TruthBook Religious News Blog

By Jim Coggins

This is the first of a two-page article. Please click on "external source" for complete article.

TEENAGERS are becoming more moral but less religious, according to a new study released by one of Canada's most respected sociologists.

The Emerging Millennials: How Canada's Newest Generation is Responding to Change & Choice is the title of the latest book by Reginald Bibby, a sociologist with the University of Lethbridge. It is based on a survey of 4,746 high school students aged 15 - 19 that he conducted in 2008.

Friendship and freedom

Asked what they found "very important," the Millennials -- as teenagers in this age bracket are called -- responded emphatically: friendship (86 percent) and freedom (85 percent). These values rated higher than a comfortable life (75 percent), a good education (73 percent), success (73 percent), family life (67 percent), money (44 percent), looks (40 percent) and popularity (16 percent). They also ranked much higher than did spirituality (27 percent) and involvement in a religious group (13 percent).

Along with these values, Millennials also demonstrated that they hold a number of "traditional" moral values. Eighty-four percent said trust is "very important," and 81 percent said honesty is. Millennials also value humour (75 percent), concern for others (65 percent), politeness (64 percent), forgiveness (60 percent) and working hard (55 percent).

Relativism rules

Nonetheless, almost two-thirds of Millennials said that "what's right or wrong is a matter of personal opinion." When asked what they based their own moral values on, 43 percent said "how I feel at the time," and seven percent said "a personal decision." Sixteen percent cited their parents' views, three percent said their friends, and only 10 percent based their moral decisions on "religion" -- slightly below the 12 percent who said their moral views were based on "nothing."

This, however, does not mean Millennials are not acting morally. From 2000 to 2008, the percentage of teens who drink alcohol declined from 78 percent to 71 percent, the percentage who smoke dropped from 37 percent to 22 percent, the percentage who use marijuana or hashish dropped from 37 percent to 31 percent, and the percentage who never have sex rose from 51 percent to 56 percent. In fact, the study claims, teens are having sex less frequently than seniors. The April 13 issue of Maclean's magazine responded to Bibby's findings by dubbing Millennials the "tame" generation.

Teens have not, however, fully embraced traditional values. Seventy-two percent of Millennials said they approved of sex before marriage "when people love each other"; but that is down from 82 percent in 2000 and 87 percent in 1992. Similarly, 44 percent approve of homosexual relations and accept them, and another 28 percent disapprove but accept them; however, that level is lower than the approval rate among Baby Boomers (people who were born between 1946 and 1965).

Who needs organized religion?

Millennials have inherited trends established by their grandparents and their parents -- particularly a trend away from organized religion.

In the 1950s, more than 60 percent of Canadians attended a Christian church weekly. In the 21st century, less than 30 percent do. Conservative Protestants (evangelicals, Baptists, Pentecostals, Mennonites, Christian Reformed, etc.) have held steady at about eight percent of the population; but there have been very significant declines among mainline Protestants (United, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Lutherans), and among Roman Catholics.

Labels: Canada, Jim Coggins, millennials, organized religion, Reginald Bibby, religion, teenagers

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Friday, April 10, 2009

Youth Survey: Teens lose faith in droves

Youth Survey: Teens lose faith in droves

Islam and atheism are on the rise while Christianity fades

Teens lose faith in drovesEvery day, Mohamed Hadi wakes up before sunrise for morning prayer. The 19-year-old then boards a bus for the 90-minute ride from his home in Richmond, B.C., to the campus of Simon Fraser University, where he’s studying to become a physiotherapist. He’s involved in the Muslim Students’ Association, and with Rich in Faith, a Muslim youth group he founded that offers tutoring and mentoring services. Hadi’s a busy guy, yet he always finds time for his religion, including prayer five times a day. “It helps me stay composed,” he says, “and to maintain balance in my life.”

Such devotion is rare among teens these days—or at least, among those from Protestant and Catholic households. Just as the younger generation is abandoning the Christian faith, though, non-Western religions, such as Islam and Buddhism, are growing in Canada at a surprising speed. According to new data from Project Teen Canada, more teens now identify as Muslim than Anglican, United Church of Canada and Baptist combined. As a group, the percentage who adhere to so-called “other faiths”—including Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and Sikhism—has grown fivefold since Project Teen began its surveys in 1984, while the percentage of teens who identify as Roman Catholic has declined by one third, and the percentage who identify as Protestant is down by almost two-thirds.

