How are Canada’s Five Largest Protestant Denominations Faring? A Look at the 2001 Census
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This paper examines how changing patterns of religious affiliation in Canada have affected its five largest Protestant denominations since World War II, by looking at both Census data as well as church membership and Sunday school enrolment figures. On the whole, these denominations did well in the 1950s, but in the 1960s they experienced a relative decline, and thereafter an absolute decline. This decline, which began among the latter edge of the baby boomers, was sudden and precipitous. So where did their former affiliates go? Some of them identified themselves as having “No Religion.” Others, we will argue using demographic comparisons, identified themselves using the generic terms “Protestant” and “Christian.” These two categories have grown so quickly that they now account for half of the country’s Protestants outside the Protestant 5. Using the same techniques, we will further argue that many of these generic Christians have a weak connection with organized religion. Finally, we argue that the identification of “No Religion” is not a temporary stage in the life cycle, but rather represents a growing and persistent trend. Taken together, these developments signify a persistent and deepening decline among those who would have formerly affiliated with the Protestant 5. In addition to this trend, we also identify a rapidly growing number of youths who have never identified with organized religion. As a result, the Protestant 5 are facing a novel situation in which a growing number of Canadians simply do not have any idea what they, or Christianity in general, are about. Such a situation is an unprecedented one in our nation’s history. And the signs are that this trend is gaining momentum. Le présent article étudie l’impact, depuis la Deuxième Guerre Mondiale, des changements d’affiliation religieuse sur les cinq confessions protestantes les plus importantes au Canada. Cette étude est fondée sur les résultats des recensements et sur le nombre des adhésions aux églises et aux “Sunday Schools”. De manière générale, ces églises ne connurent pas de problème dans les années 1950. À partir des années 1960, un déclin relatif se fit jour, suivi d’un déclin absolu. Ce déclin, amorcé avec la dernière vague des baby boomers, fut soudain et rapide. Qu’est-il advenu des anciens adhérents? Certains d’entre eux disent d’eux-mêmes qu’ils n’ont pas de religion (“aucune religion”). D’autres, selon nos comparaisons démographiques, se placent sous les bannières génériques de “Protestant” et de “Chrétien”. Ces deux catégories ont connu une telle croissance qu’elles renferment maintenant plus de la moitié des Protestants du Canada (hors les cinq confessions protestantes). Nous avançons qu’un nombre de ces “Chrétiens génériques” n’ont qu’un lien lâche avec des groupes religieux organisés traditionnels. Enfin, nous soutenons que le choix de l’appellation “aucune religion” n’est pas temporaire, mais représente plutôt une tendance croissante. Ce sont là des manifestations significatives du déclin des adhésions aux cinq confessions protestantes. De plus, nous notons qu’un nombre croissant de jeunes ne s'identifient à aucune religion organisée traditionnelle. Les cinq confessions protestantes font donc face à une situation nouvelle : un nombre grandissant de Canadiens ne savent pas ce que sont ces confessions, ni ne savent ce qu’est le christianisme. Il s'agit là d’une situation sans précédent dans l’histoire de notre pays, et tout indique que cette tendance va en s'accentuant.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.006 | 0.012 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.005 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".