Very good Sir! Short, concise, although I'm having some difficulty linking to your numerous sources.
First off, church attendance has dropped significantly since the 70's but has levelled off over the last decade
"National research findings through 2010 analyzed by prominent sociologist and religious trends analyst Reginald Bibby of the University of Lethbridge show that, since the 1970s, the proportion of Canadians who never attend services has doubled from about 20% to 40%. However, in the last decade, the proportion of people who worship at least once a month has remained steady at around 30%. The remaining 30% of Canadians are sort of like “the politically undecided”: they haven’t dropped out and occasionally drop in."
The Prairies are the most religious region followed by Atlantic Canada, Ontario, B.C. and Quebec
http://www.reginaldbibby.com/images/...aster_2012.pdf
The Catholic church is holding steady, mainly due to immigration. Evangelicals are on the rise.
"The example of the Evangelicals is particularly instructive. Where Catholic numbers are buoyed by recent immigrants who regard their Church as a safe port in the storm, Evangelicals are much more successful retaining and maintaining participation among the members they already have, especially in terms of transferring church attachment from one generation to the next."
New study shows thriving parishes engage people
Although a majority of people in Quebec still 'identify' with the Catholic church, attendance is the lowest in North America
"A large majority of Quebeckers still identify themselves as Catholic, but the Church’s sway has shrunk dramatically in what is now a fiercely secular province.
“Quebec is such a paradox,” said McGill University historian John Zucchi. He said the province had the lowest rate of practice among Catholics in North America but was also the province with the highest rate of identification as Catholics.
Eighty-three percent of Quebec residents still identified themselves as Catholic in the 2001 census, the last census for which figures are available. But church attendance is way down.
A recent survey of young Canadian adults found 12 percent attended religious services weekly, and only 3 percent in Quebec.
“It’s agnostic,” Heron, the now-retired Baptist pastor, said of Quebec today. “They’re selling churches right and left in Quebec.”
Now-secular Quebec symbolizes challenge facing Pope Francis | FaithWorld
"Catholic figures are skewed somewhat because close to half of Catholics are from Quebec, where attendance has declined more drastically. In the 1950s, Roman Catholics in Quebec boasted the highest rate of church attendance in Canada, at 88 percent.
Now, Bibby's figures show Catholic attendance has dropped to 20 percent in Quebec but is over 30 percent in the rest of country.
Thus, Canadian church attendance figures have been dragged lower by the massive secularization of Quebec society, which began later but has gone farther there than in the rest of the country.
Guenther's figures show that the Roman Catholicism is continuing to grow, in numbers if not as a percentage of the Canadian population. Catholic membership grew from 10,320,024 in 1981 to 12,624,403 in 2001, and attendance from 2,759,910 in 1981 to 3,451,874 in 2001.
One of the main reasons Catholics are holding their own is immigration. According to Statistics Canada, one-third of immigrants to Canada in the 1980s and almost one-quarter of immigrants in the 1990s were Catholic."
The State of the Canadian Church -- Part II: Shifting Traditions
Traditional Protestant churches are disappearing. Evangelical churches are taking their place.
"A massive evangelical shift
Compared to Roman Catholics, Protestants count fewer of their non-attenders as members. Therefore, 'Protestant' losses seem much greater than Catholic ones.
In fact, Guenther's figures show that total Protestant attendance has not declined in real numbers over the last quarter-century but there has been a massive shift within Protestantism.
Guenther breaks 'Protestant' churches into 'mainline Protestant' and 'evangelical' groupings. Mainline Protestants are those in the former 'big three' denominations -- the Anglican, Presbyterian and United denominations -- plus Lutheran and Reformed churches.
Guenther's statistics show that mainline Protestants have declined very significantly, from 2,240,991 members and attendance of 965,534 in 1981 to 1,666,715 members and attendance of 723,673 in 2001 -- and evidence suggests that those numbers have continued to decline since then.
At the same time, evangelicals have increased from 974,295 members and attendance of 758,383 in 1981 to 1,341,897 members and attendance of 1,130,237 in 2001. That amounts to close to a 50 percent increase in attendance in just two decades. In terms of attendance, evangelicals now greatly outnumber mainline Protestants.
Moreover, evangelicals count membership more narrowly than other groups -- not counting children or regular attenders who have not formally joined -- and they count attendance by average Sunday morning attendance. Therefore, as Rick Hiemstra reported in the first issue of Church & Faith Trends, researchers such as Reg Bibby conclude that evangelicals represent about 8 percent of the Canadian population.
However, these evangelical numbers count only evangelicals in evangelical churches. Polls that measure theological beliefs peg evangelicals at closer to 12 percent of the Canadian population. Pollster Andrew Grenville told CC.com that "a high proportion of mainline attenders are evangelicals." That is, while only a small proportion of mainline attenders are evangelicals, those who are evangelicals tend to be the more committed ones who show up on Sunday morning.
