Seventy years ago, most Canadians would have seen religion in a mostly positive light. Things are different today, especially for younger Canadians.
That is the conclusion of a new study by Galen Watts of the University of Waterloo and Sam Reimer of Crandall University after interviewing 50 Anglo-Canadian millennials, born between 1980 and 2000, who identified as spiritual but not religious.
Unlike for their parents and grandparents, religion now conjures up largely negative associations for many younger Canadians, the two scholars said.
“If you could go back to 1950s Canada, most people, when they heard the word ‘religion,’ would think of largely positive things like morality, family, Canadian identity, etc.,” said Watts.
Today, however, among millennials and Gen Z, the word “religion” tends to “conjure up very different, largely negative, associations,” he said. “They think it’s stupid, backward, hypocritical and oppressive — not good for people like them.”
Specifically, the study found four main reasons why younger Canadians have negative views on religion today: they see it as anti-modern, conservative, American and colonial.
Among those interviewed, “it was common sense that ‘religion’ was a holdover of a primitive premodern past,” says the study, which was published in Oxford Academic’s Sociology of Religion.
“Among these Canadian millennials, the term ‘religion’ conjured up associations of backwardness, ignorance, and hostility to intellectual inquiry that made it fundamentally antithetical to modern life … it was simply common sense among our informants that one could not be simultaneously ‘religious’ and ‘modern,’” the study says.
It was also commonplace to hear that religion is at odds with social progress, Watts and Reimer said, because religion is seen as dogmatic, strict, inflexible and intolerant.
“The most visceral emotions were provoked when they spoke about the discrimination and hate they associated with religion,” they said. Christianity was most often singled out for criticism for its conservative character.
The American Christian right played a significant role when it came to why these millennials had negative views of religion. During the interviews, “it was rare for our informants not to allude to the United States — specifically, to the American Christian right,” the authors said, noting that many cited the blending of Christianity and conservative politics in that country.
Finally, the mistreatment of Indigenous peoples by Christian churches through residential schools was consistently invoked in the interviews.
“When this topic was raised, the emotional tenor of interviews almost unanimously turned sombre, with the majority of non-Indigenous informants displaying feelings of shame and regret,” Watts and Reimer said.
While changing demographics, economic prosperity and rising education levels have long been understood as reasons for religion’s decline in Canada, Watts says, this study uncovered another driver of that trend: that perceptions of religion are changing.
It’s a “very powerful reason for why religion has declined so rapidly,” he said. “It’s not the only reason, to be sure. But it’s an important one.”
For Reimer, while religion as a whole “now carries negative connotations for many, but not all, Canadians, it is not equal across all brands.”
He noted that Muslims and evangelical Christians experience the most negative bias in Canada — Islam for its association with radicalization and violence by some, and evangelicals for their association with the US right and being anti-LGBTQ.
While the study focused on the negative perceptions of religion by younger Canadians, its findings go beyond them, Reimer added.
“We think this discourse on religion is much bigger than spiritual-but-not-religious millennials in Canada, as religion takes on a negative connotation for many.”
Galen Watts is a founding member of the Institute for Religion, Culture and Societal Futures at the University of Waterloo and St. Jerome’s University, which publishes research on religion, spirituality and emerging forms of belief and practice in Canada. Canadian Affairs is the official media partner of the institute.
I read with great interest John Longhursts report re young people’s strong, negative attitudes towards religion! I am not at all surprised with the reasoning behind our young people’s views re religion, as I have been aware of this for a long time now and, as a senior, agree with their views! The pathetic and disgusting views held by conservative and evangelicals, especially in the U S, feeds young people’s religious views! Keep up the good reporting!
At 50 subjects, this is a pretty narrow study. Mr. Watts should come out to Creekside Church in Waterloo to find a wider audience of young people to interview. Yes, the global church has had issues in the past. What institution hasn’t? The church is flawed because people are flawed. They have been since the beginning of time. Rather than focus on the negative, these researchers should be focusing on the positive stories that people- and community-oriented churches bring; for example, serving the homeless and people struggling with mental heath issues in our community. If these researchers would stop focusing on the minority of self-interested people within the church walls and instead start focusing instead on the majority who are trying to make positive contributions to their communities, they would be contributing a lot more to society than this flawed study allows. To the researchers – our youth are in crisis; depression and suicide rates amongst this cohort are at record levels. I believe that attending a church; synagogue; or mosque and building a relationship with our loving God builds hope and turns us from self-interest into being other-focused. Building such a relationship could stem the surge in depression rates and suicide, so I would strongly advise that you start focusing on how your articles impact these youth. Certainly, this article is a discouragement to building a relationship with God at a time when our youth need him/her the most.