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Episode 10 - Part 1 of 3 - An Interview with Daniel Dacombe & Dr. Sarah Wilkins-LaFlamme
108 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 1st of a 3-part conversation with sociologist and professor Dr. Sarah Wilkins-Laflamme as she turns a critical eye on Western history in general, and Canadian history in particular, to explain some of the factors that set the stage for the emergence of the Millenials - the most secular generation to date.
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Transcript
Introduction to Podcast & Episode
00:00:10
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. Welcome to the conversation.
00:00:29
Speaker
In today's episode, we join Humanist Canada's Daniel Dacombe in the first of a three-part conversation with sociologist and professor Dr. Sarah Wilkins-Leflam as she turns a critical eye on the Western history in general, and Canadian history in particular, to explain some of the factors that set the stage for the emergence of the millennials, the most secular generation to date. Let's begin.
Canadian Secularism & Non-belief
00:00:58
Speaker
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 evangelical Christian, a PhD student, and a member of Humanist Canada. 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 by Dr. Sarah Wilkins-LaFlamme. Hi.
00:01:28
Speaker
Sarah Wilkins-Laflamme is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Legal Studies at the University of Waterloo in Ontario. She specializes in the sociology of religion, quantitative methods, immigration, race and ethnicity, political sociology, as well as social change. Her books include None of the Above, Non-Religious Identity in the US and Canada, co-authored with Joel Thiessen and published in 2020 with New York University Press,
00:01:54
Speaker
Religion of the Edge, Nature, Spirituality, and Secularity in the Pacific Northwest, co-edited with Paul Bramadat and Patricia Killen, and published in 2022 with British Columbia University Press, and Religion, Spirituality, and Secularity Among Millennials, the Generation Shaping American and Canadian Trends, published in 2022 with Routledge. Sarah, thank you for being here. Wow, thanks for having me.
00:02:18
Speaker
This is actually our second virtual conversation. Our first happened several weeks ago when you were very kind enough to sit down with me to discuss ah your books and your research, which are areas that I'm doing work in as a PhD student in psychology.
00:02:32
Speaker
I actually own two of those books and it was that conversation that led to the decision to having you on this podcast and we're very glad that we could make this work out. This is the first episode of a series exploring the past, present, and future of non-belief in Canada, which is an area about which you have some really important insights to share.
Dr. Sarah's Academic Journey into Non-religion
00:02:51
Speaker
ah Before we get started, I hope it's okay if I ask you to tell our listeners a bit about yourself.
00:02:57
Speaker
Yeah, well, thanks. I mean, I'm i'm one of the the people that some some refer to as the cradle nuns, right? So I was born non-religious, basically. I mean, I don't know if my parents would define me that way, but I certainly do. um So my parents ah met in Toronto when my mom immigrated in the early 70s to Canada. And my dad's French Canadian. And so he's kind of fallen away Catholic. My mom was but Church of England in Britain.
00:03:25
Speaker
um but but had some very bad experiences with the Church of England in her village and so kind of oscillates between a hardcore atheist and a kind of agnostic uh depending on when you catch her and and so I grew up you know with vague references to religion as it being something theory something that other people did but My brother and I we didn't really attend religious services, hardly at all maybe I think we went to like one midnight mass with our Catholic grandmother at some point. um And, you know, we went through the public school system in Quebec which at the time was still denominational which was still Catholic, um but, but we were kind of put into the non. religious part of it that you could request when we were growing up. And so I had very little exposure to religion. And I guess when I arrived at university, I started out in criminology and then kind of moved into sociology later on in my bachelors. I came across a research group led by Martin Menier at the University of Ottawa, who was looking into kind of the current day realities of especially Catholic religion in Quebec.
00:04:29
Speaker
And, you know, part of the draw of sociology for me was kind of people profs telling me like, hey, things are not always as they appear. Right. You've been told that religion isn't important in our society anymore. But in fact, in some ways, it still kind of is, but in different ways than you often think. Right. And so that fascinated me. And and that kind of got me interested in studying religion, non religion, less conventional spirituality in Canada.
00:04:53
Speaker
And yeah, I do so mainly through statistics, through numbers. I'm a religion numbers person, so I really love love data like that. um But yeah, I've kind of been looking at how the religious landscape is involved. And as my career has kind of progressed, um and I finished grad school, did a postdoc, kind of got hired at University of Waterloo. All over that time, the non-religious population has been growing and growing in Canada. And so it's been fun to track that and to see how that's developing and how that's changing.
00:05:21
Speaker
our religious
Data & Trends in Canadian Secularization
00:05:22
Speaker
landscape. right So that's that's kind of been my background. I think some people might find it a strange idea to be assessing religion and religiosity using data. You don't really think of those two things going hand in hand very frequently. do I mean, there's only a few of us who do it, but it ah gives us a really fascinating perspective, kind of the more global overview of of how the landscape is changing. yeah And I think the landscape changing is really what we're here to talk about. um I know that there's many different opinions and perspectives on the the history of Canada and the United States, especially the idea that ah that we're Christian nations or maybe that we started out as Christian nations. So maybe that's a good place for us to to start. Is that how we started out? And maybe we're certain areas more so than others.
00:06:15
Speaker
Yeah, I mean like the European settlers did bring their various forms of Christianity with them right when they arrived in North America, um right if you think about like early Catholic Church state systems of New France, when the French were here, ah the quasi establishment of the Anglican Church or the Church of England in the later half of the 18th century when the British took over.
00:06:35
Speaker
I mean, the there has been, obviously, Christianity was the main religious tradition with the European settlers. I mean, some of those European settlers left Europe because they found certain Christian traditions especially oppressive at the time. um but But some of the large Protestant groups and Catholic churches you know did very well in establishing themselves here in North America.
00:06:57
Speaker
They became especially entrenched and institutionalized in Canada over the course of the 19th century, so the 1800s. That's kind of really when our kind of vision of what religion is, the current one we have of Christianity, really kind of comes into its own in Canada.
00:07:13
Speaker
So this is kind of when the churches began to properly expand their vast geographical network of buildings um that we still see throughout the Canadian landscape today, like next to me is Hamilton, the city of Hamilton, and there's more Anglican churches in the city of Hamilton than there are Tim Hortons, right? That's how big of an institution just one of those churches became, became and there were multiple churches.
00:07:36
Speaker
and And this is kind of when the large Christian denominations became especially effective at providing a number of social services, right, in the fields of education, health and welfare, for example, especially over the course of the 19th century. And this is also kind on the darker darker side of things when the large Christian denominations became widespread enough and had enough resources in Canada to intensify their conversion and cultural genocide of First Nations peoples, usually with the support of the government. So this is through, for example, the residential school system.
