A curious demographic trend in Canada is that spiritual or religious belief has persisted despite the famously steep decline in church attendance and other formal religious observances.
A new poll reveals a related dynamic from another perspective, what the researcher Jack Jedwab calls a “decoupling” of belief in God from the sense of attachment to one’s religion. You can lose one, but keep the other, and plenty of Canadians are doing it.
A decline in faith in religious institutions is certainly part of this as is the human tendency to cafeteria style belief, we pick and choose what suits us as circumstances warrant distancing us from our respective places of worship.
