Religion: Recent Immigrants and Not

Bryan Passifiume in the National Post commented on something that may seem obvious. Where, in a Western states such as Canada, there is a trend towards a reduction in religiosity. Typically, if women have more equal rights, education is high, and incomes are higher than average, then the society becomes less religious over time.

If natural-born Canadians tend to be less religious, and if new immigrants are more religious, then those facts can be plugged inot Passifiune’s analysis. In that, individuals and families from poorer countries with fewer rights for women, less education, and lower incomes, will likely be newer immigrants. This will influence, a bit, the secular nature of the Canadian state.

There may be a surge of apostasy within those families and for those individuals in those communities exposed to a more liberal democratic form of life, as seen in Canada. Potentially, this could mean an increased demand for secular communities to provide a community for these possible upcoming apostates. We’re talking more than a million new immigrants in a short matter of time.

Rev. Dr. Andrew Bennett stated, “If you look at the the data for new immigrants, disproportionately they’re coming from countries where religion is a much more public reality than in most western democracies… New immigrants are more likely to express their religion publicly than non-immigrant Canadians… They’re more likely to attend religious services, they’re more likely to desire to have their children educated according to their religious tradition.”

The countries with the most incoming immigrants are China, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Philippines, France, Pakistan, Iran, the United States, and Syria.

Data published by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada points to India as this country’s top source of immigrants in 2022, with 118,095 new people arriving from that nation last year.

Cardus, the source of the study for the data analysis on the immigration, developed a spectrum of spirituality index. The categories in the spectrum were religiously commity, privately faithful, spiritually uncertain, and non-religious.

The only major observable or significant different between the numbers was between the religiously committed at home and those new. 14 percent and 28 percent consider themselves as such, respectively.

Among those who consider themselves “religiously committed,” only 14 per cent were born in Canada, while 28 per cent were born outside of the country.