00:08:07
Speaker
And so this is also the period when many laws were written with heavy Christian influence, right, over, especially in the 1800s and then than the late the first part of the 20th century. um So, you
Historical Context: Christianity's Influence
00:08:20
Speaker
know, things, laws like the antiquated antiquated sodomy laws and the criminalization of assisted suicide.
00:08:27
Speaker
Those were included in Canada's first criminal code in 1892, which kind of had strong influences for Christianity. um You know, some of those laws we've only really been slowly undoing and repealing more recently over the past few decades, right?
00:08:41
Speaker
and And so up until the 1960s, I think Canada, this might surprise some of viewers who don't know much of its history, is that Canada was actually considered more socially and politically conservative, um as well as more religiously devout than the US, right? So before the 1960s, we were like the more conservative, more kind of, you know, the ones who had stayed loyal to the British crown.
00:09:03
Speaker
were more religiously devout, less Republican, right? um I know that's hard to believe now because the the current trend is has been reversed, but that was the case for for many years in Canada, right? And so I'll drop a few numbers here. I promise I won't drown you all with statistics, but there's a few key ones here to kind of give you a sense of what the landscape looked before the 1960s in Canada, right? So in the 1951 census,
00:09:29
Speaker
96% of the Canadian population identified with a Christian denomination. So almost everyone that StatsCan measured was Christian at that point. um so And most of those ah Christians were part of either the Catholic, church the Roman Catholic Church, the Anglican Church, or the United Church of Canada. Those were kind of like the three big denominations that dominated the landscape for many years.
00:09:53
Speaker
In a Gallup poll from 1945, an estimated six out of 10 individuals of the general adult population said they had attended a religious service in the past week, right? So that's a really high rate. It's not everyone, but it's that's pretty high. We haven't seen rates like that since. um That rate rose to nine out of 10 in Quebec, where 95% of the population was self-identified as Catholic. So 90% of Quebecers were attending mass each week um in the mid-40s.
00:10:23
Speaker
So these are big numbers of affiliation and religious practice, kind of in the heyday of Christianity in Canada so I usually think of that as kind of from around the middle of the 19th to the middle of the 20th century and that's what really when we could call Canada, a Christian nation, right.
00:10:37
Speaker
um But you know, this said, even during this period, there were parts of the country that were more removed from organized Christianity. um The typical example is British Columbia, for example. um British Columbia has always had higher rates of its population who are not affiliated with any religious tradition.
00:10:54
Speaker
um In the 1901 census, ah although overall numbers were still small, British Columbians were 10 times more likely than the average Canadian to say they had no religion, of and that can be of various kinds of either atheists, agnostic, free thinkers, secularists, or other.
00:11:10
Speaker
and
BC's Unique Secular History
00:11:11
Speaker
And there's kind of a kind of geographical political reason for that right historically the West had that frontier mentality when it was being settled it said it got settled by Europeans later on right and this mentality was kind of focused on mobility and resource extraction ah political contestation between indigenous British and American groups.
00:11:31
Speaker
A physical and psychological distance from the rest of the continent, and a desire out west to be free of the establishment and an establishment with a capital E here right the establishment it's all its forms kind of meant that organized Christianity never really got as strong of a foothold on the west coast in the 19th century as elsewhere in the country, right.
00:11:50
Speaker
you know ah BC historians Tina Bloch and Lynn Marks argue that what defined British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest in general, um their exceptionalism was you know it was mostly that they were had their people had an irreligious experience for many of its European settlers of the area. right So British Columbia were to a certain extent born secular, right? So characterized by lower rates of regular church attendance among their populations that date back to the 19th century to when it was settled by Europeans, right? Religion never really really became as institutionalized during the mid 19th to mid 20th century among a majority of the BC population, ah compared with kind of more Eastern, Central or Southern parts of the continent.
00:12:35
Speaker
and And also added to that was there were many large ways of East Asian immigration to British Columbia, among whom saying one had no religion, at least religion in its more Western form, ah was much more common. They loved them, kind of self-declared as non-religious, even if they might have had practices such as ancestor worship or or temple worship. And so that also added another contribution to making non-religion even more socially acceptable on the whole in the region.
00:13:03
Speaker
That's a really interesting mix that happened out west. So you have on the one hand the you know those most likely to to break away from the from the crowd and to be independent and to strike out on their own, which may be factors associated with more free thinkers. And you also have more of a ah cultural mosaic beginning to occur out west that wasn't occurring elsewhere.
1960s Shift Towards Secularization
00:13:28
Speaker
But yeah, I can see how that would really make a recipe for ah you know for a more diverse and a more secular area in Canada.
00:13:37
Speaker
um It seems that the ah the rest of the country was a little later to follow BC's example. what When did things start to change across Canada and what were some of the factors that began that change?
00:13:51
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, this is the big question. We kind of know the when, but we don't really know exactly the why or or exactly what combination of factors drove the why. There's lots of different theories. Before I get into some of those, it is worth saying, you know, we tend to think of the past as some big religious block or golden age. But in fact, like, like there's always been non-religious people in the geographies that today we call Canada, right? You know, you can think of, you know, early years of European settlement in the 16th and 17th centuries, kind of in Eastern and Central Canada.
00:14:22
Speaker
fur traders traveled and lived far away from any forms of institutionalized Christianity, right? Or we can also think of a bit later on the free thinkers and secularists who formed small and often controversial societies at the time in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Canada. And, you know, even in the 1911 census, for example, ah at that Haiti of Christianity, there was still just under 27,000 Canadians that Stats Clan classified as non-religious, basically had said come some kind of identity that didn't really have any ties with organized religion when they were asked the question, what is your religion? So, you know, the non-religious people were often persecuted in the past and they were often left out of the historical record. But non-religion as a phenomenon has long existed in western societies, including in Canada.
00:15:10
Speaker
However, the bigger more recent shift towards the decline of Christianity in Canada began, especially with the boomer generation in the 1960s, right? That's kind of like a key turning point that is in many ways we see lots of our current aspects of our current society. That's when it kind of comes into being is that long period of the 1960s.
00:15:29
Speaker
um But it's it's also when you see that kind of Christianities, some will nicely say transformation, I'll call it, you know, flat out decline amongst the general population, right. So I mentioned earlier those big religiosity statistics from the 1940s and 1950s when like almost everyone was Christian and lots of people were attending churches.