A side effect of this trend is a hollowing-out of the religious middle ground in Canada. Reginald Bibby, the University of Lethbridge sociologist who heads up Project Teen, says the grey zone of those who believe in God, but don’t regularly practise an established religion, is rapidly emptying out, leaving behind two distinct camps: teens who are very religious and actively practise their religion, and those who don’t believe in God at all. “For years I have been saying that, for all the problems of organized religion in Canada, God has continued to do well in the polls,” Bibby writes in The Emerging Millennials, a new book based on Project Teen’s latest findings. “That’s no longer the case.”

The growth in popularity of faiths such as Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism can largely be attributed to immigration, Bibby says. Indeed, there are more new Canadians than ever—immigrants made up 20 per cent of the population in 2006, according to Statistics Canada, up from 16 per cent in 1981. And the majority of new Canadians now hail from the Middle East and Asia, whereas most came from Europe a decade before.

Foreign-born teens are more likely to be religious when they arrive, but whether that faith will persist over the coming generations remains to be seen. “Because these faith groups are so small, they often can’t hang on to their kids,” Bibby explains. “They have this maddening tendency to socialize with Protestant, Catholic, and ‘no religion’ friends, and marry out of their parents’ groups.” But immigration will continue to supply fresh believers, so it’s likely that their community support will grow too. That’s been Hadi’s experience. Amongst his friends, many of whom are Muslim, “we all know when it’s time to pray. If we forget, we’ll remind each other,” he says. “Community is an integral part of the equation.”

For Canada’s Christian teens, meanwhile, the community is shrinking like never before. Since 1984, the percentage of teens who call themselves Christian has almost been cut in half while the number who call themselves atheist has grown to 16 per cent, up from just six per cent in the mid-1980s. Just as the boomers shifted toward agnosticism, teens are now going a step further and rejecting religion entirely. “Belief is learned, pretty much like the multiplication table,” Bibby writes. “So is non-belief.”

Labels: belief, Buddhism, Canada, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Project Teen, religion, teenagers

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Friday, February 06, 2009

Study: Service Attendance, Not Spirituality, May Decrease Suicide Risk

By Aaron J. Leichman
Christian Post Reporter
Tue, Jan. 20 2009 11:20 AM EST

Religious individuals have a significantly lower chance of committing suicide, according to the results of a recent study in Canada.

Individuals identifying themselves simply as “spiritual” but not religious, however, are not much less likely to commit suicide than anyone else.

Conducted using data drawn from the Canadian Community Health Survey on almost 37,000 Canadians across the country, the latest study by a team of psychiatric researchers based at the University of Manitoba was the first to use national data to look at the relationship between spirituality, religious worship and suicidal behavior in the general population and people with a history of a mental disorder.

However, what was more interesting was the differences between people who call themselves “spiritual” and those who also regularly attend religious services.

According to the data, the former category did not show a decreased inclination to take their lives, suggesting something more was involved that was related to the actual attendance at a religious event occurring in a church, mosque, temple or other spiritual gathering.

Furthermore, among people with a history of mental illness – those at the highest risk of suicide –religious attendance appeared to be associated with a decrease in suicide attempts while simply being “spiritual” was not significant enough to reduce the effect.

Despite the findings, Rasic cautioned against tying the decrease in suicide attempts directly to religious worship.

For most studies dealing with spirituality and religiousness, spirituality is considered as referring to an inner belief system that a person relies on for strength and comfort whereas religiousness refers to institutional religious rituals, practices, and beliefs.

For the recent Canadian study, religiousness was based on a person’s attendance at a religious worship service.

The research results have been published in the Journal of Affective Disorders.

Labels: Aaron J. Leichman, Canada, Canadian Community Health Survey, church, religion, spirituality, suicide

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Friday, January 30, 2009

Groups unite for global celebration

‘For once, we’re all in the same room’
By JON TATTRIE
Sat. Jan 24 - 4:47 AM

Halifax joined the global celebration of World Religion Day on Sunday. A couple hundred people from at least 10 faith groups slipped through a snowstorm to gather at All Saints’ Cathedral in downtown Halifax.

Dozens of groups across Canada and thousands around the world united to celebrate what they say is the common heart of all religions. World Religion Day has been observed on the third Sunday of January annually since 1950, when it was initiated by the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of the United States.

The Halifax event was organized by the Baha’i community.

"In the Baha’i writings, it talks about all religions being equal and that the purpose of religion should actually be to unite the human race," said Ariel Borden, a dancer in the Baha’i Army of Light Dance Troupe.