Depending on how one frames the questions, a significant portion of Roman Catholics have also been deemed theologically "evangelical."
Outreach Canada, an evangelical ministry which has sponsored a number of church planting congresses, says its statistics show that the number of evangelical congregations increased from 9,152 in 1997 to 9,919 in 2003.
This suggests that the number of evangelical churches is growing slightly faster than the Canadian population. There is now one evangelical church for every 3,189 Canadians, a number that is inching closer to Outreach Canada's first goal of having one church for every 2,000 Canadians."
The State of the Canadian Church -- Part II: Shifting Traditions
Evangelical congregations are most prevalent in Atlantic Canada and the Prairies followed by Ontario and B.C. They are almost nonexistent in Quebec.
http://files.efc-canada.net/min/rc/c..._2003-2009.pdf
Evangelical congregations per 100,000 population
NB:39 NS:38 NL:37 SK:33 MB:27 PE:24 AL:20 BC:19 ON:16 QC:2
Prairie Evangelicals have much larger congregations. With a couple of exceptions in suburban Toronto, Evangelical 'mega churches' are found almost exclusively out West, mainly in Calgary and Edmonton.
"
Religious revival: Steinbach's already large Southland Community Church set to double
STEINBACH -- Its foyer is probably larger than the MTS Centre's.
At 5,500 square metres, the Southland Community Church is already one of the largest churches in Manitoba. It attracts so many people it needs four services, two on Saturday and two on Sunday, to accommodate the whole congregation.
It already looks like a convention centre -- it's about to get much bigger. It's begun a $15-million expansion that will nearly double its size. Once completed, it's believed it will be the second-largest church in Manitoba behind Springs Church in Winnipeg."
Religious revival: Steinbach's already large Southland Community Church set to double - Winnipeg Free Press
"
Megachurches head to suburbs to grow flocks
The West Edmonton Christian Assembly has six business rooms available for booking, with Internet connections and full audio-visual presentation capabilities.
The air-conditioned auditorium seats 1,100 and has been booked for four school graduations next September. A playschool wing welcomes 260 children every weekday morning, and down the hall a Filipino basketball league plays Wednesday and Thursday nights in a gym the size of three junior-high sized courts.
The players' wives and girlfriends chat and cheer from the running track above.
This is an example of the new suburban church, a megacomplex meant to serve all aspects of community life both for members of the church and residents of the surrounding community.
As Edmonton grows, large suburban churches have become more common; there are now half a dozen with Sunday congregations of over 1,000."
Megachurches head to suburbs to grow flocks
"
Megachurch draws 'em in with free coffee, big screens and a rock band
In increasingly secular Canada, how do you bring people to God? “Through parking and bathrooms,” says Scott Weatherford, lead pastor of Calgary’s First Alliance Church.
He’s only half joking. On Sundays, the evangelical church’s 1,350-spot parking lot is overflowing. The $25.7-million, six-year-old campus feels more like a convention centre than a cathedral. Weekend services are high-tech, multimedia spectacles. The church provides free fair-trade coffee, with cup holders in every one of the 1,704 seats in the sanctuary. Whether it’s the caffeine, the big-screen monitors or the rock band, no one appeared to be drifting off when Mr. Weatherford, equipped with a wireless microphone and an iPad, took the stage at a recent weekend service."
Megachurch draws 'em in with free coffee, big screens and a rock band - The Globe and Mail
"
What would Jesus build?
Megachurches are relatively new to Calgary, but they have been popping up and taking root all over the United States for the last decade. These giant churches – mostly evangelical – attract thousands of people, run hundreds of programs and have many pastors. They also take up a lot of space, a reality that often leaves nearby residents wishing that the Almighty – or at least his followers – would be content with a more humble residence in their neighbourhood.
Centre Street Church has a $16-million building in the north of the city that, including the parking lot, takes up 17 acres. First Alliance Church is finishing up construction on an $18.5-million facility in the southeast. In the Signal Hill area of the southwest, Westside King’s Church plans on building an $11-million church complex that has some nearby residents less than thrilled."
FFWD Weekly - June 23, 2005
"
Wow....Canada's Rockin' Megachurch, Burnaby
The 10 a.m. Sunday service at Willingdon Church, held on a stage awash with purple backlighting, is one of five held every weekend at the mega-church, which together draws an average of more than 4,100 people. That doesn’t include roughly 900 who attend youth programs.
Wow....Canada's Rockin' Megachurch, Burnaby | WonderCafe
As you can see on Vote Compass, social conservative opposition to such things gay marriage, abortion and euthanasia correlates with areas of highest Evangelical concentration: rural Prairies, Atlantic, Southwestern Ontario and the Fraser Valley
Vote Compass : Gay Marriage
Vote Compass : Abortion
Vote Compass : Euthanasia
In other words, I stand by what I initially posted:
But thanks for your pithy and highly intelligent reply!
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