00:15:48
Speaker
By the time the 1971 census rolls around, Stats Can has actually introduced a specific category of no religion that people can tick off more easily ah when they're answering the question, what is your religion?
00:16:01
Speaker
And so that's an indication. It's not like that's where non-religion started in Canada or anything with StatsCan, but usually by the time StatsCan makes the change in its census question, it's because things have been brewing in the collective zeitgeist for some time, right? I'll give another example that's more recent. StatsCan only just recently provided more gender options in its gender question in the census than just male and female.
00:16:24
Speaker
But those changes have in our understanding of gender, they've been developing for much longer in and Canadian society, right? So it takes a while for Stats Can to catch up. So by the early 70s, Stats Can had caught up fit to what was going on in the population. And ah so yeah, and so but by the 1970s, being able to say that you have no religion, you know, it was still a small proportion of the population who did, but it became a more real, kind of more socially acceptable possibility for people, right?
00:16:53
Speaker
and so you know And that's kind of the period when I'm able to start measuring the rise of those who say they have no religion, that kind of early 70s period. So in 1971, there was about 4% of the Canadian population self-identified as having no religion. um It's still a small proportion at that point, but it's a big step up in size compared to what we had what had been measured in previous censuses.
00:17:16
Speaker
Right. And so, and then by 2001, so 30 years later, that proportion had risen to 17% in the Canadian population. So it was, it's kind of been steadily on the rise since the early seventies. And that rate has always been higher at West. So that rate in 2001 was 36% in British Columbia, for example. So over a third of the population said they had no religion in the early 2000s out in BC.
00:17:38
Speaker
And so here there's like many big societal upheavals during the post-war period of the second half of the 20th century that reshaped Canadian society, right? There's lots of things going on at the same time. And that's why it makes it kind of difficult to figure out, was it just one thing that triggered a decline in Christianity, or was it like a combination of this shift to a new kind of different structure of society? And and and what was also changing was our relationship with religion, right? So these upheavals, they're including, you know we conclude here,
00:18:06
Speaker
the vast expansion of the consumer market economy, right? A vast expansion of the welfare state, the civil rights movements, the moral and sexual revolutions, um kind of the racial, ethnic, and religious diversification of the Canadian population through much more open immigration policies that came into place in the late 60s. And so kind of the overall boomer counter-cultural movement ah What it led to was discrediting many traditional sources and figures of authority, including the church minister or the church priest, right? um it It also pushed for and normalized much more progressive sexual, family and gender values. The civil rights movements began to carve out more social and political spaces for their members.
00:18:46
Speaker
and more equal treatment and opportunities for racial minorities, members of the LGBTQ plus communities, ah those with disabilities and women. you know Obviously there's still more work to be done to achieve that those equalities, but that the 1960s was a big push, a big period for kind of pushing those forward. And all of those probably had a part to play, right, in the religious changes we've seen since the 1960s in Canada. But I actually give more weight to another factor um Another key shift that was triggered um
Quebec's Quiet Revolution & Identity Shift
00:19:17
Speaker
during the 1960s and I think led to some pretty big religious shifts or how we kind of perceive religion in Canada and that's the shift in how Canadians fundamentally understood themselves and what I mean by that here is the decline of the British-Canadian national identity in the English-speaking Canada
00:19:35
Speaker
and the quiet revolution in French-speaking Canada, right? So on the English-speaking side of the country, prior to the 1960s, there was this prevailing British, Canadian, white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant majority national identity, um that that's how kind of a lot of Canadians thought themselves, that kind of what we call the WASP identity, right? um On the English side, and then on the French-speaking side, there's that kind of strong French-Canadian Catholic identity um in the French-speaking part of Canada. And so Those two national identities were pretty big and were pretty strongly interwined intertwined with Christianity before the 1960s, and something happened to those two national identities during the long 60s, right? Something that didn't happen in the same way in the US. And that's really the decoupling of Christian and national identities in both English-speaking and French-speaking Canada, right?
00:20:27
Speaker
So in English-speaking Canada, you basically had the collapse of the British Empire, right? And that was often pinpointed to things like the independence movement in India in the 1930s and the 1940s, the end of the Second World War, the Suez Canal Crisis of 1956, and the UK joined the European economy economic community and kind of putting the commonwealth aside a bit in 1967.
00:20:48
Speaker
And with all of those changes, the British Canadian national identity here in Canada of the past began to crumble, right? A national identity that was once so reliant on the British Empire's ideals, worldviews and colonial membership. right So this crumbling of the British Canadian national identity was really evident in events like the big one that often comes to mind is the flag debate of 1964, right? when political leaders, mainly Pearson, decided just to remove the Union Jack from the new Canadian national flag, which before the 1960s would have been like unheard of. like You have to include the Union Jack in any representation of Canada. Well, now Canada was beginning to be conceived without that, right? and And so in response to this loss of the British-Canadian national identity,
00:21:33
Speaker
There's this kind of socio political move that was first made towards a more kind of bilingual and bi cultural national identity combining French and English heritage um articulated and promoted especially during the Lord, Lauren Denton Denton Commission of 1963 to 1970.
00:21:49
Speaker
And then a further move was made towards a multicultural national identity in the 1970s and 1980s that we still kind of have today in English-speaking Canada focused on and celebrating, let's call it more politically accepted forms of diversity, often watered down and a bit Westernized, forms of kind of cultural and ethnic pluralism. um You know, that national identity still holds pretty strong today in English-speaking Canada, although it's seen its kind of evolution over the years.
00:22:16
Speaker
And so Christianity in the form of Protestantism, which was closely tied to that old British-Canadian national identity and its, let's face it, problematic ideals of civilization, did not really go with and was not really transferred onto this new multicultural vision of the nation, right? In fact, although religious diversity more broadly is an important part of the Canadian mosaic,
00:22:37
Speaker
it's often not really discussed that much. right It's not the form of diversity that often gets touted and celebrated explicitly with within Canadian multiculturalism discourse. right More often than not, religious diversity in the country, which is very real, is treated as an afterthought in discourse, in political discourse, or as even a potential source of unwanted controversy right that doesn't receive much attention nor a discussion by the key key big players or key influencers.
00:23:05
Speaker
and so from the 1960s onwards with there being less or no social pressure to be quote unquote a good christian to be quote unquote a good canadian um and with many even associating a number of historical and present social ills with christianity right we're thinking here of like the third sexual abuse scandals um the running of the indigenous residential schools in the 19th and 20th centuries right when that kind of information came out, Christianity was seen kind of in ah in a very bad light, right? Large segments of the cane boomer majority and subsequent generations just began and continue today their move away from more conventional forms of Christian belonging, of belief and ritual.