"I think that it’s been really inspirational, in the sense that in this day and age, a lot of us see religions as dividers of humanity."

Sunday was a sort of variety show from faith groups. The Baha’i started things off with the dance troupe’s stomping presentation of the words of Baha’u’llah, the Baha’i founder, who said that world peace was not only possible, but inevitable. Billy Lewis then led the Mi’kmaq Kitpu Youth Drummers and Dancers in a smudge ceremony. A youth group from Beechville Baptist Church presented the word of God through interpretive dance, the Vedenta Ashram Society read from the Hindu scriptures and Saint Matthew’s United Church acted out the parable of the Good Samaritan.

Halifax’s Buddhist community joined in with a series of contemplative songs and the Universalist Unitarian Church added some folksy music. Brahma Kumaris captured much of the sense of the meeting with Four Faces of the Soul, a dance/spoken word piece describing the journey of the soul.

It starts off in Innocence, free and unfrightened, but is soon "protected" by Tradition. It eventually rejects those trappings and the Modern incarnation goes into rebellion. In the end, the peaceful soul enters Shakti, the face of transformation.

Ursula Johnson and Billy Lewis of the Mi’kmaq group spoke about their participation after the event. Johnson said it was the group’s fifth year.

"We really enjoy the opportunity to come and share some practices and some music and forms of celebration of our spirituality from the aboriginal culture," she said.

Lewis, an elder, explained the meaning behind the smudge ceremony. Booming drums echoed through the vast church while the Kitpu group sang high-pitched chants as Lewis fanned the smoke from burning sweetgrass onto the gathering.

Attending World Religion Day was for Lewis a sign that at root, all spiritual values are shared.

Debbie Nicholson, the main organizer from the Baha’is, said they had more than 120 participants, from babies to seniors. She was especially pleased to have the Nova Gospel Ensemble for the first time.

"It really worked well," she said of the group’s rafter-raising performance. "It’s a part of our culture in Nova Scotia, that kind of gospel music, so it was nice to bring that element in."

She acknowledged that not all faiths were present, but said they extend the welcome as wide as they can and drew 10 different faith groups this year, plus the ensemble.

She’s got her eyes on groups like the Quakers for future years to expand the celebration.

"For once, we’re all in the same room," she said of the day.

Labels: Baha'i, Canada, interfaith, Jon Tattrie, World Religion Day

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Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Poll: Do People Need God to be Good?

By Nathan Black
Christian Post Reporter
Wed, Oct. 24 2007

Atheists can be good, but people who believe in God are more likely to value being good, a recent study showed.

An analysis by sociologist and pollster Reginald Bibby of the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada, addressed the question "Do people need God to be good?"

Polling 1,600 Canadians, the nationwide survey found that those who believe in God are consistently more likely than atheists to highly value such traits as courtesy, concern for others, forgiveness, generosity and patience. Believers are also more inclined to place high value on friendship, family life, and being loved.

While God and religion are not the only sources of such traits, the survey reported that they are among the most important sources. And without them, "it is not at all clear that comparable equivalents currently exist that could fill the void," according to the report.

Bibby suggests that the primary reason believers place higher value on being good is that they are far more likely than atheists to be part of groups that work hard to instill those values. Although not all believers translate their values into action, they are at least inclined to hold the values, according to the study.

The debate on whether God is necessary to have good morals has increasingly taken public stage between staunch atheists and Christian apologists.

Nearly half of Canadians (49 percent) say they definitely believe God exists and 33 percent say they think He exists; 11 percent have doubts and don't think there is a higher power; and 7 percent say they definitely do not believe God exists.

Labels: atheism, Canada, God, goodness, Nathan Black, Reginald Bibby

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Saturday, July 28, 2007

A Creator God

7/26/2007
The Catholic Register
(www.catholicregister.org)

Occasionally, the image of Canadians — as portrayed in popular media — runs headlong into the wall of Canadian reality. It happened in early July when a new opinion poll revealed that a majority of Canadians believe that God had a hand in making human beings who they are.

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The Canadian Press Decima Research poll, released July 3, showed that only 29 percent of those surveyed believed that God had no part in the creation or development of human beings. This statistic runs against the grain of common perception. Anyone could be forgiven for thinking Canadians were a race of atheists or agnostics if all they knew of the country came from the daily news.

Despite this ingrained perception, the polls consistently say otherwise. For instance, who knew 26 percent of Canadians are essentially creationists when it comes to evolution? Yet there are almost as many creationists as there are hardcore religious skeptics. Come on over Stockwell Day. It appears the former leader of the Alliance party, and current public-safety minister, has lots of company.

