Restless Gods, a new book by Dr. Reginald Bibby, sociology professor at the University of Lethbridge, Alta., has turned up evidence that is surprising those people, including the author, who believed organized religion was in terminal decline in Canada.
New shoots of faith appear to be sprouting, particularly among young people, after more than half a century during which the mainstream churches floundered and saw their congregations shrink, apparently inexorably. In 1984, 22% of Catholics and mainstream Protestants outside Quebec, aged 15-19 years, attended church regularly. That number declined to just 17% by 1992, but instead of dwindling further, as expected, it bounced back to 22% by 2000. (In Quebec, where the condition of the Catholic church is complicated by its pervasive and resented role before the Quiet Revolution, congregations have continued to shrink. The decline from 90% church attendance in 1945 to just 14% now, and only 7% among teenagers, represents an enormous social change.)
Nor should the upturn elsewhere in Canada be exaggerated. The evidence does not necessarily herald an epochal religious awakening. "It's not a dramatic renaissance but there are signs of life," says Dr. Bibby. Nevertheless, there are reasons to believe that the new data are straws in the wind. Religious worship began to decline seriously after the First World War, but the downturn accelerated sharply during the wholesale rejection of traditional mores during the 1960s and 1970s. As the great demographic bulge of the Baby Boom began to reach young adulthood in 1963, the most powerful and alluring channels of rebellion were offered by Marxism and deconstructionism, both of which militated against the teachings and institutions of mainstream Christian religion.
It is a truism (although not always true) that each generation rebels against the orthodoxies of the preceding generation. What more convincing way to reject the secular, value-neutral assumptions of grey-haired Baby Boomers than to go to church and subscribe to orthodox moral and theological teaching? If the intellectual fashion of the society around you is to stress materialism and to assert that there is no truth, only opinion, it is hardly surprising that young would-be rebels should seek spiritual answers and universal truths. Now that Marxism is irredeemably discredited, and deconstructionism has slid down the intellectual mountainside into a swamp of moral relativism, the two most powerful paths of rebellion among young opinion formers are identity politics and religion, and the former of these is already fairly shopworn. Hence, perhaps, the beginnings of a revival of faith. Rejecting Christian teaching no longer requires daring; it is the path of dull conformity.
In 1993, a million Catholics under the age of 35 gathered in Denver for World Youth Day, just as hordes will arrive in Toronto this July for the latest of these gatherings organized by the Catholic church. Looking at the vast throng in the Rockies nine years ago, the Bishop of Seattle said "this is a revolution," and expressed bewilderment about why so many young people had come. Perhaps it was to hear a revolutionary message about good and evil.