00:23:44
Speaker
And then on the French-speaking side, it's they're kind of going through a similar process, right? The Quiet Revolution of the 60s brought about an end to the direct links between, on the one hand, the Catholic Church and Way of Life, and on the other hand, the new emerging Québécois national identity.
00:24:00
Speaker
um right Although Catholic and Christian heritage still remains an important part of national identity identityy today in many for many Quebecois, it's a much kind of weakened form of cultural Catholicism that you see today in the province that doesn't really imply regular practice of specific Catholic rituals, nor adherence to specific Catholic beliefs by individuals. like Most don't like the church, but they'll still kind of like to think of themselves as Catholic for more of the kind of heritage and cultural value that has for families in the French-speaking Canada.
00:24:29
Speaker
And it's not something that's really expressed that much in public there's issues that kind of come out of it without being openly spoken like Bill 21 is a more recent one that we'll talk about in future podcasts, but but it is still there for many many Quebecers right And so rates of frequent religious service attendance really plummeted in the 60s and subsequent decades in Quebec more quickly than in most other Western nations during the period. They started from really high, right? Remember that nine in 10 records were attending church in the mid 40s. Now it's like less than 10% attend weekly, right? And so it really plummeted and plummeted fast and has never really recovered since in the province, right?
00:25:09
Speaker
and so and And most other religiosity measures, right things like affiliation, getting your kids baptized, having funerals in churches, have also followed that decline among French-speaking populations in Quebec and in the rest of Canada.
00:25:25
Speaker
right So a lot of these changes can ah that Canada underwent in the 60s obviously had the roots and developments that happened before that in prior decades. right So it's not just like the 60s happened out of nowhere. There's some great historical works, if
Canada vs US: Divergent Secular Paths
00:25:41
Speaker
anyone's interested, y'all can email me, ah that goes over like stuff, movements that were happening in the 40s that were kind of led to the 60s and paved the way for the more kind of dramatic and visible changes that erupted in the 60s.
00:25:54
Speaker
But that that long 1960s period is really crucial in setting the core conditions for the next 60 years right up until today, of the kind of religious spiritual and secular transformation that we've seen in the country.
00:26:07
Speaker
now I just want to take a little few minutes here to contrast this to the U.S. because that's really how we are became distinct, like how the trend reversed and the U.S. became more religious and conservative than Canada after the 60s because the U.S. really didn't experience the same decoupling of Christian and American national identity in the 60s that we did.
00:26:27
Speaker
right Ties between Christianity and American patriotism, arguably remain pretty strong to this day. They're and they're not everywhere. They're not perfect, but they're still pretty pretty present in in current day American society. right Many types of ties between individuals' Christian faith and their identities as Americans and their American citizenship citizenship remain prevalent in much public and private discourse in in the US even today. right and And what happened in the US was different than what we saw in Canada. In the US, more conservative forms of evangelicalism experienced a revival of sorts in the 70s and 80s, right? Nobly by means of the Christian right that emerged politically during that period. ah That revival we took completely did not happen in Canada, but or very like very limited. We did not really undergo that same revival here.
00:27:14
Speaker
And, um you know, scholars Putnam and Campbell in their book ah that they titled American Grace, understand this latter return of conservative evangelicalism in the to the American political sphere as a counter shock to the civil rights movement and progressive sexual family and gender norms of the 60s and 70s, many in America fearing the socio political disappearance of their more conservative values, and so reacting politically to defend them, which we didn't necessarily see here to the same extent in Canada.
00:27:42
Speaker
And so this also had the effect of reinvigorating certain ties between Christianity and American identity and ensuring that this link would persist for most Americans well into the 1990s, right? In the U.S., it's only really been since the 21st century or maybe the 90s at the earliest that we really began to see signs of Christianity fraying at the edges in the U.S. among certain demographics, especially amongst millennials in the U.S. um that that had happened much earlier ah in Canada.
00:28:11
Speaker
And so whenever I compare the US and Canadian context in my own work, I keep coming back to these key developments in religious and national identities. I do think these changes in Christianity's ties to political, regional, and national identity changes that seem to have been more significant in Canada than the US since the 60s are crucial to understanding the different social environment when it comes to religion and non-religion within Canada compared with the US, right? Religion isn't isolated from transformations in other parts of society. It's very much a part of them and can be affected by them.
00:28:43
Speaker
i I thought that was a really fascinating overview. I think yourre your commentary about the decoupling of the religious and national identities that occurred here in Canada ah in a way that it didn't in the U.S., which you mentioned. And I think most of us would say, yes, we've noticed that. No kidding. Boy, howdy. ah But the ah The other piece that stuck out to me was, you you you know, you mentioned the wasps, which as I'm a I'm a prairie guy, a British Scots, Irish descent, you know, yeah wasps through and through. ah But I see that ah generational shift happening even in my own family. iint My living grandmother, who's 99, and she
00:29:31
Speaker
ah She got a letter from the Queen on her birthday when she was in her 90s. Very proud to have that. frame it yeah well i I'm pretty sure it came framed. yeah it was ah It was a big deal. and ah And at the same time, I know my parents' generation, they're much more, I don't know if we could go around and call them anti-monarchists, but definitely not you know not on board with the whole song and dance of the monarchy.
00:29:54
Speaker
And then thinking about, you know, my own generation and we could just really care less and would much rather you you weren't out celebrating when Charles was crowned. No, no, no. When Princess Diana died. That was yeah i mean know because, you know, she was the one that was at least making a difference in the world, I think was the idea.
00:30:11
Speaker
Yeah, so kind of seeing that in my own family, that that decoupling did occur. And it's really um it's really a reframing of the in-groups. You don't need to be, I think you said, you don't need to be a good Christian in order to be a good Canadian. And I think that we we might not hear as many people say that in the United States of America.
00:30:32
Speaker
Now, there's still a big proportion in the US that say you have to be Christian to be a good American. I mean, and what's really fascinating is that it's from those WASP families that we see the most non-religious individuals today. Most non-religious individuals today are coming from the kind of white Anglican or white United Church families, but but that have left religion for a few generations now. You're starting to see more and more Catholics also abandon their affiliation and become non-religious in like kind of fully like They don't have any kind of religious behaviors, but they also don't identify them as Catholic anymore. You're starting to see that more and more, but the kind of big rise in non-religion over the last few decades has really come from people leaving the Anglican and United churches, especially the big kind of mainline Protestant denominations. yeah I did grow up going to United Church before starting to try out the evangelical ones.
