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Episode 11 - Part 2 of 3 - An Interview with Daniel Dacombe & Dr. Sarah Wilkins-LaFlamme
89 Plays5 months ago
"Christian. Muslim. Jewish. Buddhist. Religious. Or not? With a greater number of Canadians than ever before identifying as nonreligious or 'none of the above,' the landscape of belief in Canada is changing rapidly. Understanding these changes can be a challenge, and can leave us with more questions than answers. What do religion and secularity look like in Canada today? How did we get here? And more importantly, where are we going? Join Humanist Canada's host Daniel Dacombe in a 3-part conversation with sociologist and professor Dr. Sarah Wilkins-Laflamme to discuss her book "Religion, Spirituality and Secularity among Millennials: The Generation Shaping American and Canadian Trends," and learn what the science says about our growing nonreligious Canadian identity."
In today’s episode we join Humanist Canada's Daniel Dacombe in the 2nd of a 3-part conversation with sociologist and professor Dr. Sarah Wilkins-Laflamme. If you didn’t catch Part 1, please consider giving it a listen to catch up. Otherwise, today they will be discussing the Millenials and their unique religious/nonreligious identity. Who are the Millennials? How do the Millennials differ from previous generations? And what is up with avocado toast?
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Transcript
00:00:01
Speaker
So could you, could you tell us what who they are? Well, it, it, it shows cause I had some avocado toast this morning for breakfast. So I think that by default I'm a millennial. So you're the problem. but I'm the problem. I'm the one everyone blames. Yeah.
Podcast Introduction
00:00:24
Speaker
Welcome to the Voice of Canadian Humanism, the official podcast of Humanist Canada. Join us as we delve into thought-provoking discussions, explore critical issues, and celebrate the values of reason, compassion, and secularism through the humanist lens.
00:00:40
Speaker
Welcome to the conversation.
Discussion on Millennials' Religious Identity
00:00:42
Speaker
In today's episode, we join Humanist Canada's Daniel Dacombe in the second of a three-part conversation with sociologist and professor, Dr. Sarah Wilkins-LaFlamme. If you didn't catch part one, please consider giving it a listen to catch up. Otherwise, today they will be discussing the Millennials and their unique religious slash non-religious identity. Who are the Millennials?
00:01:09
Speaker
How do the Millennials differ from previous generations, and what is up with avocado toast? Without further ado, let's begin. Hello everyone, and welcome to the Humanist Canada podcast. My name is Daniel Dacombe, and I'm a humanist. I'm also a husband, a father, a former Christian, a PhD student, and a member of Humanist Canada.
00:01:33
Speaker
I'll be your host for a very special series of episodes here on the podcast looking at the past, present, and future of non-belief and secularism here in Canada. I'm very pleased to be joined today again by Dr. Sarah Wilkins-LaFlam, Associate Professor of Sociology and Legal Studies at the University of Waterloo for the second part in our series. Now, this is episode two of this series and the previous episode is pretty foundational for this discussion. If you are tuning in without having listened to that first, we'd encourage you to go back and listen to it as it will give you some good background for this discussion.
Generational Identity and Societal Influences
00:02:08
Speaker
Sarah, it's great to have you back. Yeah, great to be back, thanks.
00:02:13
Speaker
So last time we talked about the slow transformation of Canada from a primarily religious nation into a primarily secular nation. And so you'd mentioned this had to do with many factors, including Canadians beginning to separate their national identity from their religious identities.
00:02:30
Speaker
ah Basically, we talked last time about how we got where we are today. And this episode, we decided that we would take a look a bit more closely at where exactly that is, what defines Canadians of different generations alive in Canada today, and what sets Millennials apart when it comes to their religious and non-religious identity. So I've been looking for this conversation ever since our last one, and I'm really glad that we're doing this again. Yeah, me too.
00:02:59
Speaker
So to start off, ah for those of us in the room who who aren't sociologists, what do we mean when we talk about a generation? ah how are How do we define generations and how do we break them up?
00:03:12
Speaker
Ooh, it's a great question, Danielle. I mean, it it sounds like a simple question, but like like a lot of sociology, there there's a lot going on. so So let me talk a bit about it. So when we talk about a generation, we're usually talking about individuals born between a span of about 20 years who were raised in what a classic German sociologist, Karl Meinheim, called a common location in the historical dimension of the social process. Don't worry, I'll break some of this jargon gap down as I go on.
00:03:40
Speaker
and And also we have a Canadian sociologist, Norman Ryder, who was working in the 60s, and he said these individuals are differentiated from previous and later generations by the changing content of formal education, by peer group socialization, and by idiosyncratic historical experience.
00:03:59
Speaker
So this means that members of a same generation share in common what we sociologists call a similar social location. So if I quote Manheim again, who's really like the key sociologist on generations, um he says the fact that people are born at the same time and that their youth, adulthood and old age coincide does not in itself involve similarity of that social location. But what does create a similar social location is that they are in a position to experience the same events and data.
Impact of Media and Economy on Generations
00:04:28
Speaker
So especially crucial for Mannheim are those generational formative experiences which happen during childhood, right? First impressions which are key in the formation of consciousness during primary socialization, so during childhood. And so if I quote Mannheim again here, early impressions tend to coalesce into a natural view of the world. All later experiences then tend to receive their meaning from this original set, whether they appear as that sets verification and fulfillment,
00:04:55
Speaker
or as its negation and antithesis. So what we learned during our early childhood years kind of has ah an effect on us for the rest of our lives. So another way to say that is that individuals who are born and raised during the same period of time in a shared social environment, so say in the same region or in the same country, are likely to experience aspects and events of this social environment as formative, right? And and so may go on to resemble each other in their attitudes and behaviors in key ways distinct from other older and younger generations, not sharing this same social location. And I'll give a few examples in a minute, they'll probably make it clearer. But we're saying before that that there's some, a couple of American demographers have worked a lot in generations, William Strauss and Neil Howe,
00:05:39
Speaker
um They were working in the early 90s and they put it this way. They say that we explain how a generation is a generation shaped by its age location, that is by its age-determined participation and epochal events that occur during its its life cycle. right So during childhood and especially during the coming of age experiences, separating youth from adulthood, this age location produces what we call a peer personality.
00:06:03
Speaker
a set of collective behavioral traits and attitudes that later express itself throughout a generation's lifecycle trajectory. So let's get into some examples that are hopefully more fun. Let's jargon it. So if we look at the living generations today, um we still have some members of the silent generation with us, and these are individuals who were born usually roughly between the mid 1920s and the mid 1940s.
00:06:29
Speaker
And so their childhoods informative years were especially impacted by just the period just after World War I, right? The roaring economic boom of the 1920s and then its complete failure with the Great disc Depression in the 1930s as well as the Second World War. And so some of the silent generation went and fought in the Second World War, but most were a bit too young for that, but still ah saw the people around them, like say their parents or a member of their family going to fight in that war.
00:06:57
Speaker
And so these formative experiences of shared events went on to impact members of that silent generation for the rest of their lives in various ways, right? So they shared these common common experiences and it shaped them in a similar way compared to older and younger individuals, right?
00:07:13
Speaker
So if we look now to boomers, boomers, we typically refer to people born between the mid 1940s and the mid 1960s. And so they were especially impacted um when they were younger by the post-World War II years, right? So defined especially by rapid economic and demographic growth, as well as by an expansion of the welfare state.
00:07:34
Speaker
Um, but also by a more morally conservative turn in the 1950s in many North American and European countries that the Boomers later revolted against in their countercultural and civil rights movements of the sixties and seventies, right? So that's kind of key moments to defining their generation.
00:07:52
Speaker
And then we have Gen X born roughly between the mid 1960s and mid 1980s, who were especially shaped by the aftermath of that, of the boomers basically, of that cultural counter-cultural movement of the civil rights movements, also shaped by the energy crisis of the 1970s here in North America, growing neo-capitalism of the 1980s and the end of the cold war in the late 1980s. So these were all things happening while this generation was still kind of growing up and becoming adults.