In fact, a plurality of Canadians – 34 percent – actually agree with the statement that “human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process.” Few Catholic theologians, including Pope Benedict XVI, would have any problem with this position from a doctrinal point of view. The Catholic Church has understood for some time that nothing in church teaching stood in the way of accepting evolution as the best available scientific theory for describing the biological roots of humanity, as long as this belief did not preclude the foundational role of God in the process.

There were also some interesting regional revelations in the survey. Belief in creationism was at its lowest in Quebec at 21 percent (not surprisingly), but second was Alberta (22 percent) and British Columbia (22 percent), both of which have reputations as diehard conservative neighborhoods, overrun with fundamentalist Christians. Also in once overwhelmingly Catholic Quebec, the greatest percentage of those surveyed (40 percent) felt God had no role in creating humans.

Another challenge to conventional wisdom can be found in the political preferences of those surveyed. More Conservatives (31 percent) than Liberals (29 percent) were likely to say God had no part in human development. What does this say about the influence of the religious right, except that it has been exaggerated? Or about the “godless” Liberals?

While it is always prudent to be careful how much to read into opinion polls, it could be reasonably concluded from this survey that Canadians are yet to jettison a belief in a creator as the source of life. While institutional religion may suffer from declining attendance and other related ills, Canadians, by and large, still remain believers. Whether those beliefs are more than skin deep is a question for another poll.

Labels: Canada, Christianity, creation, God

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Thursday, July 12, 2007

Most see God-creation link: Poll

Jul 03, 2007 01:58 PM

Canadian Press
OTTAWA —

Canadians may not be as religious as Americans, but a new poll suggests they are not prepared to rule out God’s essential role in creation.

The Canadian Press-Decima Research survey suggests that 60 per cent of Canadians believe God had either a direct or indirect role in creating mankind, shattering the myth that Canadians had long ago put their faith strictly behind the scientific explanation for creation.

The poll suggests Canadians divide in essentially three groups on the issue of creation: 34 per cent of those polled said humans developed over millions of years under a process guided by God; 26 per cent said God created humans alone within the last 10,000 years or so; and 29 per cent said they believe evolution occurred with no help from God.

“These results reflect an essential Canadian tendency,” said pollster Bruce Anderson. “We are pretty secular, but pretty hesitant to embrace atheism.”

The belief that God had a direct or indirect role in creation was widespread among the 1,000 respondents questioned between June 21 and 24. A majority of those polled held this view in every region of the country, in rural and urban areas, and regardless of education.

And there were a few surprises: Conservatives were more likely than Liberals to say that God had no part in the process, and Alberta, regarded as the birthplace of social conservatism, had one of the lowest levels of beliefs for strict creationism at 22 per cent.

But in this controversial area, the devil is in the breakdown of the numbers.

For instance, while Liberal party voters were more likely than Conservatives to credit God with some contribution to creation, Conservative voters were less likely to write God out altogether. Only 22 per cent of Tory respondents said God had no role, as opposed to 31 per cent of Liberals.

Liberal respondents were far more likely to be what could be termed “soft evolutionists” or “soft creationists,” with 41 per cent saying God guided the process of human development, as opposed to 34 per cent of Conservatives seeing creation in those terms.

Regionally, Quebec respondents were by far the most likely to say God’s role in creation was a delusion, with 40 per cent saying the evolutionary process had no interference from an intelligent designer.

British Columbia respondents were the next sub-group who could be termed strict evolutionists, with 31 per cent saying God was not involved. Least likely to hold this view were respondents in the Prairie provinces — 21 per cent.

The findings suggest the least educated were most likely to be creationists, as were respondents living in rural Canada.

Among respondents without a high-school diploma, 37 per cent said they believed God alone created humans less than 10,000 years ago, whereas only 15 per cent of university-educated respondents were strict creationists.

Rural respondents also had a plurality who believed in strict creationism at 34 per cent, whereas only 22 per cent of urban dwellers said they believed God alone created humans.
Anderson said the findings suggest Canadians lack consensus on creation, but also don’t view the issue as polarizing.

“It’s more as though for many, these feelings are unresolved,” he said. “We believe in a higher being, we know what we don’t know, are comfortable not knowing, and choose not to press our views upon one another.”

That is not the case in the United States, where similar polls have suggested Americans are more polarized on the subject. In a recent U.S. poll, 45 per cent said God created humans, and 40 per cent said evolution was God guided. Only 15 per cent said God played no part in creation.

