TORONTO (RNS) More teenagers in Canada identify themselves as Muslim than with the Anglican, Baptist and United churches combined, according to a recent survey.
Project Kids Canada, which has tracked thousands of youth in an ongoing survey since 1984, will publish its findings in a book to be released in April. The survey polled more than 5,500 teenagers, notes Project Kids director and sociologist Reginald Bibby of the University of Lethbridge.
Bibby dubs the current generation of teenagers “The Emerging Millennials” in his book of the same name.
The upswing in Islam — plus three other major non-Western religions — is largely due to immigration, said Bibby.
His research showed that the number of teens who identified themselves as members of “Other Faiths,” (including Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism, Sikhism and aboriginal spirituality) grew to 16 percent last year, compared with 3 percent in 1984. Muslims accounted for 5 percent of that group.
During the same period, teens who claimed membership in Roman Catholic or mainline Protestant denominations dropped dramatically.
While exactly half of teens in 1984 identified themselves as Roman Catholic, that number fell to 32 percent in 2008. During the same time period, young people who reported being members of the United Church of Canada dropped to just 1 percent last year, compared with 10 percent in 1984. The Anglican Church of Canada did not fare much better: 2 percent in 2008, compared with 8 percent in 1984.
Atheism is also on the rise, with nearly a third reporting “no faith at all” in 2008, compared with 12 percent in 1984.
Bibby writes that the majority of Emerging Millennials, like the generations of teens before them, “are inclined to see things in relativistic terms.” Only 10 percent say religion is the primary basis for their moral decisions, for example.
The survey also showed a sharp decline in what Bibby calls “sacred and not-so-sacred practices”: one-fifth of teenagers claim to read the Bible or other scriptures at least monthly, while 43 percent say they check their horoscopes monthly or more.