00:08:20
Speaker
right And I'm interested in the next generation after that, ah the millennials, right? So that's the focus of my latest book and specifically on religion, spirituality and secularity amongst the the millennial generation, which is a ah a word millennial. of The name for the generation was coined by those two American demographers. I mentioned Strauss and Howe in the early nineties.
00:08:42
Speaker
OK, yes, I've read your book on millennials and non-religion, and I found it fascinating. I think that people who are listening to this will also find it illuminating and also very accessible. I think that you write very well for non-academic audiences as well. I don't think you need degrees to read this book, but it does.
00:09:04
Speaker
um It does kind of make you think, hearing your explanation about the different generations and the the factors that
Defining Millennials and Generational Cutoffs
00:09:12
Speaker
that that built them. And I think given your description, I feel fairly confident in saying I probably fall into the Gen X ah generation. You know, I recall raging against the machine at one point, but now we have a mortgage. So there's yeah know that's definitely Gen X. As soon as you mentioned raging against the machine, Gen X. Yeah. Okay. Well, fair enough. In a good way. In a good way.
00:09:34
Speaker
Now, but now we're talking about the next generation, now we're talking about the millennials. So I think it, especially as that that seems to be driving a lot of the social change in our culture right now, how I think it's good that we're talking about them. So who are the millennials? ah Why do we hear that everything is their fault? ah I think it's got something to do with avocado toast from what I read on Business Insider, but I don't really know. So could you could you tell us what who they are?
00:10:03
Speaker
Well, it it it shows because I had some avocado toast this morning for breakfast. So i think that by default, I'm a millennial. So you're the problem. but I'm the problem. I'm the one everyone blames. Yeah. I mean, that this is the thing, right? Another question that seems some straightforward, who are the millennials? But actually there's a bit of debate and a bit of back and forth. Not that it really matters much, but it's worth mentioning because you might hear a few very small variations in the definition.
00:10:27
Speaker
So no one really agrees on exactly which year it was in hindsight that newborns switched from being Gen X to millennials, right? this is some Sometimes the cutoff dates are a bit arbitrary, right? So if we use those two American demographers, how in Strauss's seminal cutoff dates, when they were doing the work in the 90s, they referred to millennials as those born between 1982 and 2004.
00:10:50
Speaker
um But more recently, especially in the US s with groups like the Pew Research Center, and writer Jean Twenge, whose book got a lot of attention on millennials, um are using slightly earlier birth periods for millennials. So they're using people born between the early 1980s to the mid 1990s. So that's a bit of an older ah re definition of millennials.
00:11:12
Speaker
Others still, including myself, especially in here in Canada, prefer a kind of more even distribution of generations across 20-year periods. And so I and and others often in Canada will typically refer to millennials as a bit younger ah than than scholars in the US. So those ah individuals born between the mid-1980s and mid-2000s, right?
00:11:34
Speaker
um
00:11:37
Speaker
and But you know it's worth saying, I don't think the exact dates are all that important to the larger discussion. right Like I said, any cutoff date year or year, birth year here is a ah bit arbitrary, and there's a bit of debate around that, but it's not super important. We're generally referring to millennials as those who were born and raised in late 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s.
00:11:56
Speaker
Uh, these brief cohorts then began to move into young adulthood in the 2000s, 2010s, and early 2020s at the turn of the millennium and the generation's name of millennials, right? Right. So millennials isn't actually referring to the year they're born. It's the year when they kind of mature into adulthood. Um, right and so it's, that's going to always be a source of confusion for many people and I don't blame them. Well, looking at the social sciences, it's nice and cut and dried. Oh yeah, super, super country. Always debates, yeah. we got to We got to make a living somehow, right? um And so if we use my example, this makes me, I was born in 1987, an old millennial, right? So ah my generation saw the arrival of personal computers and internet in many of our childhood homes and schools at a relatively early age. um Most of us were still at school when the planes hit the Twin Towers and the Pentagon on 9-11. So other key formative moments there.
00:12:50
Speaker
um But funnily enough, like you're not born into thinking of yourself as a millennial, right? Ironically, it was only when there's this what I call this kind of mainstream millennial anxiety that struck older adults in the late 2000s and early 2010s that I, by then in graduate school at university, realized that I fell into this first wave of this new millennial generation that others seemed so worried about and were talking about in the media.
00:13:14
Speaker
And so what I mean by that is that although in the 1990s in pop culture, millennials were portrayed as the highly capable child saviors of society. So think of Lisa Simpson in The Simpsons, right? Who's a millennial child. Another example is like Devin Butler in Cop and a Half or or Jesse in Free Willy, right? Who's very competent and like saving the whale but or or you know the environment, however you want to look at that, or like Roger Bowman and Angels in the Outfield or Haley Parker and Annie James and the Parent Trap, all very capable and fundamentally good millennial kids. um By the late 2000s, the shine had worn off millennials in mainstream culture. ah Suddenly, we were a nickname Generation Me,
00:13:59
Speaker
as as Jean Twenge calls us, so supposedly selfish, coddled, entitled, overconfident, morally uncertain, miserable, and far removed from the practical realities of the world, according to members of older their generations. um We were labeled as snowflakes, my particular favorite, right? We were told too often by our parents that we we were each unique and special, and thus supposedly growing up too fragile for the real world.
00:14:24
Speaker
Um, we were seen as different from older generations in all the wrong ways, which is actually quite a common reaction to the arrival of a new generation and into adulthood. Like the silent generation said the same thing about boomers. Boomers said the same thing about Gen X and Gen X is saying the same thing about millennials. And so it's, ah that's actually quite a common reaction, but it did make a lot of noise at the time. And like I said, in the 2000s, 2010s, And so marketers were trying to sell us stuff with this in mind, right? Members of the business community lamented our many faults as emerging workers in their eyes. Books and articles proposed solutions where the onus was on younger individuals to lower their expectations and change their approach to better fit the current market economy. So there's kind of, that's what I call the millennial anxiety. There was kind of like the older generations freaked out a bit when we arrived um as they often do.
00:15:12
Speaker
And ironically, what's funny is that as often can be the case, antagonism and targeting from outside groups, in this case, older adults in mainstream culture, actually reinforced for many of the sense of community within our own generation. A lot of people I talked to was like, oh, that's when I realized I was a millennial and everyone was complaining about us. And so it kind of shored up these kind of in-group and out-group identity boundaries, right, between older and younger generations.
00:15:36
Speaker
And so, ah offended by some of these negative stereotypes, that was when I took on the millennial identity in university and have owned it since I'm very proud millennial. um And, you know, for some at least this became a moment and again I'm going to quote Carl Meinheim here because I really like his work. but He says that when individual members of a generation become conscious of their common situation and make this consciousness the basis of their group solidarity.
00:16:01
Speaker
Because you know whether the older folks like it or not and millennials are now the most numerous adult generation in North America ah here in Canada helped along by ah high rates of immigration coming from that kind of young adult demographic. um And when millennials decide to show up and vote and voting is is accessible to them and their votes are counted.
00:16:20
Speaker
you know, we can change the outcome of elections, right? We can take out our e-wallets and flex our consumer muscle and ah companies and capitalism have to pay attention. And as we'll discuss later in this episode, when many of us choose to stay away from churches, many of these churches have consequently had to close their doors permanently because they haven't been able to stay afloat, right? So the millennials do have a big impact now because they have kind of arrived into full adulthood as ah as a big demographic cohort.
00:16:51
Speaker
So, I mean, to talk about what's new and distinct about the the millennial social location, right?
