(no subject)
Sep. 12th, 2006 05:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
felis_ultharusMaybe it's because I come from such a multireligious family (Anglican, Atheist, Baha'i, Wiccan, and Catholic), or maybe it's because I'm a member of a religion that gets forever shunted off into the "other" category, but I've always been fascinated by religious demographics.
So I was happy to find this very thorough list from religioustolerance.org, more detailed than the one at StatsCan, showing changes in religion in Canada.
It confirmed a lot of what I heard and suspected. Christianity is slowly vanishing from this country, so it's not just paranoia on the part of fundamentalists. They've gone from more than four-fifths of the country to a little more than three-quarters. They grew, but much more slowly than the population grew -- factoring in all changes by immigration, conversion, and birth, they only grew by 1.5%.
Even the two religions that most discourage converts -- Judaism and Zoroastrianism -- are increasing faster than than the number of Christians. Going by percentage increase, Judaism is actually growing twice as fast as all forms of Christianity combined (+3.7% versus +1.5%).
"Islam" is now the 3rd-largest religious grouping in Canada, after "Christian" and "No religion." Also, First Nations spirituality -- the religious practices of the Native peoples of the continent that Europe tried to exterminate -- are making a major comeback.
The ten largest religious groupings in Canada -- and all these are very general categories -- are, in order:
Don't know how interesting anyone else finds this stuff, but I think it's really neat ^_^
ETA: Eeep! I just found the page where it shows which forms of Christianity are growing and which are shrinking. The extreme fundamentalist groups and Orthodox Christianity are the only groups which seem to be increasing significantly.
Our Prime Minister's extreme faith-healing, fundamentalist conservative church, the Christian and Missionary Alliance, is growing a little faster than the population as a whole :/
So I was happy to find this very thorough list from religioustolerance.org, more detailed than the one at StatsCan, showing changes in religion in Canada.
It confirmed a lot of what I heard and suspected. Christianity is slowly vanishing from this country, so it's not just paranoia on the part of fundamentalists. They've gone from more than four-fifths of the country to a little more than three-quarters. They grew, but much more slowly than the population grew -- factoring in all changes by immigration, conversion, and birth, they only grew by 1.5%.
Even the two religions that most discourage converts -- Judaism and Zoroastrianism -- are increasing faster than than the number of Christians. Going by percentage increase, Judaism is actually growing twice as fast as all forms of Christianity combined (+3.7% versus +1.5%).
"Islam" is now the 3rd-largest religious grouping in Canada, after "Christian" and "No religion." Also, First Nations spirituality -- the religious practices of the Native peoples of the continent that Europe tried to exterminate -- are making a major comeback.
The ten largest religious groupings in Canada -- and all these are very general categories -- are, in order:
- Christianity
- No religion
- Islam
- Judaism
- Buddhist
- Hindu
- Sikh
- First Nations spirituality
- Neo-Pagan
- Baha'i
Don't know how interesting anyone else finds this stuff, but I think it's really neat ^_^
ETA: Eeep! I just found the page where it shows which forms of Christianity are growing and which are shrinking. The extreme fundamentalist groups and Orthodox Christianity are the only groups which seem to be increasing significantly.
Our Prime Minister's extreme faith-healing, fundamentalist conservative church, the Christian and Missionary Alliance, is growing a little faster than the population as a whole :/
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-12 11:53 am (UTC)This makes me feel less like the odd girl out.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-14 06:33 pm (UTC)And I thought you'd like that stat ^_^
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-13 02:00 am (UTC)One thing I'm curious of - what does it mean exactly when someone says "I'm Christian." (Or any other religion for that matter.) I've met a lot of people who say, "I'm Christian" but often that means they were baptised and have never seen the inside of a church since. I'm curious, how many people out of all those statistics are actually practicing their faith independently or organized?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-14 06:39 pm (UTC)There are place to mark in your religion. One of the categories is "Christian, n.i.e." -- which is what you get when someone simply notes "Christian" on the page, without a denomination.
The census doesn't ask about time spent for religious matters, I think.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-13 11:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-14 06:47 pm (UTC)Damn. You're right. For some reason, I was sure I had, but it's true that the last time I remember filling in that quesion, I was lecturing Moishe about why he needn't be paranoid putting "Neo-Pagan" down on the census.
That's a shame. Studying the religious composition of countries is a growth area of scholarship. That kind of data is especially of interest to sociologists studying N.R.M.s (new religious movements).
And what people believe in has to say a lot more about them than their genetic composition (the question about ethnicity is still on the census, I see).
I wonder why they removed the religious question? The ethnicity question can't be any less controversial.
And if they're curious about about minority groups that might be targeted by violence or prejudical hiring practices (which is why I think race-questions are on the census), religion is as much a basis as race for such bigotries.