Church attendance is diminishing as multiculturalism is rising, and that's no coincidence
Pessimistic reasons for the decline of organized religion are only part of the story
People don't always leave religion because of what's wrong within the church. Sometimes they leave because of what's right outside of it.
When we talk about the many people in our society who've left organized religion, we tend to focus on how religious institutions failed them — on how hypocrisy, violence and corruption have driven people away from the faith communities they grew up in.
Just this spring, I wrote about how the Mount Cashel abuse investigation figured into a bigger picture of religious disillusionment in this province that caused many Newfoundlanders and Labradorians to desert the Catholic Church and other religions for good.
This pessimistic perspective on the decline of religion, though, tells only part of the story.
People are also leaving religion for reasons that are rooted in idealism, rather than discouragement.
It's no secret that there are age-based differences in the trend toward religious disaffiliation. Middle-aged residents are twice as likely as seniors to profess no religion, and adults under the age of 45 are twice as likely again.
If disenchantment with religious institutions were the only factor driving the exodus from organized religion, wouldn't all age groups be equally affected?
Something else has changed in our society that's influenced younger people's views on religion: multiculturalism.
The younger the person, the more likely he or she is to have had meaningful exposure to other cultures and to have a diverse social network.
Some of that multicultural contact is a result of the changing demographics of the province. According to Statistics Canada, the proportion of immigrants in Newfoundland and Labrador grew 71 per cent between 2006 and 2016.
In the St. John's metro area, one in every 25 people is an immigrant. Most metro residents who aren't immigrants themselves now interact with immigrants regularly, whether at work or at leisure, when volunteering, shopping or playing a sport.
More cross-cultural conversations
Young adults in the province have even more opportunities to meet members of other cultures.
More Newfoundlandlers and Labradorians than ever before are spending time at our society's hubs of multiculturalism, universities.
Statistics Canada also reports that 27.3 per cent of NL residents aged 25 to 44 hold a university diploma or degree, compared with 15.7 per cent of residents aged 45 to 64 and 11.9 per cent of NL seniors.
In labs and in lecture halls, students hash out ideas, listen to each other's opinions, and, ultimately, forge friendships. As Canadian universities welcome higher numbers of international students every year, more and more of these conversations and relationships are cross-cultural.
Newfoundlanders and Labradorians in their 20s and 30s also travel abroad more frequently than their elders. As visitors to foreign countries, they have the chance not only to meet individuals from a variety of backgrounds but to experience, if only temporarily, new ways of living.
Cultural diversity introduces us to the beliefs and concerns of others.
After they graduate from university or return home from abroad, young adults' regular use of social media helps them stay in touch with acquaintances near and far.
As a result, three-quarters of Canadians under the age of 35 say they have friends of a different ethnicity from their own.
So what does cultural diversity have to do with religious beliefs?
For at least a century, the population of this province has been almost exclusively Christian. We may have learned about other religions through school, books or television — but it's only as we've begun to socialize more extensively with members of outside cultures that many of us have been able to put a personal face on other religions.
Cultural diversity introduces us to the beliefs and concerns of others. But it's friendship that makes those beliefs and concerns matter to us.
Because of the affection we have for our friends, we want them to be safe and well. That loving concern clashes with religious doctrines that condemn non-believers to an afterlife of suffering.
We take our friends' perspectives more seriously that we would a stranger's, because we respect them. When a friend's beliefs are fundamentally irreconcilable with our own, it can motivate us reassess our point of view.
In other words, we shouldn't see religious disaffiliation merely as a negative commentary on religious institutions.
Religions ask us to believe that certain things are true about the world. That there's one god, many gods or some kind of godless divine order. That after death the soul goes to heaven, hell, Sheol, nirvana or into a new body to live once again.
These teachings are contradictory. They can't all be factually accurate — at least, not in the way we understand factual accuracy.
The more you come to respect the religious traditions of others, the more difficult it is to believe that your beliefs are right and theirs are wrong. Over time, this openness to other possibilities can diminish your fervour for your own faith.
In other words, we shouldn't see religious disaffiliation merely as a negative commentary on religious institutions.
It can also be an outcome of positive multicultural experiences and the qualities those experiences can engender, including broad-mindedness, empathy and compassion — qualities that, as it happens, most religious traditions have strived for centuries to instil.
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