Millennials and Technology's Impact
00:16:57
Speaker
What was it about our social environment that kind of really shaped millennials? um Coming back to Mannheim's terminology, what makes our lives different from those of our parents and grandparents? um In the book, I talk about this a bit more. I kind of, there's there's lots of things going on, but I see kind of eight interconnected and ongoing societal trends. They're especially crucial in those formative years of millennials. I won't go into a lot of detail. I don't want to drag on. It's on forever, but it's worth mentioning, right? We've lived most of our lives in the digital age, right, within computers and the internet. That's obviously shaped our lives ah tremendously. um Many millennials, especially of the older cohorts of millennials, arrived on the workforce during the Great Recession and so had to deal with an extended period of precarious work and, you know, were hard to find jobs, only had jobs for a short period of time, had to be very geographically mobile to get jobs,
00:17:47
Speaker
It took a while to kind of get into ah like an actual career that some of us now have. And that had a ah big impact on you know when people could start families, how much money they were making, wealth that they could accumulate, you know, cost of living that sort of thing.
00:18:03
Speaker
um We're also the most plural ah generation in ethnicity and religion compared to all the previous generations that came before us. So pluralism has a big impact on how we think about ourselves and our our place in the world. um Also kind of continuing from the Boomers counter-cultural movement kind of towards more individualized values. We really highly value individual choice and personal authentic experience almost to an extreme.
00:18:31
Speaker
and now compared to previous generations, and that impacts a lot of what millennials do and how they think. ah We've kind of had to deal with the environmental crisis, especially climate change being a much more prominent ah part of public discourse and of reality of what's going on around us.
00:18:48
Speaker
um the vast vast vast majority of millennials live in cities so there's kind of been this ongoing urbanization process that's started in the 19th century but still continues to this day i think the last i look it was like 90 percent of millennials live either in a city or in a suburb of a big city So it's really, really, or we forget that sometimes, but our populations have really urbanized. um ah A lot of millennials have had access to higher education. This is about half the generation, more than previous generations before. And those who didn't go to ah to to college or university have had to deal with greater consequences for that. So like inflation of degrees, difficulty in accessing jobs that once were available to high school, graduates are no longer so.
00:19:32
Speaker
And so that kind of expanded higher education has had a big impact on the generation. We have what we call like emerging adulthood. So there's this longer period. I kind of mentioned this before in relation to work where millennials haven't really like quote unquote settled down. They they um buy their houses later if they can at all. they're more They're more in transition. They're more geographically mobile. They're trying out different jobs or or shifting between jobs before they kind of settle into a career path. And so that means that, you know, whereas maybe with boomers, and especially with the silent generation, people were kind of forming households and starting to have kids in the early 20s, millennials do that much later, like late 20s, early 30s, mid 30s, sometimes not at all. And so that's a kind of that's having a big impact on people's lives and how their lives develop.
00:20:23
Speaker
And also we'll get more into this kind of growing up in a more secular social environment in Canada, especially in certain areas. And so the fact that religion is a lot less prominent in their environment around them at school or in the community. So all of these societal trends, you know, they have large impacts on millennials lives in North American Europe and are also impacting the religious, spiritual and secular landscapes of the generation, right? If you're not forming a household into your mid to late thirties,
00:20:51
Speaker
um ah And a traditional kind of Christian parish is more geared towards a more kind of stable geographic family setup. And so if you're not getting into that until like almost middle age, that's going to have a big impact on your relationship with a church or with a religious group, for example. That's just one example amongst many.
00:21:13
Speaker
And so it's worth mentioning, these trends are by no means an exhaustive list of all things new, right? And it's also worth mentioning that um other generations have kind of experienced some of this, right? American sociologist what Robert Wattnow, for example, identified many of these same trends as influential for the life worlds of young adult members of Gen X, right? Back in the days. So like many of them are probably familiar to you too, Danielle.
00:21:35
Speaker
um But it's worth mentioning these eight societal trends are key elements of our current social world that have had an especially profound impact on millennials. They've really come into play during their formative years. And it's members of this now young adult to middle-aged generation who have been socialized within this new social environment during their childhood, teenage and young adult years, and who are being shaped in all aspects of their lives by these trends, including in their religion, their non-religion, or their spirituality.
00:22:04
Speaker
I think it was really interesting. So many of the things that you brought up as kind of hallmarks or milestones for this generation that they all experienced more or less together. They all went through together these transitions. You identified one, a digital generation. They grew up in the digital age and with home computers and access to the internet at a relatively young age. I mean, I do remember ah the internet from when I was younger. Do you remember a dial-up, Daniel? Oh, of course I remember a dial-up, but that's how we played games. Oh, the dial-ups. Absolutely. Yeah, my mom kicking me off the internet because she needed to to use the landline, yeah. Yeah, that was yeah that that was later in my in my teens, and that was ah that was part of part of the landscape. um Yeah.
00:22:50
Speaker
But it's, ah it kind of reminds me, I've heard some of the the generational differences described ah using that digital age as ah as a kind of common theme, how millennials grew up being told by their parents, you can't believe everything you see on TV. And now millennials are are telling their parents, you can't believe everything you see on the internet. And social media.
00:23:12
Speaker
on social media, on Facebook. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, there's a surprising amount of Canadian millennials who remember the miniature hippopotamus that the Canadian government put out an ad of like this mini hippopotamus in the home. And, and it it was like, look how realistic this documentary looks, but it's fake. I get that quoted all the time. I'm like, wow, that's like such a shared cultural moment for us. It's like from inside out. It's a core memory. Yeah.
00:23:39
Speaker
i yeah I think that's ah that's fascinating. It kind of makes you think, what's this next generation that's growing up up under the advent of language learning models? What's being commonly called AI? what's what's yeah What's their upbringing going to be like? What's their future going to be like?
00:23:55
Speaker
knowing you can go have a conversation with a language learning model that ah isn't bad at conversing and is better than a lot of our friends. and A lot of people. yeah Yeah. I mean, well, this is a a lot of, especially in the US, a lot of the scholars will use technology as the main divider between generations. So say what would make Gen Z distinct is that they grew up with smartphones, right? Whereas we didn't, we we grew up with the internet, like where I did, I was about eight or nine when we got it at home.
00:24:21
Speaker
um but But I didn't have a smartphone until like my early 20s because I was a bit of a technology slowpoke. But so but i'm not i'm not I don't know how I feel about that. like Technology is important, obviously, but it's not the only thing going on. Because in terms of like va progressive values, which are much more common amongst younger generations,
00:24:42
Speaker
there isn't so much a divide between millennials and Gen Z. And so the technology is worth looking at, but for me, it's kind of not the only thing going on when it comes to distinctions between generations. Yeah. I think COVID obviously will be a big, um oh yeah big factor in, especially those who were teenagers ah when they had to go through COVID. Like for me, COVID, i'm I'm fortunate to say didn't have a huge impact on me because I already had a stable job, which was easily transferred to remote work.
00:25:10
Speaker
um So it it it impacted, obviously, all of us. I was fortunate that none of my family got sick, um and so but it didn't have like a huge impact. But it I could see it in like my 17-year-old niece that it was going to have a huge impact on her. like It completely upended her whole social life right at a time when you're learning to make friends and learning to like get out in the world and kind of think for yourself.
00:25:34
Speaker
And so I think that's going to have a huge impact that we're already starting to see a bit at university when I'm teaching younger students, but that we'll see ah more and more as as time moves on. I would love to hear more about the specifics of that impact you're seeing with your younger students, but we might just save that for the next episode for the future but the next series.
Challenges Faced by Millennials
00:25:55
Speaker
um So you you mentioned kind of the formative events for millennials and and also for yourself, the formative events that led you to say, oh, a millennial, that that's me. That describes me. um I'm planting my flag here. And now I'm also irritated at all of these things and I'm going to
00:26:10
Speaker
help destroy the wedding industry or whatever it is you guys do. Whatever we do. Yeah. ah But what made you want to research religion and spirituality and secularity specifically among this generation?
00:26:23
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I was already interested in religion, spirituality, and non-religion before I realized I was a millennial. um and so But I was kind of ah really intrigued. I started to notice in the 2010s, there was what I'll call like a millennial awakening in some of the academic works.
00:26:41
Speaker
So, works by authors like B.B. Theosin and Bailey, Carnes, Jehu, Hancock, and Scott, these are all people who start to push back against the prevailing myth of millennial entitlement. We're kind of like, well whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. They're not all terrible. but Let's look at this in a different way.
