Canadians are losing their religion at an unprecedented rate, with more than a third of the country reporting no religious affiliation in the latest census, Statistics Canada revealed Wednesday.
And while the latest tranche of data from the 2021 census shows the proportion of non-religious Canadians has more than doubled in the past 20 years - to 34.6 per cent, up from 16.5 per cent in 2001 - the share of the country who identify as Christian has shrunk.
“If you leave your community in a place like Toronto, you're just a worker,” she said. “You try to find that meaning and connection and humanity … but that's not a guarantee.” Until the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, they met weekly at an interfaith centre, hosting speakers and musicians.They migrated to virtual meetings when the pandemic began, and haven't switched back since.“We're meeting a need,” she said. “It's being organized by people like me who have the need themselves and have tried to create something to meet a need we have.”
“Very often, what tends to happen is there's a characterization of non-religious people as somehow having a gap or a yearning. And I think that we perhaps want to bracket that and instead ask, simply, what are the things that people care about?” Beaman said.