TruthBook Religious News Blog

Almost half of Canadians believe they have been in the presence of God and one in three say they have had a religious or mystical experience, reveals a new poll.

The survey, conducted for CanWest News Service in the days leading up to the Easter weekend, also shows that religious beliefs among Canadians remain as strong as they were a decade ago, but church attendance has slipped.

"There's a huge gap between those who believe and those who belong," said Andrew Grenville, senior vice president of the polling firm Ipsos Reid.

"There are three times as many believers as there are regular attenders."

Sixty-two per cent of those polled agreed with the statement that "through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, God provided the way for the forgiveness of sins."

But only 17 per cent reported regular church attendance of at least once a week.

"There is a thriving privatized faith," said Grenville, adding that Canadians, unlike Americans, have a tendency to avoid public displays of religion. "In America every athlete thanks God after a game and in Canada if somebody did that after a hockey game, they'd be a freak."

The number of Canadian believers is virtually unchanged from 1996, but regular church attendance dipped four per cent.

Moreover, a little more than half of Canadians now say they go only once a year or never at all, an increase from 43 per cent a decade ago.

There was no clear division between younger and older adults, which Grenville said is surprising considering today's young adults, compared to their baby boomer parents, were not raised as Sunday schoolers.

The survey shows a widening gulf between Canadians and Americans.

In the U.S., regular church attendance is more the norm and has remained virtually unchanged since the Second World War.

Thirty-nine per cent of Americans said they went to church at least once a week, more than double Canada's regulars.

The difference can be attributed to Canadians' mistrust of institutions and the fact that there are fewer smaller evangelical churches in this country that there are in the U.S, said Richard Ascough, a religious studies professor at Queen's University in Kingston, Ont.

"The church in a way is perceived as just another institution and people are shying away more and more from things institutional," he said.

"Often I'll hear things like 'I'm religious but I don't go to church, I'm spiritual but I don't go to church.' There's a clear difference to them between believing in God and the institution of the church."

Believers also may have been scared away by scandals that have rocked the churches in recent years, including revelations of sexual abuse and the treatment of Indian students at church-run residential schools, he said.

Janice Tibbetts, CanWest News Service
© The Leader-Post (Regina) 2006