00:26:57
Speaker
And so some push back by arguing that millennials are, in fact, not that different from previous generations in terms of their values and their behavior. And so older adults ah shouldn't worry so much. Others, though, argued instead that millennials are different because they are, in fact, facing never before seen challenges tied to the excesses of neoliberalism, economic austerity, work precarity, and the decline of the welfare state across Western nations. right So rather than proposing young individuals simply lower their standards to worsening economic social environmental conditions. These scholars, ah ah who it's worth saying are mostly Bernie Sanders supporters in the US, by the way, are now calling for political action for millennials to help solve these issues, or at least help improve these conditions.
00:27:45
Speaker
And so that was kind of literature that grabbed my attention. And although I'm sympathetic to it, ah to to many of these calls for belittle collection and find much of this work very relevant for my own scholarship, part of me, and I'll i'll admit it, the somewhat cynical part of me, ah still heard a bunch of older adults squabbling about how millennials should be defined and what their political and social priorities should be, right? Because most of those authors were not millennials themselves.
00:28:11
Speaker
And it's only very recently that we're starting to hear more from millennials researchers themselves and their their own work. And so I want to kind of come onto the scene and contribute by doing away with some of this baggage of both either an extreme anxiety of stereotypes, of negative stereotypes of millennials, or this utopic hope for a perfect future ah that millennials will lead us into, ah both of which you find amongst older generations who dream or a nightmare about the young And instead, examine how things really are, because they're probably somewhere in between those two extremes. um and and And in my case, regarding religion, spirituality, and secularity, um for members of my own generation who are living it now, right? So, you know, and and again, why the generation? Why is that an important kind of variable or factor that I want to examine? um You know, there's a a number of important social divides in Western societies along which strong differences in values and behavior appear between individuals and according to which social experiences and opportunities vary greatly. right So we can find these divides nobly between racial, gender, and socioeconomic groups, right different values, different opportunities, different realities.
00:29:22
Speaker
But we can also find them between generations, right? So I want to focus on this other important fracture line that is especially crucial when it comes to religion and spirituality and non-religion. And that fracture line is a generational one, right? Generational effects are especially key for understanding differences in religion, spirituality, non-religion, identities tied to that, beliefs and practices tied to that in today's Western societies.
00:29:49
Speaker
right So my objective was to explore with recent empirical data how millennials are different from the generations who have come before, since these differences are currently and will continue to have a significant impact on shifting American and Canadian religious and spiritual landscapes, and which I hadn't really felt had been looked at with any kind of normality, like normal approach, non-ideological approach prior to that.
00:30:16
Speaker
So just like how millennials can deeply impact ah political outcomes by voting in a b block and just how like how they can deeply impact an industry. And I joked about the wedding industry, but I do recall seeing some articles about millennials just don't want to spend $40,000 on a wedding anymore. They're seriously affecting that industry. Yeah, what so what's what's wrong with them? ah I dont can't imagine spending $40,000 on a wedding I mean, many are not bothering getting married anymore, right? And that's part of what we're going to talk about. Yeah. We're all just living in sin now. Gosh. Yeah. Yeah. Not defying it that way for sure. Yeah. But so when they, when they make decisions as as a block, uh, when it comes to religion and, uh, and not just, uh, believing, but also, uh, participating and attending and with your, you know, with your attendance also comes your money in in general. I think most.
00:31:12
Speaker
ah most religious organizations are are operating solely by the ah by the donations of the individual members and not by like large foreign donors. So that's yeah, I can see how that would really be creating a noticeable impact. i I think perhaps the millennials are all okay with this too, from the sounds of it, or most of them.
00:31:34
Speaker
I mean, millennials are probably even not even thinking about it, to be honest. like Most of the ones I speak to, the not especially non-religious millennials, which we'll talk more about, that it didn't even cross their mind. they're They're not even aware of what's going on with religious and spiritual landscapes, which I don't know is is maybe more disturbing for certain groups, I'm not sure.
00:31:53
Speaker
I think I know a few people that it might be, and just think to but that's a good transition. um you've You've mentioned ah your book, you mentioned the the research in in general terms, but ah now i'm I'm very excited to to ask if you could tell us a bit more about that research. And for those listening, this is the research that not only went into what into your book, but also into other articles and kind of just forming the the foundation for some additional work going forward that we'll be talking about next episode. ah So yeah, if I could ah ask you to share a bit of about what you learned and and how you learned it, um that would be really great.
00:32:36
Speaker
Yeah, let's get into it. Yeah, I mean, this is what I do for a living. This is what fascinates me and gets me up in the morning. I don't know how y'all feel about that, but I'm i'm really interested by this. Okay, we all giant nerds too. Yeah, hopefully, like like I will give a disclaimer. There's going to be some statistics. I'll try and make them as interesting as possible. there There's going to be a bit of kind of theoretical, what we call theoretical framing in sociology, and you'll see what that looks like. It's basically explanations behind what's going on with the statistics.
00:33:02
Speaker
And then i'll I'll tie it all together at the end with a few kind of key things going on with this generation. But let's start with the kind of probably the most common story so far amongst millennials when it comes to religion, and that is one of religious decline.
Religious Decline Among Millennials
00:33:14
Speaker
right We've already kind of been hinting at it strongly throughout this episode. And I'm definitely seeing signs of that of that decline in my analysis of survey data in Canada, because that's my main main area that I look at.
00:33:26
Speaker
And so millennials generally score lower on a whole range of religiosity indicators compared with members of older generations. So for example, there's only an estimated 57% of millennials in the 2021 Canadian census said they belong to a religion of any tradition.
00:33:43
Speaker
So it's the Christianity is now a minority amongst millennials, and there's only a small majority still identifying with any kind of religion. So that compares with 76% of Canadian boomers who say they belong to a religion, right? So there's been kind of a steep decline between boomers and millennials there.
00:34:00
Speaker
right um In stats cans, 2020 general social surveys, so a big survey they run each year, only an estimated 27% of millennials said they practice a religious or spiritual activity on their own. So things like prayer, meditation, at least once a month. And that compares with 37% amongst boomers. So a 10% drop between boomers and millennials for those types of activities.
00:34:22
Speaker
And in the 2020 World Values Survey, it's a big international survey of which Canada takes part, um there's only an estimated 52% of Canadian millennials who say they believe in God. um So that's just a slight majority ah compared with 64% amongst boomers, right? So there has already been decline amongst boomers for some of these indicators, but much sharper decline when you look at at younger folks amongst Canadian millennials, right?
00:34:49
Speaker
And so why are we seeing this decline? I mean, we talked a bit about this in the previous episode of kind of factors leading up to this. It doesn't come out of nowhere necessarily. um But there was this kind of way of understanding, at least the process of what's going on, because it's not only happening in Canada, it's happening across Western societies, so like in the US and Europe as well.
00:35:08
Speaker
Right? um and And it fits into what, and is explained by what we call in my discipline, the secular transition framework, right? So kind of transitioning to a more secular society or a secular social environment. So it is part of a kind of a secularization paradigm, right? So it's like most sec ah classic secularization theories, right? Secular transition theory kind of puts the emphasis on modernization.
00:35:33
Speaker
um and modernization as the root cause of religious decline. So that includes modernization, its mix of industrialization, democratization, urbanization, rationalization, cultural diversity, expanded education, increased prosperity. These are all kind of processes tied to modernization that are kind of weakening religion in our Western societies over a span of many decades and many centuries.
00:36:00
Speaker
And these modern processes, pushed to their limits and even taking on new forms in the millennial social location, are argued to undermine identities, beliefs, and behaviors related to the supernatural and the transcendence, so typically the domain of religion. And so there's still a lot of debate um as to which of these processes is most influential in driving the decline of religiosity in their cares amongst populations.
