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81% of Canadians are asking, “What is the meaning of life?” 64% are asking, “How did the world come into being?” 76% are asking, “What happens after death?”
While 20% of Canadians currently attend religious services every week, another 58% attend at least once a year.
Since the 1950s, weekly attendance at conservative Protestant (evangelical) churches has increased from 700,000 to 1.5 million.
In 1991, only 4% of Canadians identified with faiths other than Christianity, scarcely higher than the 3% recorded in 1871. Moreover, weekly attendance at religious services for these other faiths dropped from 120,000 people in the 1950s to 85,000 in 2000.
– Reginald Bibby, Restless Gods
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“It’s time we said it: when it came to predicting the future of religion generally and Christianity specifically, Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, and Sigmund Freud were wrong. Societies and individuals have not ceased to have a need for religion.”
– Reginald Bibby, Restless Gods: The Renaissance of Religion in Canada (Toronto: Stoddart Publishing Co., 2002)
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Religion is in decline. People have lost interest in church. Canadians no longer ask the questions about meaning and suffering and death which intrigued people in the past. If people do pay any attention to religion, it is the religions “new” to Canadian society which interest them – the New Age, Buddhism, Hinduism, Wicca, Native spirituality, Islam. Canadians certainly aren’t attracted to the Christian faith, which was traditionally the dominant religion in Canada. Right?
Wrong. According to a new book by sociologist Reginald Bibby (Restless Gods: The Renaissance of Religion in Canada), Canadians are deeply interested in religion, and they are returning to churches in considerable numbers. Moreover, they are returning to Christian churches. It is not in New Age teachings and Eastern religions that they are finding satisfactory answers to their questions but in conservative Christian churches which teach such traditional Christian beliefs as that God is the creator of the universe, that the Bible is God’s true message to human beings and that Jesus is the Son of God who died on a cross to pay the penalty for human wrongdoing.
Canadians are not alone in turning to such beliefs. Around the world, Christianity is growing rapidly. In Africa, people for many decades have been turning from “native spirituality” to Christianity. In Asia, people are turning from Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam to Christianity. In Russia and China, bastions of communist atheism just a few years ago, the Christian church has not only survived but is growing rapidly; millions of people have become Christians in the last few years, and many new Christian churches have been established.
Why are people turning to Jesus Christ? The stories in this issue of Encounter focus on real people who have gone searching for meaning in life and have found the most satisfying answers in Jesus. Is there a reason for this? Could it be that the Bible really is true and that Jesus really does have the answers to your deepest questions? Why not read the stories in this magazine, then read the Bible, go to a Christian church and see for yourself if Jesus really does have the answers.
Jim Coggins, Editor
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