In the ’90s sitcom Roseanne, son DJ comes to his parents with the question “What religion are we?”
Dad Dan says, “Well, my family’s Pentecostal on my mom’s side, Baptist on my dad’s side. Your mom’s mom was Lutheran and her dad was Jewish.”
“So what do we believe?” DJ asks. The parents shift awkwardly.
“Well,” mom Roseanne begins, “We believe in being good. So basically we’re good people.”
“Yes,” says Dan. “But we’re not practising.”
Confusing family stories like this are probably the new normal in Canada, according to a recent study from the Angus Reid Institute, which suggests a large swath of Canadians — 44 per cent — are neither inclined to embrace religion nor inclined to reject it, but define themselves as somewhere in between. This group is the plurality in every region, age and gender. Of respondents, another 30 per cent said they are inclined to embrace religion and an almost parallel 26 per cent said they are inclined to reject it.
There are some fascinating and bizarre findings in the study.
Among the large number of religiously ambivalent, 87 per cent continue to identify with a religious tradition. Even among the 26 per cent who reject religion, a majority continues to identify with a religious tradition. In other words, perhaps, “The church we don’t attend is United (or Catholic, or whatever our grandparents subscribed to).”
Curious too is that almost three in four of the religiously ambivalent respondents do not believe that the growth of atheism has been a good thing for Canada. So even as we move away from religion, we don’t necessarily think atheism is a positive alternative.
In the category of most contradictory, I would particularly like to have a beer with the seven per cent who reject religion but want a religious funeral. I guess most of us sometimes hedge bets.
Millions of Canadians reject or are simply ambivalent to religion, but cling strongly to certain aspects, like feeling a personal connection with God and praying privately or saying grace at the table.
While the report has a lot of fascinating new nuggets, it also confirms the anecdotal evidence that SBNR — spiritual but not religious — has become a thing. But what does that even mean?
Obviously, it means different things to different people. There may have been a mythological time when Canada was a country of Protestants, Catholics and a few Jews. Since the 1960s, there has been a tremendous influx of people of different traditions. In more recent years, it seems we have refracted into possibly millions of spiritual perspectives.
Not addressed by the study, but something that I’ve pondered is the basic nomenclature around these subjects. The blanket terms “faith” and “belief” seem problematic, because not all religious streams are defined by these words. For some — most notably, in my experience, liberal Christians and many adherents of Judaism — religion is not primarily about answers, or about having faith or belief, but about exploring questions and acknowledging what we don’t know, and can’t know. For others, spirituality is more about practices of the mind and body than about theological verities.
By a similar token, the word “belief,” which implies religious certainty, seems like a sort of sacrilege, the human arrogance that we could possibly know the unknowable. And not only know it, but insist that our knowledge is certain and unchallengeable. That kind of certainty — that “belief” — is rejected by increasing numbers of Canadians, nowhere more so than here on the Wet Coast.
Huge numbers of Vancouverites believe that there is something greater than ourselves, but recognize as futile attempts to define it. This seems like a respectful approach to divinity or spirituality or whatever word we use to describe our relationship with the unknown.
There is still, of course, a significant number of Canadians who believe that their books represent the word of God. These various scriptures are the foundations upon which our ancestors sought to make sense of the world around them — and many people still do, some very thoughtfully, some mindlessly. But according to this study, a large majority of us are not convinced they hold definitive answers to our infinite questions.
This and similar studies seem to suggest a drift away from religion. But maybe that’s not quite it. Maybe these attitudes represent a deepening of spiritual maturity. In at least some cases, it may be a sign of unprecedented spiritual questioning, which is not a rejection of theology or spirit or ritual, but a more advanced, critical approach to it. Sometimes the greatest wisdom is demonstrated by those who acknowledge what they don’t know.
There is enough fodder in the Angus Reid study itself for a series of columns. But given the evidence that an increasing number of Canadians are SBNR, I thought it would be cool to see what that means to people.
By definition, there is no way I could cover every permutation of this sort of individualized spirituality, so I am choosing a few that piqued my curiosity. I have already had my mind (and spirit) opened during my initial research. I hope you will also find in this exploration something that resonates.
And if you have an idea for inclusion in this series, shoot me an email.
PacificSpiritPJ@gmail.com
twitter.com/Pat604Johnson