00:36:25
Speaker
Some scholars will put the emphasis on kind of a better kind of um kind of material conditions, less existential anxiety. right If you're living longer, you're not faced with death all the time. There's less need for religion sort of thing. Others will focus on the welfare state as providing that more material security for individuals. Others will turn more to pluralism and the fact that you have people of different religions um creates a context where no one really thinks that one religion is right above others to be able to coexist with those different religions and that kind of weakens they their kind of worldview or way of understanding the world. So all of this is at play and that's still kind of debated, which is the key one, or maybe it's a combination of all of them, to be honest.
00:37:09
Speaker
But nevertheless, there are kind of three main arguments put forward by the secular transition framework on how religions decline unfolds that form more of a concessant consensus among those currently within the secularization paradigm. So things people typically agree on about this process that's underway, right?
00:37:27
Speaker
So first kind of key argument from secular transition theory is that religious decline can be triggered at different moments in different regions and proceed at different speeds, depending on the specific socio historical context of the country or the region in question.
00:37:42
Speaker
So I'm quoting sociologist David Vos and Mark Chaves here who are kind of key thinkers in this field. So every country's experience of secularization is unique when it comes to specifics like the onset of decline, the rate of decline, and contingencies that may accelerate or offset cohort driven decline in a particular time and place.
00:38:01
Speaker
Although historical, political, cultural, social, and economic differences amongst, they're speaking about Europe, so amongst the dozens of European countries, produce substantial variation in the onset of secularization across the continent. Once it begins, the pattern of change looks very similar in all of them, so across countries. So there can be different factors impacting timing, but once that secularization process begins, it usually unfolds in a similar way between countries in the West.
00:38:32
Speaker
So differences are a matter of history and culture, and explaining them always requires a combination of the general and the particular. But these differences should not obscure the reality that there is a general pattern of religious decline that characterizes the West, including the United States, because that's another issue. Some people think the United States is an exception, but it's not. They're going through the similar process. It just kind of became began later in the US. and you can Look back to our previous episode in this series, we explored some of those historical and cultural contextual factors for the Canadian case and why Canada looked a bit different with this when this process began um kind of to do with kind of what happened over the last couple of centuries.
00:39:13
Speaker
And so that's the first kind of main argument, right? Is that it's a general process, but it can be triggered at different moments given different cultural factors. Right. So the second main argument put forward by the secular transition framework, um also one that was mentioned in that previous quote of Velas and Chaves, is that it's mainly generational religious decline that's happening.
00:39:36
Speaker
So although the timing may vary between regions and countries, once underway a process begins where each successive birth cohort is less religious than the preceding one. The common stories decline driven by cohort replacement. So this process achieves fruition when many parents with weakened religiosity from their now more secular social environment have in this case, millennial children of their own and raise their children without explicit religious socialization. So don't really give them much religious education in markedly more secular surroundings, right? So declining levels of religious education and socializations or childhood are considered a key factor as the key factor in understanding these intergenerational decreases in religion, right? So each successive generation gets less religious education because the environment gets more secular over time, which in turn makes each successive generation more secular. It's kind of like this ongoing process.
00:40:34
Speaker
And so within the secular transition framework, religious and spiritual needs amongst individuals are understood as not fundamental to human biology, but rather as socially constructed. So usually only present amongst adults who learnt these religious and spiritual needs during their childhood and learnt to give importance to them during their childhood, during that religious socialization.
00:40:56
Speaker
So individuals born and raised in more religious social environments and families tend to be those who go on to be more religious and spiritual as adults. There are always exceptions, but for the most part, that's the trend. If you grow up religious, you're more likely to be religious as an adult. So secular transition argues that this is less and less the case for larger and larger portions of younger generations who do not receive this kind of more religious education and socialization. So that was the second argument. So it's mostly a generational decline that we see.
00:41:26
Speaker
The third main, the third and final get through this, I promise, is the third main argument um that the secular transition framework puts forward is that this process affects all forms of religion and spirituality in society. so This includes less conventional forms of spirituality.
00:41:42
Speaker
so crystals, nature loving, random digital newfangled forms of religion, spirituality, all of this is affected. It's not just your classic types of religion, like going to church right or going to mosque or you know praying in a group, um but all these various all the kind of beliefs, the behaviors tied to the supernatural are part of this process.
00:42:08
Speaker
And so what often happens is that some people will move away from more conventional forms of religiosity, but because they learned that spiritual matters were important in their more religious socialization as kids, they might still keep less conventional forms of spirituality of various kinds. Maybe that's more a more spiritual practice of yoga and so forth.
00:42:29
Speaker
And so, but this is hard to pass on to kids without any kind of structured religious socialization. And so their kids are less likely to adopt those more kind of even these less conventional spiritual activities. So that's the the secular transitions framework view of it. That's still a bit debated. We're not sure exactly where pick people pick up some of these kind of less conventional spiritual beliefs and practices in our societies. Maybe it's their parents, maybe it's pop culture, maybe it's a combination.
00:42:55
Speaker
Um, but that's, those are also expected to decline. So it's not just like we're changing the type of religion. Secular transition theory says, no, no, we're seeing a decline of all of these forms. Just some of them take a bit longer to decline than others sort of thing. I think at least some of it is coming from Gwyneth Paltrow, but I'm not sure. Yeah. go Yeah. Group. Yeah. a goopia Paltrow studies to be had people, which anyone's interested. Yeah.
00:43:19
Speaker
Um, so that that's the kind of decline. You can also see it in a kind of more substantive or positive light focus not on decline, but on what has been gained amongst members of the millennial generation. So, you know, millennials can be understood as the inheritors of their boomers, parents and grandparents in some instances, uh, of their countercultural revolution that de-emphasize traditional social institutions including more traditional forms of Judeo-Christianity in the 1960s, and brought about a society more characterized by progressive sexual and family morals, individual choice and personal authenticity with an ultimate goal of personal happiness, and a consumer market economy on steroids basically, right? Like those last few things we almost take for granted now, but you have to remember that it actually comes from somewhere
00:44:03
Speaker
And that's kind of what kind of key aspects that also define the millennial generation that we've kind of pushed to the limits, but also inherited from our parents and grandparents. Right. Right. So it's okay. So that's the kind of first story of religious decline going on. It's the main one and it's kind of a key focus for our episode today. It it it is though, worth turning a bit of attention to the fact that just because there is some religious decline across generations,
00:44:29
Speaker
This doesn't mean that religion spirituality have disappeared entirely amongst today's millennials, right? There definitely still is religion spirituality. It's just not as prevalent amongst the generation, and it's taking on different forms amongst the generation than before, right? So although millennials are characterized by the largest non-religious population in Canada, compared with older generations,
00:44:51
Speaker
Millennials are also the most religiously diverse generation right compared with those who have come before right so there's a kind of like these two parallel trends of decline of religiosity but also diversification of religiosity right 15% of millennials in the 2021 Canadian census said they belong to a religion, other than Christianity.
Religious Diversity and Non-religion in Millennials
00:45:08
Speaker
And that's up from 8% amongst boomers, right? So it's it's a minority, but it's still a substantial minority. If you're curious, the largest non-Christian religious tradition amongst millennials in Canada is Islam. That that represents 6% of millennials self-identify as Muslims in Canada.
00:45:26
Speaker
And more broadly, when I analyzed how like Canadian millennials answered a whole series of questions on their religious and spiritual identities, practices, and beliefs in a survey that I ran back in 2019 with about 1,500 Canadian millennials, I found four distinct groups um that i'll I'll name and quickly mention now, and we'll get get a bit more into them in a few minutes.
00:45:49
Speaker
So um first, those who I call the religious millennials, right? um These are individuals who are quite active with the faith group and who encompass just under a quarter of Canadian millennials. So 24% of colonial millennials so can be defined as quite actively religious of various religious traditions put together. There is the spiritual seeker millennials. So these are individuals who are um occasionally involved in more in kind of traditional religious groups, um but are also really into less conventional spiritualties. And they make up about 20%, so a fifth of Canadian millennials.
