ChristianWeek

The budding renaissance of religion in Canada has benefitted enormously from the evangelical emphasis on good ministry to people of all ages, says Reg Bibby.

Whether they realize it or not, evangelical churches have been playing a leading role in the recent resurgence of organized religion in Canada.

Resurgence? Yes. Since the early 1990s regular weekly attendance has been increasing among teenagers and young adults. This growth in turn appears to be reflected in modest increases in overall national attendance levels since 2000.

To be sure, the renaissance of organized religion is at an embryonic stage. Things could regress. Still, unexpected signs of new life are springing up in unexpected places. The next few decades are going to be well worth watching.

It seems to me that people who attempted to understand religious developments in Canada in the post-1960s commonly made two important errors. First, they bought into the assumption of relentless secularization. Second, they dismissed the important anomaly of evangelical growth with a stereotype, when they should have embraced it as a prototype.

Academics, the media and church leaders almost without exception bought into the idea that religion’s golden era of the 1950s and early 1960s marked the high point of religious participation, never to be seen again. Many such observers had been strongly influenced by key European proponents of secularization, notably, Durkheim, Marx and Freud.

We now know that secularization describes Europe well. International Gallup poll data collected in early 2004 inform us that weekly attendance currently stands at between 10-15 per cent in countries such as Britain and the Netherlands, under 10 per cent in France and Germany, and around five per cent in Finland, Sweden, and Denmark.

However, the secularization thesis fails miserably when applied to the United States, where traditional Christian beliefs abound and a fairly steady 45 per cent or so of the population have been attending religious services almost every week or more dating back from today through the mid-1930s.

Given the impact that American culture and religious resources have on Canada, which direction do you think we would be expected to go-that of Europe, or that of the U.S.?

If you answered, “Somewhere in the middle,” you get the A+. A 1945 Gallup poll pegged weekly attendance in Canada at what perhaps was a generous figure of some 60 per cent. By 1975, largely because of a significant Roman Catholic participation decline, particularly in Quebec, the national figure came in at just over 30 per cent. By 2000 it had fallen further to about 20 per cent.

At that point, simple extrapolation suggested that by 2025, a reasonable weekly attendance projection might be 10 per cent-a level hauntingly similar to much of Europe.

What was lost in all this was the fact that Protestant attendance actually remained at approximately the same level of around 25 per cent from 1975 through 2000. In part, this was because declining involvement in mainline churches was offset by growing participation of evangelicals.

By the 1990s, there were indications that the Catholic situation-particularly outside of Quebec-was beginning to stabilize. The logical conclusion? If Protestant and Catholic groups could improve on effective ministry, national participation would go up, not down.

That appears to be happening. Recent polls suggest weekly attendance now stands at about 25 per cent. Two large Statistics Canada surveys completed in 2003 further found that more Canadians are involved in religious groups than any other group activity, with the number of existing religious organizations matched only by those operating in the area of sports and recreation.

In the early years of this new century, organized religion is anything but a thing of the past in Canada.

In the post-1960s, Canada’s evangelical groups collectively represented an anomaly: their participation levels were increasing at a time when those of mainline Protestants and Roman Catholics were decreasing.

Why? The research indicated it was primarily because evangelicals were doing a better job of holding on both to their children and geographically mobile members than were their Christian counterparts. According to what became a popular stereotype, evangelical growth reflected “the circulation of the saints,” rather than the recruitment of “outsiders.”

That finding was sound; the problem was that it diverted attention from the important retention findings. While evangelicals, like other groups, were having limited success in recruiting “outsiders,” they were also demonstrating that the lifeline of every group-once the pipeline of immigration runs dry-is their children.

In those post-1960 decades, evangelicals across the country appear to have accelerated their emphasis on ministry to children, teens, young adults and families. They planted new churches in burgeoning suburbs. In some cases, they emphasized ministry over denominational loyalties, in the process establishing a large number of independent congregations.

And they grew. The key to retention? Evangelicals of all ages were finding that involvement was worth their while. Churches were ministering to their diverse spiritual, personal and relational needs.

Since the early 1990s, mainline Protestants and Roman Catholics have gradually been following that prototype, giving higher priority to youth and family ministry than they did in the 1970s and 1980s.

While not abandoning justice issues, they also have been giving far more explicit attention to innovative forms of worship, new types of music, the meeting of diverse spiritual needs, Bible study and small group ministries. New churches are being founded in new communities.

Does all this sound familiar? It should. Increasingly, mainliners and Catholics have been contributing to what observers such as Lyle Schaller have described as nothing less than “a new Reformation,” a renaissance that clearly has been stimulated in large part by evangelicals in both Canada and the United States.

Evangelicals have in many ways led the way in making a decisive case for the fact that secularization is not inevitable in modern and post-modern societies. The research shows what many evangelical leaders have found-that if people find significance in churches, they are receptive to greater involvement.

Conversely, if churches fail to touch their lives, they can be expected to stay away in droves.

The budding renaissance of religion in Canada has also benefited enormously from the evangelical emphasis on good ministry to people of all ages, beginning with children. The vitality, enthusiasm, determination and commitment of evangelicals is the envy of many laity and leaders in mainline Protestant, Catholic and other faith settings.

It’s important to emphasize that the research clearly shows evangelicals are still having considerable difficulty reaching people outside their own boundaries. One of the major reasons is that most Canadians-regardless of their level of involvement-do not identify with evangelical groups.

At the same time, many of these same people readily acknowledge that they are receptive to greater involvement if they can find that groups touch their lives in significant ways. They are not, however, looking to just any group; otherwise, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Latter Day Saints would be making more headway.

Consequently, as I emphasized in this forum two years ago (“Restless Gods: Implications for restless evangelicals,” ChristianWeek, April 30/2002), the challenge facing evangelicals is a radical one: heed the Macedonian cry and come over and help like-minded-and I emphasize like-minded-people in mainline and Catholic groups.

Engage in evangelism and ministry beyond your borders by sharing your expertise, energy, commitment and resources with groups that have one critical thing that you don’t have: ready access to millions of mainline Protestants and Catholics.

Of course there will be resistance and indifference to such a collective ministry strategy-not only on the part of many evangelicals but also on the part of a good many mainliners and Catholics. But if evangelicals and other groups continue to try to go it alone, they are going to continue to waste a lot of resources. More importantly, they are going to continue to fail to provide the ministries that Canadians require.

Evangelicals have been major contributors to the emerging religious renaissance in Canada both by their accomplishments and their example. That contribution may grow exponentially if some people in their ranks will have the courage and foresight to seek out likeminded individuals in other Christian faith settings and covenant to work together.

If the God who I believe is at the centre of what is happening in Canada these days is in the midst of such efforts, who knows what might happen?

Reginald W. Bibby, PhD, holds the Board of Governors Research Chair in Sociology at the University of Lethbridge. He is the author of nine bestselling books, including Fragmented Gods, Unknown Gods, Restless Gods, Mosaic Madness and Canada’s Teens. Over the years he has become familiar to Canadians through his extensive media appearances and presentations from coast to coast.