The Anglican Journal in Canada is running a book review. Reginald Bibby’s, a sociology professor’s: Restless Churches: How Canada’s Churches Can Contribute to the Emerging Religious Renaissance. His main point, based on the recent numbers of his research spanning 30 years is that “organized religion is making a comeback“. I might take that with a hint of salt, considering where this summarization of the book appeared. Although I have no reason to doubt the academic qualities of Mr Bibby’s work but his thinking must have been heavily influenced by being a person of faith and pruod and out about it. Not having read the book I cannot comment on this, but I do want to accolade him for being open and integral about it. The most interesting point of the review for me was this:
the proportion of people identifying with conservative Protestant sects was the same as it was in 1991 – and 1951 and 1871.
We don’t know from ths breif article what he means by Protetsant sects and what is that proportion. He also had a valid point regarding the numbers related to religion coming from the census: “people declaring ‘no religion’ were actually responding to questions about religious identification, not belief.” The later is much harder to track.