00:31:23
Speaker
what what some of my French friends might call the anti-chamber to atheism. That's a joke. it's the Full respect to the United
Early Secular Figures & Challenges
00:31:30
Speaker
Church. I respect the progressive nature of the United Church, but yeah, it's it's that's that's they've seen huge declines, and they're now really in a fight for their own existence, because they were they were so big, like they were so massive and as an institution in the late 19th and early 20th century, and now they're having to massively downsize, and if they don't manage it properly, it's really gonna be the end of them. yeah I think any organization any religious organization that has Greta Vosper as there as one of their ministers, famously an atheist, yeah church minister, at the anti-chamber of the foyer to atheists, that fits. That definitely tracks. You mentioned that there have been you know secular people in Canada for as long as we've been in Canada.
00:32:14
Speaker
um And you you also mentioned that you know data gathering is a little challenging prior to the 70s for the the reasons you described. ah Do we have much idea about who the first secular people or groups in Canada were and how they identified or organized themselves? ah Did they organize themselves or ah was were they all kind of scattered an individual?
00:32:40
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, the the first time, when we know about them, it's it's from the individuals who are brave enough to actually speak out about their secularity, right? Which I assume was quite rare because the repercussions for doing so, the negative repercussions were quite high still, right? If we're thinking about like the 17th and 18th and 19th century. um And so, I mean,
00:33:01
Speaker
you definitely do have some key legal cases that pop up from time to time where um there's like a non-religious person is trying to do something in society and the church is thwarting them and so they take them to court basically, right? And so um you can think of in 1874 there's the Gebal case in Montreal. So Gebal was a prominent member of the anti-church liberalism movement in Montreal and was not allowed by the Roman Catholic Church to be buried in his family's preferred Côte d'Innège cemetery when he passed away, right? A cemetery that was technically owned by the state, but that was actually run by the church at the time, right? Because the church was still running a lot of things. The state hadn't really taken on the size that it has now and the powers that it has now.
00:33:43
Speaker
And so his his family, Gebal's family, had to take the church to court over over this, right? and And that was a big deal as the Roman Catholic Church has a lot of resources and was very powerful in Montreal in the late 19th century. um But the Gebal was one, right? It went all the way to the London Privy Council, which was, you know, at the time, the highest level of of courts that you could go to.
00:34:05
Speaker
and And but that case was just kind of like a good snapshot into the some of the inequalities that non-religious individuals were facing at the time. For all the cases that we heard about, there was probably a lot more going on that we never heard about that never got written down in the historical record, right?
00:34:21
Speaker
and And so, yeah, there is some organization, I'm not a huge expert on this, but the the first societies of free thinkers and secularists did begin to kind of officially form, um especially in Toronto, but in other parts of Canada as well, in the kind of late 19th and early 20th century. This was kind of part of a bigger movement across Western nations, like in in Great Britain and US where similar organizations were beginning to form.
00:34:45
Speaker
um And I mean, I'm not sure if there's a really good history academic history of those groups yet that's out there. and I mean, so if anyone's looking for a fun research topic, I'm sure there's some probably some independent researchers who's looked at that. And it'd be fun if anyone's got any suggestions to to put them in the comments of of works that have looked into those groups, but they haven't gotten a whole lot of attention. um But they were definitely there. um But the before the 60s, they were still pretty small.
00:35:13
Speaker
um and And they were usually a particular kind of person who was able to out themselves, we'll call it that way, as being non-religious or who were actually just non-religious. And so you know before the kind of later part of the 20th century, it was typically your white male university educated urban resident who was more comfortable self-identifying as non-religious because in other ways they had more social power they had the kind of means, maybe economic means, but also kind of social means to either thwart or counteract some of the discrimination they would have experienced for being non-religious. So the white guy that was kind of you know came from Oxford and was living in Toronto was like, you know you can't do anything to me because I've got all the power. You wouldn't actually say that, but that's probably how it actually was. And he's like, so I'm going to you know call it for what it is. I'm a free thinker. And And so that's your typical demographic who when non-religion was socially ostracized, they would be the ones who could say they were non-religious and some did still experience very negative repercussions, right? There was some, even if you go further in the past, there's executions.
00:36:24
Speaker
related to being an atheist, but it was only kind of more recently as the non-religious population has grown since the middle of the 20th century that you see other members of other demographic groups becoming a bit more comfortable to say they're non-religious. So kind of ah the trend of being non-religious grew amongst women, amongst some racial minorities, um especially you know since that 1970s period and more recently as non religion became kind of more normal normalized and socially acceptable. And so that's how the kind of non religious population in the country has changed as it's kind of grown and and become more normalized in society.
00:37:04
Speaker
I think that's, as you mentioned, you know consequences like being executed, which obviously was quite some time ago. The worst, yeah. I mean, it's actually not that work. Scotland had one that was actually, um I'm forgetting the date now, so we can probably cut this, but it was actually only like a couple of centuries ago. like It's not that far. yeah That's unfortunate. I've been to Scotland. I liked it there. then Nobody tried to cut my head off at all.
00:37:30
Speaker
No, and now the the funny thing, well, not funny, but like they've become so one of the most non-religious parts of Europe. And now it's like they did a complete 180 on it. Yeah. Yeah, they have. I think ah your point about the the social capital that a lot of people who were able to be out as atheists is ah is really well made. There's certainly, and as a cis, a c assist ah hetero white male myself, I navigate spaces without being aware of the challenges I would have where I someone else in them. And that's something that I'm ah still you know still learning about and will continually be learning about.
00:38:09
Speaker
ah But there's there's constantly spaces where and that I don't experience a consequence for something that maybe somebody else would for being in that space, being as vocal, being you know so on. So to to understand that, up right up until the later 20th century, we have, um if not a majority, at least the majority of the visible secular community, being you know white, male, educated,
00:38:34
Speaker
financially stable enough to weather the consequences of going against that kind of identity. Yeah, being able to take the church to court, for example. Yeah, being able to take the church. There will be a very small number of people who could do that, right? Oh, no kidding. Well, then, and the first case you mentioned in Quebec,
00:38:53
Speaker
I know I'm not I'm not Catholic. I know relatively little about consecrated ground except what I think I've seen a law and order episode that included it as a plot point. But it was a big deal, if I recall correctly. And so to see someone even in that era take on the church and
Canada's Peaceful Secular Transition
00:39:08
Speaker
win in the courts, you know, that's really something we're still seeing people struggle. And and they weren't given a um ah they weren't buried in consecrate, gap the church de-consecrated the grave area, and so, but the family just wanted Gebal to be able to be buried in that cemetery, but the church didn't give him religious rights or anything, even with the court case done and everything, so he's he's technically not, kind like they it's really petty in some ways, they like, they consecrated the small area around the grave, yeah, basically. That is, if it was any other organization, being that petty would just seem really out of character, but for some reason, I don't buy it.
