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Are Canadians less religious?

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With fewer young people going to church and growing numbers of people saying they have no religious affiliation, a tendency to leave formal religion for a more personal religion based on one’s own beliefs is emerging in Canada.

From 1985 to 2004, the proportion of Canadians who had no religious affiliation or did not attend religious services rose from 30% to 44%. Native-born Canadians were less likely to take part in religious services than immigrants, even though there was considerable variation in the degree of religious commitment reported by immigrants from various parts of the world.

While more Canadians are abandoning formal religious practice, they are no less religious. In 2002, although only 32% of Canadians attended religious services at least once a month, 54% engaged in individual religious activities on a monthly basis, such as prayer, meditation and reading scriptures. Moreover, 44% of Canadians reported that religion was very important in their lives.

The importance that Canadians place on religion tends to decrease with each generation. In 2002, only 34% of Canadians aged 15 to 29 stated that religion held a high importance to their lives, compared with 62% of Canadians aged 60 or older. The importance that Canadians placed on religion also varied by region. Nearly half of the Canadians surveyed who resided in the Atlantic Provinces practised their religion on a weekly basis, compared to only 35% in British Columbia.

Most Canadians who had attended religious services at least once in the month preceding the survey engaged in individual religious activities on a weekly basis. Of those who had seldom attended religious services in the previous year, 37% carried out individual religious activities each week, compared with 27% of those who had never attended such services during that period.