Many of Quebecers would have “reluctance to talk about religion, even with their relatives” : this is one of the conclusions of the study on “Religious Plurality in Quebec”, published in early December by the Presses de l’université de Montréal. Led by a team of Canadian researchers, this work aims to be “a readable and concise synthesis of the diversity of current beliefs in the province”. Over a period of more than ten years, they studied 230 religious or spiritual groups spread over several regions of La Belle Province.
Among the main findings of this study, that of a certain “taboo” of Quebecers with regard to their religious practice. “We were struck by the great discretion that our respondents from the social majority in Quebec displayed with regard to their religious practices and beliefs,” observe the researchers.
Self-censorship
How to explain this self-censorship? “People are very discreet for fear either of causing quarrels, or of being ridiculed or scandalizing”, reports anthropologist Deirdre Meintel, who led this study, quoted by the Canadian daily The duty. Otherwise, “the visibility of certain evangelical and Pentecostal places of worship has been the subject of disputes in certain neighborhoods”in the same way as the wearing of certain religious symbols, such as the muslim veil.
And this while evangelical and Muslim places of worship have multiplied in the province. For example, in the 1970s, “The major Protestant churches (Anglican, United, Presbyterian) made many conversions among French-speaking Quebecers, but twenty years later, they had lost 90%, of which probably the majority was recovered by the Evangelical churches”.
More pious immigrants?
Majority religion and preponderant authority until the 1960s, the Catholic Church is today experiencing a wave of closure of its buildings and a gradual decline in the number of its followers. In addition, detailing the religious diversity present in Quebec, the study notes an interest of the population for other forms of spirituality, such as druidism or neo-shamanism.
The researchers endeavor to deconstruct prejudices concerning religion in the Canadian province, such as the one that “Quebecers are generally presented as not very religious and immigrants as being much more so”. Gold, “immigrants more frequently declare themselves “without religion” than people born in Quebec, i.e. 15% against 12%”.
On the subject of immigration, however, religious bodies remain privileged integration tools, the study recalls: “Religious groups thus offer their members the help they need to adapt to the new society. » This dimension of inclusion manifests itself in particular in the context of assistance to unaccompanied minors.