00:39:43
Speaker
yeah we're gonna we're gonna deconsecrate this six foot long plot of yeah okay that totally tracks uh was there any point at which the the secular Canadians and the and religious Canadians, ah their interactions, their ah collaborations or conflicts, how did that play out over the latter part of the 20th century? Were there any, um and you mentioned some court cases, where were there any other arenas where that conflict really came into the forefront or where collaboration suddenly became ah more important?
00:40:19
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, like we tend to like highlight the the like the the difficulties or the challenges or the fights. But in reality in Canada, the change happened pretty smoothly, like pretty non-violently. I mean, I don't want to generate like there were some instances of really nasty um, outbreaks of, of kind of disagreements or fights or violence or discrimination. I mean, in Canada, compared to like somewhere like France, where there was like actually, they actually called it like a war between the church and the state in the kind of latter part of the 19th and early part of the 20th century.
00:40:52
Speaker
In Canada, the churches well i mean the church is held on to their social services and their social power for a bit longer in Canada than they did in some European countries. but i mean By the time the 1960s rolled around, the boomer generation was just so big demographically. like The church was having trouble handling them like it was just they didn't have enough resources to provide education and health to this huge generation that arrived right and and you know you know things quality of life is improving so expectations were higher right we're becoming kind of greater.
00:41:25
Speaker
And so in in a lot of cases, you you look at some of the historical records, the churches are kind of happy to hand this over to the state. They're like, oh, thank God. Like now we can focus on religion matters because we've been desperately trying to like educate all these like this huge amount of youths and we just can't handle them anymore. yeah um And so the church is kind of.
00:41:43
Speaker
i don't I don't want to call it quiet. I mean, it's called the quiet revolution and in in Quebec. I mean, there were some flare up moments, but for the most part, the church kind of transitioned the power to the welfare state and relatively peacefully in Canada. I mean, yeah, there's legal cases. Yes, there's discrimination experienced by religious minorities.
00:42:02
Speaker
and non-religious peoples. But overall, compared to some other countries, um it it went pretty smoothly and and happened. you know People noticed, but people didn't really talk about it a whole lot. I mean, the process is a long one. It's still going on today, right? Like I mentioned in Quebec, the school boards only became non-denominational in the early 2000. It was a bit later, it was like 2008 or something officially. like I was still in a public Catholic school at the time,
00:42:28
Speaker
And I mean, there's still some kind of ties to the state and religion that kind of persists, that that kind of leftovers of this era. And so, you know, it started early, like we started to see it in the 19th century, right, that Gebal case was actually a pretty important one.
00:42:44
Speaker
because it established that even if a church was running a cemetery, it was the state that owned it. And so the church couldn't like exclude certain people based on their religious faith of taking part in this state service. And that case actually was an important precedent for future cases right of like kind of people going to schools that were run by church groups, et cetera.
00:43:03
Speaker
And so, um so yeah, it's it's been a long process, still sort of ongoing, but a relatively peaceful one. And so I think that's kind of what's, ah what's maybe the characterizes the Canadian history ah of all all of this kind of change, is that it it happened pretty quietly and pretty smoothly, and and the churches were at least initially okay with it for the most part.
00:43:24
Speaker
A lot of their members left the church to kind of continue to be cheer teachers and nurses. They kind of right defrocked in the 60s to become state employees, basically. like I remember at my first Quebec school, a lot of the teachers were just ex-nuns who used to be the not teachers, but who left the the church to still be able to teach at the public school um after it kind of happened a bit later kind of in the 70s in Quebec.
00:43:51
Speaker
And so, um so, yeah, it was ah for the most part, I kind of highlight the the general kind of nonviolence of most of it. Right. Like, I mean, yeah, I don't again, I don't want to understate some people went through some really awful experiences. um Some people move geographically out west to get away from the churches. Right. In some cases. And so, but, yeah, pretty relatively nonviolent, at least what we we see and remember of it today.
00:44:20
Speaker
Again, just noticing the the differences between Canada and the US, which I'm sure is something we we could come back to repeatedly. Yeah, I mean, this is it. Like today, we talk about polarization in the US, and this is part of it, right? There's kind of younger generations who are more progressive. Some who are very still involved in religion, but have more progressive values.
00:44:39
Speaker
um and who maybe want to see the church take a step away from politics and the state and and groups that don't, right? And so we're seeing it play out. I mean, it's not like it's completely absent in Canada, but it's much less public and no one really wants to seem to talk about it in Canada, which I always find fascinating. Like politicians here desperately try and void anything that's related to religion because they're worried sick that somehow it's going to tank their numbers. Whereas in the US, you see it much more part of political discourse still today, right? Yeah.
00:45:09
Speaker
ah You mentioned some of the systems that were ah previously run by the Church, education is one of them, and ah administration of certain public services, ah and as the the country trended less religious and the church was at least, like I said, at first seemingly happy to give up some of those duties. ah I'm guessing all those public systems had to change and adapt as well. um how how did what So what were some of the other public systems that had to change and and how did they adapt?
00:45:45
Speaker
I mean, they all had to change, right? They were all pretty much like welfare, like that that was the growth of the welfare state was basically governments taking provincial, federal in Canada, taking over responsibilities that used to be mainly religious or or from the churches, right?
00:46:00
Speaker
I mean, what we call state secularism policies, right? So in French, the term is laicite. In Canada, like a bad transition, but the only one we have is state secularism policies. These have kind of been slowly developing in the country over the course of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. So it's not like it all happened in the 60s, but they're kind of slowly developing. And in the 60s, it really became visible and took off.
00:46:23
Speaker
And here by secularism policy, I mean how a democratic state manages its relationship with religion and responds to diversity, right? So how the state no longer legitimates its power and existence based on or from religion, how its laws and policies are meant to be drawn up and adopt adopted independently of religious doctrine, and how discrimination based on religion is meant to be banned. It's not, it never perfectly is, but it is meant to be.
00:46:48
Speaker
And so a few key moments of these policies being developed in our history, you know, include right the freedom of religion that was legally offered to the conquered French Catholics with the British conquest of 1759 and the Treaty of Paris of 1763. I mean when the British arrived.
