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As Easter nears, Christianity finds evidence of its own resurrection
Deborah Meister, Executive Archdeacon of the Anglican Diocese of Montreal, knows that many members of her faith are, to put it bluntly, old.
“People who have been hanging on faithfully and practicing their faith and sharing their love of Christ with one another and with their neighbours all their lives,” she says. “Many of them have reached the point where they’re no longer able to attend church regularly because they’re in senior homes, or they have limited mobility.”
But there’s another group within what she deems a “bifurcated” religion.
“We are also seeing the rise of people I would call Christian curious, meaning people who are mostly young adults, some of them middle-aged, who were raised with no faith, and who are now realizing that for their own spiritual and psychological wellness they want there to be something in their lives more than money, property and family.”
She adds: “They want to have a spiritual grounding. They want to find a community of people who share their dedication to making the world a better place in various ways.”
Those numbers, which include longtime Quebecers, newcomers from the rest of Canada and immigrants from abroad, are on the rise.
It’s good news for the Anglican Church, and for Christianity and even religion in general. For decades there has been talk of secularization driving people away from organized religion. But now, here and there, comes news that some are coming back.
The data can be difficult to parse. And the timeframe for membership in religion is like nothing else on Earth, eclipsing politics and even nationhood. Meister talks about the 1977 Charter of the French Language and its effects on anglo-Quebecers as though discussing current events.
Take the 2025 study from the aptly named Pew Research Center , which looked at how the global religious landscape changed in the 2010s.
Good news for Christianity, it would seem. In 2020, Earth’s most populous religion had 2.3 billion adherents, a growth of more than 121 million over the previous decade.
But the study also notes that Islam grew even faster, adding 346 million new members to reach two billion. And the next biggest group, broadly defined as “unaffiliated” and sometimes called “nones,” grew by 270 million to reach 1.9 billion (non) believers.
What’s more, Earth’s population continued to grow. And so in 2020, Christians made up 28.8 per cent of the populace, down from 30.6 per cent in 2010. In the same period, Muslims grew to 25.6 per cent of Earth’s people. up from 23.9 per cent. Even the nones gained a percentage point.
More locally, U.S. and Canadian numbers from Pew showed that in 2020, 63 per cent in those countries were Christian, 30 per cent unaffiliated and less than two per cent each for other religious groups. But over the decade, Christians as a percentage dropped by 10.8 per cent, while nones rose 92.3 per cent, Buddhists 62 per cent, Hindus 55 per cent, Muslims 52.3 per cent, and Jews 0.6 per cent.
“Most of the growth of Muslim and Hindu populations in the U.S. and Canada can be attributed to immigration,” the report noted.
Meister says immigration can also add to numbers of Christians as well.
“We’re seeing an influx of immigrants to Quebec who are bringing their own spiritual faith with them and are looking to connect in Anglican churches,” she says.
“A lot of them are arriving already within the Anglican faith and are looking to continue that affiliation. There are also a number of them who have arrived as Christians, but not Anglicans, but who are finding in our churches the kind of robust welcome and strong community and dedication to service that they want.”
Even so, numbers of Christians continue to rise and fall, ebb and flow, differently across many regions, allowing for a variety of opinions on just where the faith is going.
An article last June from the website religionunplugged.com takes a slight hand-wringing tone with its headline: “Why Islam Grew (And Christianity Didn’t) Around The World In Just A Decade.”
But the same month the Economist went to bat with an article titled: “The West has stopped losing its religion: After decades of rising secularism, Christianity is holding its ground — and gaining among the young.”
And just this month, the Washington Post explained “Why Catholicism is drawing in Gen Z men,” while the Atlantic Monthly promised to unpack “The Real Religious ‘Renewal’ Happening in Gen Z,” noting: “Some pastors and politicians claim that a Christian revival is afoot among young Americans. Nationwide data tell a different story.”
One thing you’ll never see (barring the Second Coming) is a headline that Christianity is going viral.
Still, the Economist pointed out that, across seven western European countries, growth in nones has slowed markedly, rising by just three percentage points since 2020, compared with a 14-point surge in the previous five years.
“This suggests that slowing secularization is caused by fewer people leaving Christianity — rather than the growth of other faiths, such as Islam — alongside a surprising increase in Christian faith among younger people, particularly those from Generation Z.”
One possible explanation is the effect (and aftershocks) of the COVID-19 pandemic. Lockdowns, social isolation and economic upheaval left many young people “lonely or depressed and looking for meaning.”
It found that across three surveys in 2023 and 2024, the share of young Americans identifying as Christian rose to 51 from 45 per cent, while nones fell from 45 to 41 per cent.
A recent Angus Reid poll , though using different terminology, finds some similar trends in Canada. The survey found that while 18 per cent of Canadians overall said they were “religiously committed,” those numbers rose to 23 per cent in the 25-to-34 age range, and 24 per cent for those 18 to 24.
Meanwhile, research on the website Made in Canada noted that, while the percentage of Catholic Canadians declined from 43.2 per cent in 2001 to 29.9 per cent in 2021, almost all of that decline came in the first decade of this century. Between 2011 and 2021, numbers fell by just 0.1 per cent.
Meister says inclusion is key.
“The Anglican diocese has started investing quite heavily in bilingual and even multilingual ministry,” she says. Many of the churches now offer the Mass in English, French, Creole and Spanish.
“There’s a Ukrainian group that meets in one of our churches,” she adds. “There’s a church with a lot of members who worship in Farsi. So we have moved away from being a reservoir of English culture into being very much a church whose doors are open to anyone.”
Attitudes to children have also changed, she says, and must continue to do so.
“There were a lot of generations of children who had to endure Sunday school,” she says. “And it wasn’t for them an experience of inclusion. It was Sunday morning oppression. I hope none of our churches is doing that anymore.”
She is, perhaps not surprisingly, hopeful for the future of the faith.
“I am hopeful about it because I believe that what we have to offer is deeply needed, and I’m seeing people being drawn to it,” she says.
“The other reason I’m hopeful about Christianity and its presence in Canada is that the experience that it’s had over the last generation or so of being pushed a bit to the margins is, I think, the experience that It needed to have.”
She explains: “There’s always a temptation for any religion to intertwine itself around power and to be more about money and power than it is about faith and standing with the marginalized. And at least for the Anglican Church, I would like to believe that we have now reached a deeper understanding that it is God’s call in our lives to be there with the people who most need love and support.”
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