00:46:27
Speaker
There is a third group that I call the cultural believers. So these are typically individuals who have a nominal affiliation with a religious tradition. So who identify with the tradition, have some beliefs tied to that tradition, but don't really have much practice ah tied to it. So don't really aren't really involved with religious groups all that much. So that's about another 20% of millennials.
00:46:49
Speaker
And then finally, the non-religious millennials who score low on all religiosity and spirituality indicators. So anything you ask them that is somehow related to spirituality and religiosity, they score low, it's completely absent for them. And that's about 36% of Canadian millennials. So a big chunk of Canadian millennials are this non-religious group, but they're it's not also not all millennials who are non-religious either, right? right So being religious hasn't disappeared amongst the millennial generation in Canada, it's just become a minority phenomenon now, compared with religiosity being more widespread amongst previous generations, right? And the main argument I make in the book is that this shift towards non-religion that's been happening over a number of generations is now kind of reaching this tipping point amongst millennials, that it's become the new default or the new normal amongst the millennial generation for the first time. It's kind of starting to reach
00:47:41
Speaker
kind of normality or like that's the common category, the one that a lot of people think about when they think about millennials, right? um This is kind of, you see signs of this, right? yeah If you have, if a millennial has two non-religious parents, they're 90% like more ah likely to be non-religious as adults, right? So non-religion has really high retention rates, right? Very few non-religious people become religious as adults.
00:48:05
Speaker
compared to in previous generations, say if you're born in the 20s and 30s, when actually if you were raised non-religious, you had a good chance of becoming religious as an adult because maybe you ah found friends or got married to someone who was religious and they kind of like pushed you into it and your social environment was much more religious. So you're more likely to kind of become involved with a faith group, whereas now that's very rare. It still happens a bit, but very rare.
00:48:30
Speaker
um And if you were raised ah with either nominally religious or or actively religious parents, you still have a 50% chance of disaffiliating as as a millennial compared to a very low lower rate of disaffiliation amongst previous generations.
00:48:46
Speaker
So those who are born non-religious, stay non-religious. Those who are kind of raised religious are more likely to shift towards non-religion. And that's why I'm starting to see non-religion as like this this kind of new normal, new default option amongst the millennial generation.
00:49:03
Speaker
and And this affects everyone in the generation, right? So it also affects those who remain more religious and spiritual because they're now having to grapple with this wider secular culture amongst their generation. And they almost, you see it when you interview them is that they kind of feel they have to justify to others as well as to themselves why they're religious or spiritual. um Whereas in the past, they were part of a majority. And so they wouldn't have to really think it through all that much. They just kind of did it because everyone else did it, right?
00:49:31
Speaker
So for example, there's many Christian millennials currently who see themselves as going back to the core teachings and origins of that religious tradition, similar to when Jesus walked the earth in Roman times with only a small dedicated and holy following, right? So that's like the Christian millennials in this larger world of heathens and pagans, right? So it's like this shift in mentality of where they ah where and how they see themselves.
00:49:54
Speaker
and um And so a lot of Christian millennials see this almost as a positive thing because they feel their faith is more engaged and authentic um compared with the masses in prior generations who just kind of nominally carried out church teachings and the will of religious leaders without thinking too much about their faith. That's kind of how they're often defining what happened in the past.
00:50:13
Speaker
and And also what's fascinating is that many religious millennial parents are struggling with how to best pass on their faith to their children. And remember, I mentioned earlier that religious socialization education during childhood is often key for individuals to be actively religious as adults. Many religious millennial parents are struggling with how to pass on their faith to their kids.
00:50:35
Speaker
when the onus of doing so follows more squarely on them now because religion is less prevalent in public schools, is less prevalent in the wider community. So it's kind of now more on the religious parent to pass on and they kind of feel that pressure and they're kind of worried that like, how do I do that in in this kind of cultural generational context that is less religious? That's more secular, right? So not only is that kind of the decline of religion affecting creating a larger non-religious population, but it's also changing the cultural environment that affects all these different categories of religious and spiritual millennials, right? And so again, I'll repeat for emphasis, um religion, spirituality have not disappeared amongst millennials. Instead, all members of the millennial generation are impacted by the new secular default is what I kind of call it, where being non-religious is most common and considered most normal.
00:51:26
Speaker
as well as millions are also impacted by this kind of growing religious pluralism. And all of this gives religion, spirituality, a kind of new flavor amongst today's emerging adults, right? So makes religion, spirituality, non-religion look different now than it did in previous generations. So there's a lot on the back there, and i'm im I'm interested in all of it.
Secularization in Education
00:51:51
Speaker
And ah I I think it's especially um it's especially ah informative for us now as we look at some of the some of the trends that are occurring across the West. And like you mentioned, the United States is is undergoing this process maybe a little, ah start a little later than ah some other places like Canada, but it's still ongoing. And we see right now, I think, a really good indication that ah
00:52:21
Speaker
um your ah your points about how this the school age and the lack of religious education and the ah the more exposure to pluralism and to people from different beliefs and even you know even how the internet exposes people to to different beliefs and ah how it is creating perhaps a bit more of a ah a bit more of a battleground in the in the school systems, ah which we I think see in the states as there's a lot of now controversies to some states that have come out, I think, oh, I might get this wrong, but I think it's Ohio says you have to start teaching the Bible in every class. And there's, you know, and and these aren't ah sort of grassroots decisions driven by the current generation or even the current generation's parents or a lot of the
00:53:09
Speaker
citizens of those areas. It's driven by politicians and by what might seem to be maybe more of a reaction to this trend of secularization. um I'm not sure if I have a question in there, but I'm kind of throwing that out. No, it's a great comment. i mean it is a really ah like Education is always a really contentious domain of of all of all of these developments, right? Like I teach a sociology of religion class at university and looking at how the state ah kind of manages or deals with religion. And even in Canada, education becomes really fraught because a lot of millennials, even amongst millennials, millennials will often like, when you ask them like, oh, you know, I'm okay with people with different values from me, like you do you, right? Like it's all fine.
00:53:55
Speaker
until it comes times to like, oh, they have to teach my kids, right? Like, oh, yeah my kids have to learn, right? and And millennials are coming into that because they're starting to have kids and they're starting to reach that kind of middle age where where kids are are really on their minds. And suddenly it's ah the you do you framework is not applied in the same way when it comes down to the you the the person with very different values might be teaching your kids or your kids might be learning about it.
00:54:19
Speaker
And so how best to do that right is always been contentious in Canada, to be honest, and is still very contentious. like What's the best way? Because you also don't want to like completely not mention religion in schools because religion is an important part of our society. Whether people like it or not, it it does have an impact. There's people of all different faiths in our society. And so if individuals have like zero knowledge about that,
00:54:42
Speaker
that can also be problematic, right? they can They can, you know, without thinking about it, potentially discriminate against certain religious minorities, for example. And so that so how how to best teach about religion without, um you know, ah think teaching kids into getting bringing kids into a religion, right? And so and it's a very fine line sometimes. And and this, yeah, there's Yes, in the US, you hear about like extreme cases sometimes, but even in Canada, there's a lot of debate between provinces of how best to do this, and and there hasn't really been a perfect solution found or anything. it's it's you know Those who develop so public school curriculums are still dealing with this.
00:55:22
Speaker
I think it'll be interesting to see what does come out in that area as we, you know like you said, religion is a ah part of our society, a part of our history. So as we continue in our journey as a increasingly secular nation, what are those conversations in schools going to look like? And I you know i hope they continue and I hope they're also evidence-based. And I have a book I've ah been reading recently by a psychologist,
00:55:50
Speaker
Ara Norenzian from the University of British Columbia is called Big Gods and he's an evolutionary psychologist and does work on ah religion and the development of religion as a sort of a social agent to encourage ah collaboration and reciprocity and ah kind of viewing the the history of religion through a lens of Well, what did it do for us and and why and how did it evolve over time? I think that ah that would be a very useful way of, ah you know, teaching religion in schools as opposed to we all have to put up the 10 commandments in every classroom. Yeah. I mean, which isn't really legal in Canada so much anymore. Yeah, I know. wait but But was very, until very recently, very common, right? and And still some teachers go in that direction, even if that's not policy. Yeah.