00:47:06
Speaker
many other colonial powers have basically just oppressed religious minorities. And at this period, ah Catholics were also a minority. in they They were like a Christian minority at the time. um But the British actually, ah a bit surprisingly, were a bit kind of counter to what it had done elsewhere, or what it was still doing in England at the time, they actually gave quite a bit of freedoms to French Catholics, right? And to the Catholic Church. And and it's why we still have a French-speaking part of the country today,
00:47:34
Speaker
is because the Catholic Church was allowed still to exist under the British and still kind of remain a pillar of French-speaking society in French Canada for until the 1960s basically. right So that's kind of an instance of these first move towards kind of more equality and kind of removing religion from state powers in Canada. right um Another example is in 1832, equal rights are legally given to those of the Jewish faith in lower Canada, right? This does not mean it's the end of antisemitism that was still rampant at the time, but at least legally, Jewish ah peoples were allowed to have equal rights in Canadian society in the early 19th century.
00:48:13
Speaker
In 1854, all the economic privileges like land and tax rights were rescinded from the Anglican Church. So this was kind of like the final moment of official disestablishment of the Anglican Church from the state ah in Canada. um There is no reference to God included in our 1867 Constitution, unlike what you saw in the American Constitution ah a few decades before, right?
00:48:36
Speaker
um And in more recently in living memory, there's been the 1982 Charter of Rights and Freedoms, right, especially it's article two of freedoms, right, the freedom of conscience of religion of thought, of belief of expression of the press, and of other methods of communication of peaceful gathering and of association, as well as article 15 right to equality. um I mean that now plays is the key you know, charter that play comes into play with legal cases now since the 1980s, whenever it comes to how the state deals with religion religious diversity, respective people's religious rights, beginning also to be interpreted in the courts as respect of religious rights of non belief as well but that's only come more recently and more slowly.
00:49:19
Speaker
um And so, you know, most of the legal cases that led to the official removal of prayer and Christian symbols from schools, from public health settings, and from political spaces, um those are based on the tenets of the 1982 Charter um and reflect the changing times and Christianity's loss of public influence in the country. And I mean, that's still an ongoing process, right? There's still municipal council meetings that start with a prayer in Canada,
00:49:42
Speaker
um And so it's not like so it's happened overnight. It's still ongoing.
Boomer Generation & Secular Trends
00:49:46
Speaker
Right. And so these governmental and legal changes were kind of one part of the process whereby the Canadian landscape went from one where, you know, Christian religion was considered an essential part of social life and of national identity.
00:49:58
Speaker
where religious identity and practice were taken for granted and people needed to be involved with a church to access key social services such as schools and hospitals and to be accepted in their community, ah to a shift to a landscape where religion became more and more a choice, right more and more disentangled from other social identities, just one thing to do and one set of belief ah amongst many others available to individuals.
00:50:21
Speaker
and And also part of this transition, I mean, it's hard to kind of distinguish parts. I mean, they're all kind of intertwined, but we also started to see important declines in rates of people attending religious services frequently as the Boomer generation reached adulthood in the 60s, 70s and early 80s, right? They kind of stopped going to church on a regular basis for many of them.
00:50:41
Speaker
and many of this boomer generation cada even though they stopped going to church they still for the most part retained a christian identity all right they might occasionally attend a church for an important event you know maybe over christmas or easter holidays um or for a baptism a marriage or a funeral Yet their decision to move away from regular religious practice in large numbers had ripple effects down subsequent generations right their Gen Z and millennial children did didn't receive the same religious socialization and upbringing as the boomers had right many Gen X and millennials.
00:51:13
Speaker
weren't brought to church regularly as kids, right? they they didn't They didn't see religious practices or rituals in the home all that often from their boomer presence ah parents. um And they weren't exposed to as much religion at school or in the right their wider community. I mean, as an overall trend, there's obviously places in the country where they were still still were, but as an overall trend, it was less less over as amongst younger generations.
00:51:38
Speaker
And so this led to kind of a further weakening of ties with Christian identities, beliefs and occasional practices amongst younger generations in a social environment where this non-religion was more and more acceptable, right? So if you didn't go to church at all, it's like, well, why would I still call myself a Catholic or an Anglican or a member of the United Church? I have no ties with them. And so generationally, even that just that kind of even vague identity or vague tie to religion disappeared or slowly in the process of disappearing even now.
00:52:04
Speaker
And so by the year 2000, in Statistics Canada's General Social Survey, about a quarter of individuals under the age of 35 said they had no religion. And even amongst those with a religious affiliation, one fifth said they never attended religious services. So these religiosity measures kind of decline more and more ah with each subsequent and younger generation. right and And this intergenerational process of religious decline, which is kind of the main shift that's driving the rise in the non-religious population in Canada, is still one that's ongoing today. right It hasn't stopped. It's still it's still happening.
00:52:37
Speaker
um and you know And we'll talk about that more in the next episode when we talk more about the the current situation of the population. Yeah. Yeah. So the trends we're seeing now, the trends that we, like you mentioned, we're gonna talk about in a future episode. Those trends, the current circumstance, we don't get there without the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in the 1980s. We don't get the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in the 80s without going through that long 60s that you talked about. And we don't get there without that sort of long decoupling, that very different national identity development
00:53:13
Speaker
than the United States had. ah So it makes complete sense when you when you lay it out like that. It makes complete sense why Canada... Well, it's easy to explain it after the fact, right? Sociologists are really great at that. We're really terrible at protecting the future. So wait till episode three, where... We try and make future predictions give fail utterly. But I mean, that that's it's one way of seeing, I mean, that's also a debate, right? Like some people will see other key factors like the rise of the welfare state and more material security as the key trend that led to a decline in religion. People didn't need religion anymore if the state was providing services and they were more kind of secure in their existence.
00:53:50
Speaker
I mean, but I, because Canada, like it to to explain that difference between the Canadian US trajectories, I think the national identity question is probably a key one. But, and then also you raised the question of kind of like, well, what came first, right? Was it the the chicken or the egg, right? Was there a decline in religion? And so there's a decoupling of those identities or did the identities kind of decouple because of other factors like the fall of the British empire?
