People who want to know more about the role religion plays in Canadian society will soon have a one-stop source for this information from the new Institute for Religion, Culture and Societal Futures.
The institute, which was launched this month, is led by Sarah Wilkins-Laflamme and Galen Watts of the University of Waterloo and Carol Ann MacGregor of St. Jerome’s University, a Catholic liberal arts university affiliated with the University of Waterloo.
Based at St. Jerome’s, the institute aims to bring together scholars from different disciplines to study and gain a better understanding of the religious landscape in Canada.
The institute will specialize in four main areas of research: Religious trends in Canada; the interaction between religion, spirituality and culture; religion and spirituality in schools; and the realities and future of Catholic life in Canada.
For Wilkins-Laflamme, the institute will meet a need for quality data about religion in Canada.
The lack of good quality research about religion in Canada means Canadians tend to be “influenced by news from the US, which frequently highlights the most extreme versions of religion,” said Wilkins-Laflamme.
Unlike in the US, where a number of organizations survey the religious scene, there are few places for Canadians to go to know more about the Canadian religious landscape, she said.
And if they aren’t getting it from news media, Canadians are getting their ideas about religion from Hollywood, Netflix or other streaming services, which show religion from a mostly American point of view, she said.
In addition to providing information about religion, the institute will focus on the growing non-religion movement in Canada through the rise of the “nones” — people who say they have no religious affiliation.
“This is a significant moment with the rise of the nones and other new spiritual movements,” said Watts, of the University of Waterloo.
“Canadians are seeking new spiritual frameworks to make sense of their lives and the world around them, but there is little systemic analysis of what is happening.”
Since many of the nones say they are spiritual, one thing the institute will wrestle with is how to come up with new ways of describing spirituality and religiosity, he noted.
The old ways of doing so — such as affiliation with a faith group, attendance at religious services and belief in God — “are less relevant than ever before,” Watts said.
“People are not thinking of religion in conventional ways today,” he said. “We want to study how they are expressing their spiritual and religious longings.”
Other topics the institute wants to examine include the rise of Christian nationalism, religion in rural Canada, immigration and religion, education and religion, politics and religion, the impact of the pandemic on religious life and something called “conspirituality” — how some people combine religion and spirituality with conspiracy theories, such as happened during the pandemic.
At the same time, the institute will explore Canada’s shift from the Christian hegemonic country it was 50 to 60 years ago, to a country made up of people of many faiths and no faith.
Although the institute is part of an academic institution and operated by scholars, it doesn’t want to keep what it learns in an ivory tower. The creators say they want to share their findings with religious groups, the media, politicians and the public through webinars, symposiums, conferences and social media.
“We want to bring our expertise to the subject, understand how it works and share it with others,” said Wilkins-Laflamme.
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