A new book challenges the idea that most Baby Boomers in Quebec are non-religious.
“The religious landscape in Quebec is quite complex and, to some extent, quite contradictory,” said Géraldine Mossière, a professor at the Institute of Religious Studies at the Université de Montréal.
Most Quebecois Baby Boomers will say they are not religious, she says. Many see religion as “backwards” and part of a pre-modern society. Or they associate religion with recent immigrants to Canada.
“We, Quebecois, we are not religious, possibly spiritual, but not religious,” Mossière said, describing common stereotypes people use when discussing religion in Quebec.
But census data tells a different story. In the 2021 census, 58 per cent of Quebecers said they were Catholic. Another six per cent said they belonged to another Christian tradition. Only 30 per cent said they were non-religious or secular.
However, the number of Quebecers who identify as non-religious has increased significantly, rising from 13 per cent in 2011 to 30 per cent in 2021.
Shift to secularization
Mossière’s newest book looks at Quebec’s shift from Catholicism to secularism through the life experiences of Baby Boomers, the generation born immediately after the Second World War.
The lives of Baby Boomers in Quebec “embody” the province’s shift to secularization, Mossière said during a recent lecture hosted by the Institute for Religion, Culture and Societal Futures at the University of Waterloo. They are the “architects but not the promoters of the modernization of Quebec,” she said.
Baby Boomers in Quebec were raised during a time of significant religious and cultural upheaval in the province. The Catholic Church had long controlled both the public life in Quebec, and people’s personal lives. But during the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s, the province broke away from the Church. Since then, many Quebecers see themselves as a secular people, not influenced by religion. For many, a modern Quebec means a society free from religious control, specifically the Catholic Church.
Mossière interviewed 43 Quebecois Baby Boomers for her book, Portraits de la modernité (non) religieuse: Quelques confidences de baby-boomers au Québec. All interviewees were Francophones from families that had been in Quebec for at least two generations and had Catholic backgrounds.
The original goal was to study this group’s religious experiences in general, Mossière said in an interview after her presentation. But because everyone mentioned their upbringing in the Catholic Church, the findings soon became about Catholicism.
Most — 32 — of the individuals Mossière interviewed called themselves Catholic. But many of these self-identified Catholics also said they did not practise the religion or believe in it. For many, it was a statement about their cultural background and their identity “by default,” she said.
Most of them did not think it was a contradiction to call themselves Catholic but say they were not religious, Mossière said. They would say they had values or believed in powerful energies but would not describe this as religious.
Several people she interviewed were interested in eastern religions, like Hinduism or Buddhism, which they first encountered while participating in counter-cultural movements as young adults. Many were also interested in First Nations spirituality. Mossière described this approach as making a personal spiritual “collage by borrowing religious resources from different traditions in a way that suit their needs.”
A few participants formally converted to other religions, whether that be non-Catholic Christian traditions or Islam. A small number had also returned to practising Catholicism, although often in a different way than they did as children.
Bill 21
Mossière’s presentation comes amid renewed focus on Bill 21, a 2019 Quebec law that forbids government employees from wearing religious symbols while working. On Thursday, the Supreme Court of Canada announced it will hear a constitutional challenge to the law.
The law has been widely criticized outside of Quebec, particularly for how it impacts Muslim women who wear religious coverings in public.
But Mossière says Baby Boomers in Quebec who support the law are not doing so because they fear Islam, or dislike people from other countries. Instead, they are concerned about returning to a society where religious institutions control people’s lives.
“Some Quebecois felt that some immigrants’ way of experiencing religion would bring Quebec back to the pre-modern period that they associate with [religious control] and with Catholicism in particular,” she said.
One of the biggest areas of tension is around sexuality and families, Mossière says. Many immigrants have conservative views about sex, marriage and family. Some Quebecers react strongly against that. It reminds them of the strong control the Catholic Church once had over families, by, for instance, telling wives to have as many children as possible.
“Most Quebecois Baby Boomers see religion as something that is dangerous for women’s status and gender equality,” said Mossière.
“On the other end of the spectrum, there are recent immigrants who see that the Quebecois society is really liberal regarding sexuality, regarding family models. So of course, some immigrants also see Quebecois society as a threat to their own values.”
This has led to a lot of political division, she says. But she hopes showing the religious lives of Baby Boomers in Quebec may lessen the division.
“[Religion] is something that tends to polarize social and political debates,” she said. “Maybe my research could smooth those political debates. Baby Boomers also have a religious sensitivity, and maybe they could find some ways to have a conversation with immigrants for whom religious life also means something.”
Another reason for secularization could be a general skepticism regarding the promise of religions to make their people more peaceful. I found an article by the Austrian peace researcher Franz Jedlicka about this topic on Linkedin (“The competition between religious ..”).
Paul