[troutman]

Is Canada Losing Its Religion?

Secularization in the Great White North.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/b...g-its-religion

“Projections from our data indicate that there will be no members, attenders, or givers in the Anglican Church of Canada by approximately 2040.”

This dire pronouncement was recently declared by Canadian Reverend Neil Elliot, an Anglican priest, and lead author of a new report commissioned by the Anglican Church of Canada.

While the Anglican Church of Canada had 1.3 million members back in 1961, it is now down to less than 360,000—and this decline has occurred while Canada’s population significantly increased throughout those decades, making such a drop in membership all the more precipitous.

As is happening all over the world—from Uruguay to Japan, from the Netherlands to New Zealand, and from Germany to South Korea—people in Canada appear to be walking away from religion in numbers never seen before. For example:

• In the 1960s, 50 percent of Canadians reported attending church on a weekly basis; by 2015, that was down to 10 percent.
• In 1971, only 4 percent of Canadians said that they had no religion, but today, that is up to 29 percent.
• In 2000, 70 percent of Canadians said that their religious beliefs were important to them; today, just under 50 percent say as much.
• In 2005, 81 percent of Canadians believed in God; that number had dropped down to 65 percent in 2016.
• Today, 64 percent of Canadians now agree that religion plays a less important role in society than it did twenty years ago; 67 percent of Canadians also now agree that it is not necessary to believe in God in order to be moral and have good values; half of all Canadians today seldom or never go to church.
• Nearly 50 percent of those living in the province of British Columbia, nearly 40 percent of those living in the province of Quebec, and 35 percent of those living in the province of Alberta say that they “prefer to live life without God or congregation." Such high rates of secularity are historically unprecedented.