Will Canadian secularism spread south of the border?

Canada's turn from being distinctly Christian to decidedly secular may hold lessons for its more religious neighbor, the United States.

By Douglas Todd, Religion News Service


VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA - In Denys Arcand's Oscar-winning 2003 film, "The Barbarian Invasions," an aging priest laments the decline of Christianity in heavily Catholic Quebec.

"In 1966," the priest says, "all the churches emptied out in a few weeks. No one can figure out why." That scene, said American religious historian Mark Noll, essentially sums up the religious history of Canada.

The decline may not have happened quite so rapidly as Arcand's film suggests. Still, Canada's turn from being distinctly Christian to decidedly secular has caught the attention of historians such as Noll, who wonder if there are lessons for Canada's more religious neighbor to the south.

Noll, one of the United States' most prominent religious historians, who recently moved from Wheaton College outside Chicago to the University of Notre Dame, tackled the question "What Happened to Christian Canada?" at the recent meeting of the American Society of Church History.

In the 1950s, Noll said, the vast majority of Canadians took seats in the pews. A Gallup Poll from the era found almost seven of 10 Canadians attended church once a week, far more than Americans at the time.

But in just half a century, the rate of Canadians' weekly attendance has dropped to 20 percent, while in the United States, the weekly rate is strong at roughly 35 percent.

The reasons are legion

Noll argues that the de-Christianization of Canada was brought about by a wide river of historical developments that began in the 1960s, including declining British influence, high immigration, federal policies that embraced multiculturalism, the Second Vatican Council, the creation of a new Canadian Charter of Rights, globalization, sexual liberation, gay rights and more.

Noll -- a Christian who said he admires Canadians' civility and cooperativeness -- maintains that most Canadian Christian denominations actively promoted this rupture with the past.

In a country that operates in a more "top-down" manner than the United States, Noll said Canadian church leaders embraced many of the secular social values and government programs that indirectly led to Christianity's erosion.

Noll pointed to the fact that Montreal's World Exposition in 1967 contained no sectarian symbols, even though it was held in a province where more than 70 percent of the population regularly attended church.

Instead, Noll said, Montreal's "Expo 67" marked the beginning of the Canadian government and other societal leaders spreading a rhetoric of universal multicultural tolerance.

Aside from secular trends, Noll theorizes that Canada's Roman Catholics and Protestants also contributed to the drop-offs in their own churches, in large part because they stopped treating each other as enemies.

After the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) modernized the Catholic Church and thawed relations with other churches, there was less reason for French-speaking Catholics or English-speaking Protestants to maintain their sectarian identities. Without an external enemy, he said, loyalty to an institution can wither.

At the same time, Noll pointed to the provocative thesis by historian Nancy Christie that the United Church of Canada, the largest Protestant denomination in the country, declined in part because it promoted the secular value of personal freedom -- including sexual freedom -- above public morality.

The Anglican Church of Canada, for its part, waned as a result of decreasing British influence and internal strife, Noll said. Meanwhile, Canada's evangelicals have remained a small minority (less than 10 percent of the population) because they continue to see themselves as outsiders.

Beyond internal church dynamics, however, Noll argues that the sweep of larger forces was probably more important in weakening Canadian churches, shifting Canadian culture away from Christian-based "conservative communalism" to a "liberal communalism." As a result, Canada looks more like the thoroughly secular countries of Europe than does its closest neighbor.

Why is the U.S. different?

So why didn't a similar rapid process of de-Christianization take hold in this country? The answer lies in part in U.S. Christians' competitive streak, Noll said.

Instead of being communitarians who support any efforts to aid the common good, many conservative American Christians promote individualism, voluntarism and a kind of spiritual warfare.

Entrepreneurial U.S. Christians see themselves locked in a battle for supremacy, including against their own government, Noll said. It's helped them maintain their market share. But that hasn't been the case, Noll said, with Canada's more cooperative Christians.