Canadian Changing Religious Identities
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Medium (Personal)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/04/19
We are witnessing a changing religious landscape. I came across a minor news item about Nova Scotia. It was by Vernon Ramesar in CBC News.
It covered a number of stories on the growth of religion in some sense in North America. There is an old tale about the Freemasons and others working for religious pluralism in order to grow tolerance and diversity of the religious landscape to prevent massive conflicts, while minor conflicts inflict less damage.
Maybe, there is some wisdom in that. A tolerant and amicable society built on plurality of superstition can seem better than one built on one with political and economic clout. Islam, as a self-identified faith, has grown by two times in 10 years. Not as fast, but the same for Sikhs and Hindus in the country.
Emad Aziz of the Islamic Association of Nova Scotia said, “We have to be very creative in how to make best use of the space we have today, but also think [about how to] provide for the needs of the attendees that are coming.”
It can create difficulties in sustainability and maintainability of such a community because of the growth and the increase in needs. Adaptation for any religious community is difficult. They opened the Pictou County Masjid in 2019 out of a deconsecrated Catholic church.
Churches are dying in Canadian society in general due to losing thousands and thousands of believers every year, and thousands and thousands of worshippers too. In this landscape, we are witnessing a loss of donations to maintain churches. Some fall away and others are replaced by growing religious institutions.
Which is to say, religion, too, is subject to an aspect of economic law of its own. Lower birth rates, lower immigration, fewer believers, fewer serious worshippers, fewer well-to-do benefactors, and off to the world of remembrance they go.
Associate Professor Christiopher Helland of Dalhousie University claims religion helps anchor people in terms of an identity and a sense of self, an orientation to navigate a new environment, world.
As a person without an ideological serious commitment, except to perennial tendencies in human societies grounded in much of what seems like facets of human psychology in more humane and intelligent times, mutual comprehension seems relevant. Humanism is one such lens to see the world. A view to humaneness and people’s superstitions and non-rational instincts as a point of compassion, not veracity or empirical firmament.
Respect for religion does not play a role here. Respect for individuals who adhere to religious orthodoxies is present, particularly among intellectuals of the craft — because there is a formality of thought and a training associated with the reasoning and a particular orthodox ratiocination worth remarking on and taking note of everywhere. You have to look, though.
Helland opines, “It’s not just about believing in the tradition… It’s also about what resources those institutions provide for the newcomers, how it helps them integrate into society.”
I suspect a sense of community may come from an online presence. It can come through community conversations and services. The online resources are cheaper and have been used widely by cults, small faiths, and larger religious communities, to get their messaging out to believers and beyond.
People not only come for the unification of beliefs and ethics. They come for friends, contacts, and guidance, in a new place, even food and feeling a sense of purpose in a variety of volunteerism.
Faith, particularly Christianity, in Canada can look upon immigration as a benefit, as these communities are preventing the overt collapse of whole swathes of faith community in Canada. A buffer to a seemingly inexorable loss in times of comfort, as the last half-century in Canadian society. The West is soft, so religion can be covered by both government and provisions of the economy at individual expense — where individual incomes are far higher than prior families in the decades past.
Minister Beth Hayward of Fort Massey United Church remarked on the difficulty in bridging younger immigration experiences and older Euro-Canadian Christian experiences. Yet, these branches of believers must make the bridge for the communities to survive. And many are, as Ramasar presents. But… for how long?
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