00:54:15
Speaker
and that led to a decline of religion like that I have no answer for that like they were probably it was probably both they're probably like influencing each other most likely right
Global Secularization Comparison
00:54:24
Speaker
yeah I think that makes a great deal of sense uh I did have uh one other question before we start wrapping up this current episode um we've talked a bit about the the difference between how Canada and the United States have undergone their secularization trends, which I think you mentioned the yeah US s is still undergoing one, it's just happening a little slower and there's some more polarization. and How did what occurred in Canada compared to other Western countries? And I know that you mentioned Scotland already is being relatively ah secular and there's a lot of ah
00:55:01
Speaker
you know a lot of European countries that probably will be the same, how did their how did their processes ah you know differ or were similar to Canada's? Yeah, it's a great question, right? Because so far we've talked about like context specific Canadian things, right? That went on over the course of its history. But in reality, what was happening in Canada was part of a much broader Western trend, right? In most Western countries, right? European, North American, um you were seeing something similar going on. It might've started at different moments. Each Western region had its own unique social historic context that kind of had an impact.
00:55:40
Speaker
whether or not the dominant church was Catholic or kind of a ah ah few Protestant churches or one Protestant church did seem to have an impact, right? The Catholic countries seem to cause a lot more antagonism with the state than the states with that had a Protestant church or multiple Protestant churches that were dominant. And so there's some kind of context specific factors, but there is this kind of broader trend going on.
00:56:06
Speaker
right where um institutionalized Christianity is moving out of other social spheres such as education, health and politics over the course of the 20th century and populations are seeing declines in their levels of religiosity. right These are trends that we refer to typically as secularization and so if you see it as a bigger process, some countries began this process earlier like in France, like in Great Britain, um before the world wars. Whereas for us, it kind of really only picked up after the second world war. um Some countries were actually forced into this transition, right? If you think of the kind of extreme secularist and atheist state policies of the Soviet Union over the course of a big chunk of the 20th century, they were kind of like rapidly thrown into it, whether they wanted to be or not, people weren't allowed to kind of practice their faith anymore. And that kind of led to generational declines of religion.
00:56:57
Speaker
So, for example, like the Czech Republic or Czechia now is ah has the largest non-religious population in the world. Like it's the biggest one. It's like 80 percent of their population say they're non-religious. Right. and And that comes. You can see that like immediately as the Soviet Union starts to enact its atheist policies, ah you see that number jump officially because people would not say they were religious because they they would. It was like the flip side right in the Soviet Union. It was bad if you're religious and there were repercussions for it.
00:57:25
Speaker
and then their kids kind of just continued with that without receiving any religious socialization, right? And some countries didn't go through that process in the same way, or at least ah only started at a much later date than in Canada, like the US, right, that I mentioned earlier, which only really began to see signs of religious decline amongst this general population in the beginning in the 1990s, so especially with the millennial generation.
00:57:49
Speaker
And so it's I do understand it as a larger process at play that seems to be throughout the Western world. um But depending on the kind of socio cultural context, it could trigger that process kind of earlier or later depending on kind of more localized factors.
00:58:06
Speaker
So these secular populations seem to have ah evolved in parallel in different in different countries for with different you know mitigating factors, but all kind of following a a general trend.
00:58:21
Speaker
and especially looking at the decline of larger ah churches such as the Catholic Church or the Anglican Church, removing themselves from those public spheres a little more than they used to be. We know don't have Jesuits traveling the world colonizing nations anymore. but i mean Some are still trying, but not as many as there used to be. yeah and They're not always not usually supported by the state anymore. yeah Right. So you you see that kind of ah yeah parallel evolution of secularization all ah all across different Western nations. And ah as someone who generally my you know my my focus is on individual factors, what makes one individual make a choice towards rhythm religious just disaffiliation or so on, having the chance to talk about these ah
00:59:12
Speaker
these social factors, these society-wide factors is so valuable because it's easy to forget the sphere that we're living in, the water that we're swimming in, but it is affecting each individual, every individual who decides to say well does has to come out and say, I guess I'm secular, I guess I'm non-religious or whatever their choice of phrase might be. there they're not They're not doing it just as an individual, they're doing it in context. And that context is ah so valuable to understand and also really difficult to see. Like you said, sociologists you talk about talk about things that people don't always talk about. but You talk about the the invisible things and the factors that are occurring all around us. And you do see it better in hindsight.
00:59:56
Speaker
yeah but always But that's okay. This is the episode talking about the past. which yeah but great And I mean, for me, that was always a really fascinating aspect of sociology was that, you know, each individual has their own kind of personal biographical explanation of decisions they make of, you know, justifications of why they did certain things, why they left religion.
01:00:16
Speaker
But then when you take a step back and look at the numbers, it's like, oh, but that's really interesting because a huge chunk made the same decision and and are talking about it in the same way. And so there's obviously kind of these social environmental factors going on as well, right? Psychology typically looks at more internal factors of the individual, the mind kind of personality traits, et cetera.
01:00:35
Speaker
Whereas sociology looks at the more kind of social environmental factors around you that also doesn't determine who you are, or what you do, but has usually has a strong impact and will kind of limit some of the information you get or some of the opportunities you have. And so it kind of drives you into certain types of behavior or ways of thinking sometimes, right?
Episode Wrap-up & Future Topics
01:00:52
Speaker
and and we're Or then you get these kind of maverick individuals who will be like the first ones to say they have their atheists in the 19th century like have their whole community turn against them for it right and it's it's really a fascinating that's why i love studying it about this kind of of this landscape and and through the social sciences yeah we're a fascinating species but we are like complicated ross park we move in herds and it's nice to examine those herds from time to time it is
01:01:20
Speaker
ah Sarah, thank you so much for your time and your insights and your expertise with this matter. We have, I hope, two more episodes planned, although we'll see ah how talkative we are during them because we there's a lot of content to cover. and There's a lot of interesting research that's been done. We've just barely even scratched the surface of your own work ah so far. And having read your book and and and marked it up and put dog ears everywhere. I apologize. it's it's don't balge shapely when i got right It's for those who do that, they write the books, right? For who really want to read them. Well, I'm glad. It's seen better days. So I'm terribly hard on my books, I'm afraid.
01:02:04
Speaker
ah So ah for those who have have listened to this episode and have been ah you know as interested as I was in learning how we got here, um what's just as interesting as ah looking at what's happening now and the context in the water we're swimming in now and what it means and and ah the factors that are currently influencing it. um the The book that I'm referencing currency currently is Religion, Spirituality, and Secularity Among Millennials ah by Dr. Sarah Wilkins-Laflam and Sarah has been wonderful to spend this episode with you. I look forward to the next one. I hope that people who are listening to this will ah head out and buy this book in preparation for episode two when we're going to dive into your own research.
01:02:54
Speaker
Yeah, sounds good. I'm looking forward to it. All right. Thank you so much. And we'll see you next time.
01:03:01
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.