00:56:37
Speaker
Well, ah this is maybe this is my Gen X showing. I do recall oh yeah the school days starting with the Lord's Prayer. Yeah. Well, I mentioned my public schools in Quebec when I was there were still denominational based, right? So I went to a yeah public Catholic school, as as you still can in Ontario as well. And we were taught the in Bible and and and create and creationism and in our classes as fact until I was in Devote High School. yeah Yeah. No, it's, this is, yeah, these changes are, some of them very recent, right? Yeah. And especially came out of charter challenges stemming from the early 1980s in Canada, that especially religious minorities didn't want this in schools anymore, as well as secular individuals didn't want this in schools in the same way, at least. And so since that shift away from Christianity in schools, kind of what, what form does it take, right? And that's the big question. Yeah.
00:57:30
Speaker
and public schools, like private schools. Yeah. And public schools. Yeah. Yeah.
Reasons Behind Religious Disaffiliation
00:57:34
Speaker
ah One other thing that you'd said really stuck out and kind of reminded me of some. conversations I'd had over the years with younger friends who are firmly in the millennial generation. And I've seen a ah fair few ah disaffiliate or or deconvert from their religious beliefs. ah yeah Full disclosure, i I used to work in a Christian youth ministry organization many years ago.
00:58:00
Speaker
um you know, different life. And I've actually been bumping into people who are now adults, but were teenagers during that time. And a ah startling number of them have actually disaffiliated from their ah from their beliefs. So we've had some interesting conversations about it. But one of the things that has always come up when I've asked them, so what, you know, what made you reconsider your beliefs? What made you, you know, ah start to make different choices or or believe different things with the or do different things with your time, you know not going to church or whatever. ah Many of them either went to university and made friends from different backgrounds.
00:58:42
Speaker
ah or they traveled and met people from different religions and from no religion at all, ah or they just through ah through one way or another had increased exposure to that sort of pluralistic society and would just say things like, you know, I couldn't maintain this ah you know this this belief, this idea that we had like the one true way of looking at the world anymore because I'd met all these wonderful people.
00:59:12
Speaker
who looked at the world a different way than me. And i ah one young friend of mine, she said that she went to a secular university and her kind of light bulb moment was when she was talking to her ah or atheist roommate and said, but you can't possibly be happy though, because only Christians are really happy. So so how do you get through the day? And her roommate was telling her, look, I legitimately am quite happy with my life in general.
00:59:41
Speaker
you know, like I'm not thrilled about a lot of things in society and global warming, scars me but i'm I'm quite happy. But I'm leading a happy productive life. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, but like yeah yeah I mean, yeah, no, all of this is is fascinating. And and yeah, I've heard a lot of of kind of similar biographical stories through the interviews I often am part of or part of a research team conducting interviews with people who've who've left religion.
01:00:04
Speaker
And if you see it kind of more from my point of view, the sociological point of view, the change in social environment and the change in social ties is crucial. And that often happens in your late teens and early adult years. So when you leave your parental household, if you were religious, were you if you're part of a religious family and you change, you don't always disaffiliate, obviously. You can still remain involved with the religion. You can change religions.
01:00:29
Speaker
um But that is the moment when you're most likely to disaffiliate, if you are going to disaffiliate. It can happen later in life, but it often happens in that kind of late teen, early adult years. And and individuals themselves will give lots of reasons and and rationalize that change of worldviews and what led them to to question their beliefs and to change the way they think about the world and understand themselves in the world.
01:00:53
Speaker
Um, but, but often proceeding that is a change in the kind of social network, social environment. You often change environments. You go to a university, usually living outside away from your parents. Um, maybe you, you travel, um, and you start meeting people with different perspectives, including non-religious perspectives. And, um, and, and and just, say we can go on forever. We'll see how much of this makes into the episode. But another fascinating side of that is that non-religious parents have a specific way of raising their kids. And it's always fascinating to talk to them about it because they're always like, oh, no, I have a hands-off approach when it comes to religion. like I let them choose. i'll I'll give them all the information. and Then they can decide. And they think that's very kind of individual, like unique to their way of parenting. But it really isn't. That's a very common way that non-religious parents deal with all of this.
01:01:46
Speaker
And that actually um passes on a certain way of seeing the world. Like it's not absent of content. It's that the parents themselves are not assigning a whole lot of value to religion. They're just saying like, here it is, you go ahead and and do your thing with it, kid. um Kids don't tend to pick up things that way, right? They often pick up things that they see their parents doing, their parents talking about things in the home. I mean, again, as a trend, there's always exceptions.
01:02:14
Speaker
but as a trend and so that's actually a very secular kind way of way of education or socialization of teaching religions as all kind of equal and just here they all are is a very kind of a certain secular view of the world i'm not saying it's a bad thing i'm just saying it's a certain way of seeing religion in the world that often transmits non-religion. You don't often pick up a religion that way. and so um And so I also find that fascinating of kind of looking at it from the other point of view, of actually it's not that non-religious people, parents are true ah passing nothing on, they're actually passing a different way of seeing the world on. And that's also really fascinating because that transmission is
01:02:55
Speaker
highly successful in our current day societies. Most kids who will come from that background keep it, keep that worldview as adults versus your more religious parents who are having trouble transmitting their faith to their kids more and more. Yeah. Right. Yeah. You mentioned, I think 90% of, uh, by far the best transmission rate of any quote unquote religious or non religious group in the country is the non religious parents are able to do it very successfully. And that's, and I argue that's because the environment also helps them do that. Right? Yeah. And they're not even trying, which is the really incredible. no That's it. That's it. They don't even think about it, right? That's what's so fascinating is they don't even have to think about it because that's the new normal, right? Yeah. In the past, and a religious tradition ah in the past, a religious transmission was the normal. And so their religious parents didn't even have to think about it right now. It's the reverse. Yeah.
01:03:44
Speaker
Absolutely. As a parent, I'm just wishing we could find all kinds of ways to transmit all kinds of things, ah you know, without any hurt to our children. ah There's loads of possibilities here. We should, we should definitely figure this out as a society because I would love to.
01:04:00
Speaker
i would i would love to I mean, I don't think there's any figuring it out as a society. I think just we're in a more plural, complex society. There's just going to be different ways of doing it, right? And that's, that's the kind of new, new thing, right? Maybe if we all just tell our kids, like, we're not going to tell you to pick up after yourselves. We're going to let you decide for yourselves. Start cleaning their room. I don't know. no no You got to give them a broom when they're like five.
01:04:22
Speaker
but we're thinking about.
Millennials in Religious Leadership
01:04:23
Speaker
So we ah we talked about how the, you know, leaving for a university, those transition periods, probably learning to do their own laundry, lots of ah factors that go into that being a change of worldviews. yeah Changing worldviews. Yeah. Like, but oh Oh my gosh, oh laundry I have to, I have to clean my own apartment. There is no God, like lots of, there is no gosh, lots of big transition moments.
01:04:45
Speaker
ah And i I think it's also interesting how you mentioned that those who are ah are pursuing some you know religious identity aren't necessarily doing it the same way that the the Boomers were, or the Gen Xers were. They're having to justify it more to themselves. they're having to you know they're They're seeing themselves as going back to ah back to the original messages of of Jesus, which I think we could both agree there's lots of positive things that could be gleaned from ah you know from those those words and those ideals. um Maybe millennials will be killing the megachurch industry next.
01:05:22
Speaker
And yeah, we'll see. I mean, I'm not too worried about mega churches in Canada. They haven't been all that successful, but um yeah, I mean, there's also different interpretations of these original messages, right? And so it which is true yes it leads them to some really fascinating dynamics amongst current day Christianity as millennials are kind of coming into positions of power, right? They're now kind of, you know, becoming church leaders, deacons, you name it. And so they're starting to kind of bring their own way of doing, including in some cases, more progressive values.
