wars issues than on other social and political issues. These findings are generally supportive of the culture wars thesis and should help return examinations of culture wars back to where they were originally theorized to be waged: among elites.
Research suggests Canada is a largely secular nation. Yet Reginald Bibby (2002) has recently proposed, surprisingly, that Canada is experiencing a religious renaissance. While "private spirituality" abounds in Canada, Bibby says his claim rests on increased levels of involvement in "organized religion." We have our doubts about Bibby's new optimism; and there are two sources of our scepticism. First, the cumulative weight of his own evidence is still more indicative of a continued preference for the consumption of religious fragments, a notion first popularized by Bibby (1987), than a renaissance of organized religion. Second, the credibility of his proposal is undermined by some nagging problems with the way he sorts, reports and interprets his data. To grasp whether something new is happening in Canada we need more precise and relevant data, and we make four methodological suggestions for acquiring the kinds of information needed.
Many observers have asserted with little evidence that. Americans' social opinions have become polarized. Using General Social Survey and National Election Survey social attitude items that have been repeated regularly over 20 years, the authors ask (1) Have Americans' opinions become more dispersed (higher variance)? (2) Have distributions become flatter or more bimodal (declining kurtosis)? (3) Have opinions become more ideologically constrained within and across opinion domains? (4) Have paired social groups become more different in their opinions? The authors find little evidence of polarization over the past two decades, with attitudes toward abortion and opinion differences between Republican and Democratic party identifiers the exceptional cases.
According to the General Social Survey, the combined rate of weekly and monthly attendance at religious services in Canada has declined by about 20 points from 1986 to 2008. Approximately half of this decline stems from the increase in the proportion of people reporting no religion, who, for the most part, do not attend religious services. The other portion of this decline is attributable to eroding attendance rates among Catholics, particularly older Catholics, and Protestants in Québec. Attendance rates for Protestants outside of Québec show signs of increase. The reported increase in weekly attendance in Canada by the Project Canada surveys and cited by Bibby as a possible indicator of a religious renaissance is revealed as an artifact in the data due to an oversample of Protestants. I find another weighting problem in the Canadian Survey of Giving, Volunteering and Participating that leads to underestimates of aggregate religious attendance rates.
The view that America is fragmenting is popular among both pundits and academics and may well be endemic to American culture. We review claims that between 1970 and 2005 American society fragmented along lines of cultural politics, social class, immigration, race, or lifestyle. Taking the twentieth century as historical context, we weigh evidence for both main variants of the fragmentation thesis that there is an increasing divide between two Americas, or that America is fragmenting into a variety of little worlds that touch but do not interpenetrate. We find a well-documented, widening gap in social class, whether measured by education or income. We also find that political elites and activists are demonstrably more polarized in 2005 than they were in 1970; this gap's effect on the electorate is debatable, however. Caveats aside, there is little evidence for increasing fragmentation of America along lines of race, ethnicity, or immigration status. American cultural tastes increasingly cluster into distinct lifeways, but there is little evidence about what effects, if any, this development has. The loudest claims of fragmentation, those concerning value issues, are based on the most contested evidence, but the widening gap between Americans by income and education which receives less popular attention is substantial and serious.
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