The Canadian Press-Decima Research survey is considered accurate within 3.1 percentage points, 19 times in 20.

Labels: Canada, Conservative, creation, God, Liberal

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Thursday, June 14, 2007

The real roots of crime

The Daily News

A new Ipsos Reid survey commissioned by CanWest News Service and Global National finds that half of Canadians think schools are more dangerous today than five years ago. They blame bad parenting, society's disintegrating moral fabric and violence in the media as the prime culprits. One-third of respondents identified absent, lax or poor parenting as the root cause of school violence, and about one-quarter citing a perceived "lack of morals, conscience and respect" as being to blame.

Only 15 per cent thought "gangs" are the primary cause of escalating violence in Canadian schools, and just 11 per cent blamed the availability of guns - notwithstanding the histrionics of anti-gun lobbyists and some fellow-travelling politicians such as Toronto Mayor David Miller.

Convenient scapegoats

The public gut differs from many politicians, the media and various special-pleading activists who continue to blame rising adolescent depravity on the Internet, guns, video games and Hollywood violence. These are convenient scapegoats for much deeper distempers afflicting our culture - ones the left/liberal, self-styled elites don't want to acknowledge or address.

The root of the problem is that an ideology of moral relativism has been uncritically assimilated by three or four successive generations, rendering many people incapable of judging right from wrong.

Interestingly, science tends to corroborate grassroots perception more than leftist social theorizing. In criminological literature, "bad" parenting is frequently portrayed as a risk factor for unhealthy social development and, in turn, antisocial behaviour.

For instance, a study by M.R. Gottfredson and T. Hirschi, A General Theory of Crime, (Stanford University Press, 1990) finds that a propensity to engage in crime is the prime cause of involvement in crime and deviant behaviours. It argues that ineffective parenting is the reason children fail to develop self-control - lack of which is a characteristic that persists across the lifespan, predisposing individuals afflicted to lifetimes of criminal behaviour.

Gottfredson and Hirschi contend that children raised in unstructured environments fail to develop the ability to control their behaviour, and are therefore prone to engage in risky behaviours that give them either a short-term reward or relief from momentary irritations. It is failure of parents to make the effort to instil internal control that leads to childhood, and later adult, misconduct.

The baby-boomer and boomer-shadow parents of today's crop of adolescents and pre-teens are arguably the most disastrously ineffectual cohort of parents in history. Steeped in the post-1960s cult of permissiveness and a constellation of other half-baked leftist notions, they have, in the main, failed miserably at executing their parental duty of nurturing ethics of civility, duty, self-control, and responsibility in their offspring.

Reflexive contempt for self-sacrificial virtue and rejection of real religion in favour of facile, feel-good "spirituality" have robbed these postmodern parents of the tools needed to combat the malignancies today's depraved popular culture inflicts on their children. Too many parents are themselves afflicted with "perpetual adolescence syndrome," identifying with their loutish kids against teachers and other authorities as agents of oppression to be opposed at every turn.

Christina Hoff Sommers, a philosophy professor at Clark University, says many of her students are "incapable of making one single confident moral judgment."There is really no such thing as right or wrong, they tell her. Each person has to work it out for himself.

"The trouble is," laments Hoff Sommers, "that this kind of answer, which is so common as to be typical, is no better than the moral philosophy of a sociopath."Today's kids have been deceived by aggressive advocacy of bad philosophical values - the sort that are big on "rights," and "self-esteem," very light on things like responsibility, respect, duty, honour, self-control, self-sacrifice and other quaint qualities that used to be revered as unquestioned virtues in our society.

Moral naivete

This increasing moral naivete combines catastrophically with a popular culture of violent, sex-saturated entertainment, dysfunctional family life, abdication of parental authority; social science quackery in the educational system and in the social work and judicial arenas; an aggressive consumer/materialist ethos; and the pervasiveness of drugs, booze, violent entertainment, and promiscuous sex in youth culture.

Under these circumstances, it's no mystery why some kids turn predatory. Until the parenting problem is addressed, there is no hope of turning the tide of youthful anarchy, anomie and alienation.

At least the new survey reveals that public perception is finally clueing in to the actual causes and nature of the distemper. Getting people to implement the remedy will be another matter.

cwmoore@gmx.net

Charles W. Moore is a Nova Scotian freelance writer and editor whose articles, features, and commentaries have appeared in more than 40 magazines and newspapers in Canada, the U.S., the U.K., and Australia.

Labels: Canada, morality, parents, relativism, self-control, violence