01:05:51
Speaker
And so what does that look like and what happens when there's that kind of generational clash that that might happen because of different ways of thinking and doing, right? That's currently going on in a lot of religious groups.
01:06:03
Speaker
Well, in our area of the country, much of the clash is still about women in leadership. Oh yeah. So that's, that's where some of the- At some point, and hopefully it won't be such an issue anymore, but yeah, yeah still progressive values. That's what I'm talking about, right? LGBTQ plus communities, right? Indigenous reconciliation, yeah all of these that, you know, it's not all millennials who hold these values.
01:06:26
Speaker
that more do and and are are consider them very important and want to change their groups from the inside. And that can lead that sometimes that can happen and and then sometimes that can lead to big clashes. Yeah. And to their credit, ah I know a number of religious organizations that are uh, going all in with things like, oh yeah, affiliation. And, uh, I mean, I've met some United church groups who are like more progressive than like your most progressive atheist, who are like really into it and, and have a long tradition of being very progressive. Yeah. We, we have this stereotype of more conservative churches. I mean, on average just groups are more conservative than mainstream Canadian culture, but there are some groups that are very progressive. Yeah. And I was like, because I'm an outsider, I'm non-religious myself. A religious group's never going to listen to me, but they will listen to someone on the inside who's kind of you know taking that position of leadership and who does kind of you know trying to promote these more progressive values. And so I'll often try and support those leaders to kind of, if they want to hopefully engage with change within certain groups. I mean, that this is my kind of more activist
01:07:31
Speaker
less empirical side, but of what I'm hoping to achieve. But it's ah it's it's fascinating to see kind of what goes on and what comes out of it and kind of sometimes more conservative backlash against it as well. That can happen. So yeah, yeah it's all all underway.
01:07:46
Speaker
like I can share from my own experience. ah When I was still religious, I was ah attempting to be that kind of progressive influence. And as I disaffiliated it, it did become clear that the ah those on the inside who were listening to me before no longer were. So that was a ah ah loss of the voice that occurred there. and And having seen that, I can kind of see why others might choose to stay and you know make the changes from from the inside. And I ah I have a great deal of respect for people who who do ah take that role on for their communities. And i i know I know several even ministers I've spoken to friends over the years who've said, yeah, my my beliefs have changed greatly, but I can make more of a change yeah if I stick around on the inside. and
01:08:30
Speaker
that So you mentioned earlier that the survey you did that formed the foundation for your research and your book ah occurred in 2019.
Pandemic's Impact on Religiosity and Future Trends
01:08:39
Speaker
And ah the next year, a funny thing happened, and we were all caught by a global pandemic. Hilarious. Yeah, it was the most hilarious. And and despite all the the you know the occurrences and the tragedy and and everything that came out of COVID, one of the most, I think, interesting ah
01:09:02
Speaker
social changes was to see a ah ah drastic ah kind of shift in church attendance and in affiliation, and also in churches kind of coming down on different sides of the divide for ah for COVID ah measures. And there there was a lot of controversy. and um And to their credit, a lot of churches really ah you led the charge in saying, hey, let's social distance and let's be let's try to keep people safe.
01:09:28
Speaker
ah And despite those efforts, I'm not sure all the millennials who responded that they were religious in 2019 would have the same answer today. And I have no way ah to measure that, but I was wondering, is this something you plan to to do again, to conduct your survey again with millennials and to ah see if anything has has changed in the last five years?
01:09:51
Speaker
Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, I don't have any immediate plans to just for resource reasons. It takes money to run these surveys and I'm now involved in other surveys. i I mean, I'm definitely keep tracking all the generations, especially millennials over the year, over the next few years and see what comes of it. Because even though the key changes are often seen between generations, there are often some shifts during the same lifetime, like the life course of a same generation or members of that generation.
01:10:18
Speaker
So we'll see how it goes. I mean, um I think what I found, there were a few things I found especially fascinating over the last five years, how quickly governments ah in Canada assumed and decided that that religious groups were non-essential and so that they would have to close. Like there was no discussion about that. Like it never even came up as like, of course we'll have to shut them Whereas Walmart could stay open or Amazon warehouse could stay open, which I found fascinating. It was like, oh, okay. I mean, that really shows what the government thinks of religion in some ways. yeah um and and And also non-religious organizations. I'm sure you guys, your activities were shut down as well.
01:10:56
Speaker
and um And so that for me was really interesting, but also actually how little the pandemic affected general religiosity trends in the country. So obviously would the church like with gatherings prohibited in some cases, um but but a lot of people who attended in-person religious activities kind of shifted online. What kind of screwed our statistics up a bit was that it ah the COVID happened right around Easter.
01:11:22
Speaker
And Easter is usually you get like a spike of church attendance because like the cultural believers, like that's like one of two times a year, Christmas and Easter, cultural Christians, when they'll actually go to church. And so a lot of people jumped online for um ah an Easter religious activity, as well as, you know, there's other faith holidays around then.
01:11:41
Speaker
as well. And so it was fine. It was fine. Like church leaders like, Oh, this is it. Like everyone's going online. Like there's a return with the pandemic. It's like, no, I think, I think it was just the usual Easter spike and, and it was, um, but yeah, after, you know, when things reopened, I'm looking at more recent statistics.
01:11:59
Speaker
You know, there's still that kind of slow downward trend that we've been seeing and and that there wasn't a whole lot of pandemic effects so far. I've got colleagues who are really looking into this and so we'll find out in the next few years, like what was the real impact of COVID-19 on people's religion and spirituality. It obviously had some effects, but it's hard to kind of see them in just the general government statistics so far.
01:12:19
Speaker
But yeah, kind of keep tracking it. Maybe not with like the exact same survey as before, but keep looking into it. And yeah, and, and for teaser for the next episode, also we have a new generation arriving, right? Gen Z. We're kind of here who I'm teaching at university now and who are coming onto the scene as adults. And so it's also fascinating to see like, what are they up to and and how are they similar or different from previous generations? So we'll, we'll talk more about that in the next episode when we look to the future. Yeah.
01:12:47
Speaker
who are Gen Z and what are they putting on their toast? I'm looking forward to that conversation very much. Is it still avocado? It might be avocado. It might be birria. I'm not sure. or like i and I don't even know what that is. like think that' so old I think like meat. I think I've seen lots of like videos on Facebook with meat going on toast, which I'm i'm all about. or Oh my God, is it like back to French can Canadian tots here on toast? Is it like so old it's new again?
01:13:12
Speaker
I don't know. Then again, it is Facebook. That's a very Gen X thing to be looking at. I was going to say, I don't know how many Gen Z's are on Facebook. book I don't know. Probably not. Probably not a lot. Well, I'll get one of my kids to go on TikTok and tell me what people but we report back in the next episode. folks Looking forward to it. So ah in the next episode, we will be hearing more about ah where Canada is is going. where Where are things going from here? what ah What do the data show the likely trends to be it as much as one can predict anything, ah which you know is always going to be a little bit vague and misty, but we're still yeah we're still going to do our best. and I'm looking forward to hearing more ah from Sarah about the
01:13:55
Speaker
um you know about the they're not just the trends, but also the direction of future research
Episode Conclusion and Call to Action
01:14:00
Speaker
in Canada. And there's a new initiative, the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Societal Futures that I am looking forward to hearing more about. So I want to say again, thank you to Dr. Sarah Wilkins-Laflam for joining us in this series. I want to say thank you to all of us all of you who are listening ah on behalf of Humanist Canada. We're glad you were here and we're looking forward to having you next time. Thanks again. Thanks, everyone. Bye.
01:14:26
Speaker
Thank you for listening to The Voice of Canadian Humanism. We would like to especially thank our members and donors who make our work possible. If you feel that this is the type of programming that belongs in the public conversation, please visit us at HumanistCanada.ca and become a member and or donate. You can also like and subscribe to us on social media at Humanist Canada. We'll see you next time.