Why can’t we be just like those Americans?
Canadian Versus American Religiosity Trends (June 1, 2023)
In a previous article, we examined the work of Reginal Bibby1 in illustrating a long term decline in multi-faith belief and activities. It stated “A series of Gallup Polls, supplemented by a poll by Bibby in 20003, show a significant downward trend in weekly religious service attendance in Canada. Weekly attendance stood at 53% in 1957, dropped to 31% in 1975, went further down to 24% in 1990, and settled at 21% in 20002”. Bibby1 continued with many other analyses highlighting similar trends.
Yet, listening to American media, politics and social discourse suggests they are more religious than Canadians. So let’s look at some numbers.
Statistics Canada published information on religiosity in Canada from 1985 to 20193. It noted a persistent decline in respondents claiming they attend group religious activities at least once per month, from 42.5% in 1985 to 23.3% in 2019. In response to a question on whether they feel religious or spiritual beliefs are somewhat or very important to them, the rate declined from 71% in 2003 to 54.1% in 2019 (this question did not appear in the survey until 2003.)
Now for the United States. Gallup published information on long term religiosity in 20214. Respondents were asked to rate their religious attendance as every week, almost every week, and about once per month. The results ranged from 58% in 1992 to 42% in 2021. In another section, respondents were asked to rate the importance of religion in their life. The results for the categories of very important and fairly important tallied to 87% in 1992 and 76% in 2021.
Let’s look at how the two countries compare in this regard. In Canada, religious activities declined by 45% over 34 years. Belief declined by 24% over 16 years. In the United States, religious activities declined by 28% over 29 years. Belief declined by 13% over 29 years. The figures are not directly comparable due to the surveys wording questions differently and using different time spans, but the general gist is clear. The decline is more pronounced in Canada. And, as a matter of interest, European rates of decline are more similar to Canada than the United States. Many have held this up as a banner for American-style evangelism.
It would be easy to drop the question at this point and say increases in American secularism are not as pronounced as in Canada. However, rafts of information and statistics indicate that general well-being is statistically worse in the United States, especially with respect to rates of crime, poverty, access to health care, food security, drug problems, etc. Why would these social indicators be worse in a country that is both more religious and more wealthy?
That is a very complex question that may have a whole lot of answers. However, Bibby5 provides some conclusions stemming from work done by sociologists Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann. They got the idea to study the difference in values between church-goers and church-avoiders in different countries. What they found was that whereas in most countries church-goers held somewhat higher values than non-goers, in the United States there was very little difference. The study concluded that while other countries secularize away from the church, the United States seems to be secularizing within the church. This is just one study on a very complex issue. Yet, it is enlightening and perhaps has a few lessons for Canadian churches.
____________________
1. Bibby, Reginald W, Resilient Gods: being pro-religious, low religious or no religious in Canada,
UBC Press, 2017
2. Bibby, page 41
3. Statistics Canada, Religiosity in Canada and its evolution from 1985 to 2019, https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/75-006-x/2021001/article/00010-eng.htm
4. Gallup, In Depth: Topics A to Z Religion, https://news.gallup.com/poll/1690/Religion.aspx
5. Bibby, page 39