Religion in Canada: A Historical Overview

Abstract

Christianity has profoundly shaped the contours of Canadian life from the early seventeenth century to the present. By the middle of the nineteenth century, Canadian Catholicism and Protestantism had been more influential in virtually every aspect of Canadian life than they had been in the United States. Throughout the last two centuries in Canada, there has been a growing gap between elite religion and the populist variety. Secularization has not necessarily destroyed Canadian Christianity. Rather, it has helped to de-Christianize the elite but not necessarily the rank and file. Thus secularization has significantly weakened the churches, especially the mainline ones. The last decade of the twentieth century has witnessed a remarkable transformation of Canadian religious life. Not only are more and more Canadians abandoning Christianity altogether, but more are privatizing their faith, and a significant percentage of those who are remaining in the churches are Evangelical. There is, then, a noteworthy residue of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century pietism and orthodoxy still to be found in Canadian Christianity.