The main plotline is the continued falling away of Canadians from the Christian religion. From the 1860s to the 1960s, Canada was one of the most observant Christian countries on earth. Through the 1940s, weekly church attendance was well above 60% (versus about 40% in the U.S.) and a broad cultural consensus existed around Christian values, institutions, customs, and religious language. As late as the 1970s, Canadian public school children recited the Lord’s Prayer at the start of every morning, and into the 1980s the Lord’s Day was observed by acts that bore its name””businesses were kept closed and entertainments curtailed to foster both worship for the faithful and rest for the weary.
The tight link between Canada and Christian piety has evaporated as Canadians have raced the Dutch for the fastest de-Christianization since the French Revolution. Yes, Quebec led the way with its Quiet Revolution””its rapid and radical secularization in the 1960s. The national story is simply an Even Quieter Revolution of slow, but sure, abandonment of Christian identity by older people and an increasing number of younger people who have never known the inside of a church and are in no hurry to see it.
Excellent article, and a disturbing one. I was surprised to discover that Canadians used to be more regular in church attendance than the USA, but the drop in religious affiliation has been significantly faster and more ominous. As British Coumbia tends to be a trendsetter for the rest of the country, as southern Cal is in the US, it was stunning to read that a whopping 40% of the population of Vancouver claims no religoous affiliiation anymore. For Canada as a whole, 25% of the nation now identify themselves as having no affiliation (in the US I think it’s about 17%, but around a third of youth).
This sort of article is a wake-up call. The rapid de-Christianization of North America has immense, far-reaching implications that most of us haven’t begun to face and take seriously. But I, for one, prefer to see the vast potential this sea change in the prevailing culture gives us. For the first time in roughly 1500 years, we have the chance to transcend the huge limitations of living in a nominally Christian land, where the standards of discipleship were inevitably quite low. Now that we live in a truly post-Christendom social environment, we are freed from the shackles of Constantinian religion (and our Erastian past as Anglicans) with all the shallowness and compromises associated with it. For the first time in a millenium and a half, we have a genuine opportunity to rediscover the excitement and authenticity of being earnest Christians who know ourselves to be a committed minority, surrounded by a sea of pagans and skeptics. Much like the early Christians of the first three centuries, and much like our brave brothers and sisters in much of the Global South.
But first we have to come out of our corporate denial and face the reality of living in a society that has turned its back on its Christian heritage and relearn how to evangelize a lost and hurting world.
David handy+