{"id":2402,"date":"2013-05-11T11:25:46","date_gmt":"2013-05-11T11:25:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/?p=2402"},"modified":"2013-05-11T10:29:52","modified_gmt":"2013-05-11T10:29:52","slug":"the-second-largest-religious-faith-in-canada-nothing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/2013\/05\/11\/the-second-largest-religious-faith-in-canada-nothing\/","title":{"rendered":"The second-largest religious faith in Canada? Nothing"},"content":{"rendered":"

This <\/a>is interesting, though the numbers are inaccurate given that the census has become voluntary, and, as such, the completion rate for the census was very low.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

OTTAWA \u2013 A nation of non-believers?<\/p>\n

The new\u00a0National Household Survey<\/a>\u00a0suggests we could be becoming so.<\/p>\n

While the largest faith in\u00a0Canada remains Christianity<\/a>, nearly one-quarter of Canada\u2019s population has no religious affiliation, according to the 2011 National Household Survey released Wednesday.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s roughly 7.8 million people who don\u2019t identify with a religion, up from 16.5 per cent of the population a decade earlier.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re seeing an increase,\u201d said Jane Badets, a spokeswoman for Statistics Canada. \u201cIt varies across the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

About 4 in 10 people in B.C. have no religious affiliation, compared to 2 in 10 in Toronto, she said.<\/p>\n

And immigration has contributed to the population having no religious affiliation \u2013 although she couldn\u2019t say why.<\/p>\n

The non-religious population is also younger than the general population, the survey said, with the median age in 2011 of about 33 years old.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
The largest faith in Canada is still Christianity, at just over 22 million people or two-thirds of the population, the survey said.<\/span><\/section>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n

Roman Catholics were the largest Christian religious group, with 12.8 million people or almost 39 per cent of the population. It was followed by the United Church at just over 2 million people, then Anglicans.<\/p>\n

Another 4.5 per cent said they were simply \u201cChristian,\u201d with Baptists forming the fifth largest denomination among the Christian faith at 1.9 per cent.<\/p>\n

But consistent with changing immigration patterns, there were growing proportions of the population who reported religious affiliations other than Christian, the survey said.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0growing proportions were Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, and Buddhist<\/a>. In 2011, about 2.4 million people, or 7.2 per cent of the population, reported affiliation with one of these religions \u2013 up from 4.9 per cent a decade earlier.<\/p>\n

Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists accounted for 33 per cent of immigrants between 2001 and 2011, compared to just 2.9 per cent of immigrants who came before 1971.<\/p>\n

Among those groups, Muslim was the largest, with just over one million people, the survey said. Muslim people represented 3.2 per cent of the population, up from 2 per cent in the 2001 census.<\/p>\n

It was followed by Hindu at 1.5 per cent, Sikh at 1.4 per cent, Buddhist at 1.1 per cent and Jewish 1 per cent.<\/p>\n

The survey collected information about religious affiliation only, regardless of whether it was practised or not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is interesting, though the numbers are inaccurate given that the census has become voluntary, and, as such, the completion rate for the census was very low.<\/p>\n

OTTAWA \u2013 A nation of non-believers?<\/p>\n

The new National Household Survey suggests we could be becoming so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[256,6],"tags":[39,646,205],"class_list":["post-2402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-atheism-2","category-demographics-of-religion","tag-atheism","tag-canada","tag-census"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2402\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}