Canadians’ confidence in religion slips
Most Canadians prefer personal faith over church doctrine, says Angus Reid pollster
By Bob
Harvey
Special to ChristianWeek
OTTAWA–Most Canadians now feel their private beliefs are more important than church doctrine, says pollster Andrew Grenville.
In a new analysis of data collected around the world by the Angus Reid Group, Grenville says less than 10 percent of Canadians now believe "good" Christians must agree with all of their church’s teachings.
Three out of four Canadians, including many regular churchgoers, now believe "my private beliefs are more important than what is taught by any church." One of the reasons, says Grenville, is that Canadians’ confidence in organized religion has declined, even though their belief in God has not.
Grenville, a senior vice-president of the Angus Reid Group, says that Bill Phipps, moderator of the United Church of Canada, personifies the new Canadian approach to faith. Although Phipps infuriated orthodox Christians last fall with his declaration that he’s not sure Jesus was both God and man, he also won admiration from many Canadians who call themselves Christians, but feel free to question key Christian beliefs.
Grenville’s specialty is market research–helping organizations sell their product or belief–and he’s recently been analyzing attitudes toward religion, based on Angus Reid polls in 33 countries.
Those polls, conducted in 1996 and 1997, show there’s a growing trend around the world toward what he calls a more "privatistic" faith. Only in a very few countries, like Poland and South Korea, do almost all believers actively participate in organized religion and wholly accept their churches’ teaching.
In Canada, almost seven in 10 people say they believe Jesus was the son of God, and half say they pray weekly. Yet only one in five attends a worship service in an average week. Not surprisingly, most also believe it is not necessary to go to church to be a good Christian.
Canadian vs. U.S. faith
Grenville says that to make sense of this new pattern of belief, it helps to subdivide Canadians and others into six basic categories. They show some of the differences between Canadians and Americans:
• Church-centred Christians (nine percent of Canadians, 20 percent of Americans) believe attendance at church and acceptance of the church’s doctrines is the minimum standard for "good" Christians. They are also the most socially involved of any group in society–more than six in 10 are also members of other social groups, and 55 percent volunteer their time to help these groups. About 37 percent of this group describe themselves as evangelical Christians (including 20 percent of Catholics).
• Privatistic Christians (11 percent of Canadians, 28 percent of Americans) pray regularly, and most read the Bible and attend church regularly. They also accept orthodox Christian beliefs and believe in the importance of evangelism. However, they are adamant that their private beliefs are more important than what is taught by a church. Equal numbers of this group (42 percent each) describe themselves as evangelical Christians and liberal or progressive Christians.
Together, the church-centred and the privatistic Christians place a high priority on preserving the family and raising moral standards. Since church-centred Christians and privatistic Christians make up almost half the population in the United States, compared to only 20 percent in Canada, "family values" are a political issue in the U.S., but not here.
• Independent believers (22 percent of Canadians, 20 percent of Americans) say they pray regularly and faith is important to them. But they attend worship services only occasionally, and are only lukewarm in their assent to Christian beliefs like "through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, God provided a way for the forgiveness of my sins." Just 10 percent of this group describe themselves as evangelical Christians.
• Occasional Christians (19 percent of Canadians, 16 percent of Americans) go to church only on special occasions, like Christmas and Easter.
• Private theists (19 percent of Canadians, 10 percent of Americans) believe in God, but few feel religion is important to their lives. About half of Muslims and Jews also fall into this category.
• Atheists and agnostics (20 percent of Canadians, six percent of Americans) include some people who also identify themselves as Catholics, or evangelical or liberal Protestants. But their Christian identity is little more than a cultural identification, because they believe "the concept of God is an old superstition that is no longer needed to explain things in these modern times."
Grenville presented most of his findings at a conference at Queen’s University in May.
