Dear colleagues,

I occasionally get phone calls from Statistics Canada asking me for various numbers pertaining to the operation of the college. Recently, it had to do with how we heat our building. I often find myself grumbling about this sort of thing. But then StatsCan aggregates the numbers and publishes the results and I realize what a gem of an institution it can be.

Take, for instance, a recent report on religiosity in Canada. This is a sort-of interim report based on some periodic surveys. (Many of us are waiting for the complete results of this year’s census to really get a sense of the state of religion in Canada.) But I found a couple of things worth highlighting.

There’s a striking parallelism between the Anglican and United Churches. An equal number of Canadians report identifying with each denomination: 3.8% each. An equal number of those people also report that they engage in no group or individual religious practices in the course of a year: 39%. In other words, 2 out of every 5 people who identify as Anglican or United never engage in religious practice. A further 26% engage in such practice about once per year. That leaves about 40% of such people who engage in group or individual religious practice (excluding weddings and funerals) at least once per month. Compared to many other denominations represented in the report, these are low numbers of engagement with one’s (self-identified) Christian tradition.

The report also highlights the difference in religious identification and practice by age cohort. Those born in earlier generations are more likely to identify with a religious tradition and practice it. Yet there was one difference the report highlighted. Those born outside of Canada were more likely to report a religious affiliation and more likely to participate in a group religious activity. The age gap was also significantly less. Younger people born outside of Canada were more likely to report a religious affiliation and say that it was important to them than those born inside of Canada.

Sometimes it is helpful to see depicted in numbers what we may sense to be true. For many people, belonging to a Christian tradition is a marker of identity that does not translate into a set of practices—worship, prayer—that many of us think are central to our tradition. Why might this be? And what alternative practices can we offer to people who identify with a tradition but are reluctant to engage with it? Increasingly, the people who are practicing faith in this country are those who are immigrants or their descendants. This is obvious to me every time I look around my church on Sunday morning. What kind of ministerial leadership is needed to help the church embrace its emerging reality as an immigrant church—particularly for those of us who belong to traditions that are so strongly identified with a white settler population?

These are just a few of the questions brought into sharper relief by looking at the numbers—and they’re the kind of questions that make me excited to be in ministry in this time.

Faithfully yours,

Jesse Zink

This message was written by Jesse Zink for this week’s Wingèd Ox, a weekly news digest distributed to the college community.