This article by Phillip Jenkins is certainly sobering.
How Quebec went from one of the most religious societies to one of the least
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Interesting⌠thanks for sharing. It would be insightful to have more viewpoints in regard to the âhowâ of all of this. Most of that seems to be included in this one paragraph from the article:
Starting in 1960, Quebec experienced a general cultural and political transformation. New media, higher levels of education, and new forms of political protest combined to support a new national consciousness, with calls for secession from Canada. The religious consequences of this Quiet Revolution were sudden and disastrous for the established order. The state took over many of the functions previously claimed by the church.
So it sounds like this ânew national consciousnessâ became so compelling for a large enough percentage of the population that they saw no need for the church after that⌠perhaps political activism was more effective at bridging divides and motivating action?
My husband knew a couple who were missionaries in Quebec, and from what Iâve heard it was pretty bleak⌠Iâm not sure theyâd ever had a convert. It must be difficult to minister to a population that is not only very secularized but is also close enough (timewise) to their religious roots that religion probably sounds more like a relic than anything new and different.
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Fascinating. The risk is that when religion disappears, its secular replacement will fill the vacuum strongly based on the shape of the hole and the medium, the culture the hole is in. The implosion of evangelicalism in America will suck in fascism.
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It already significantly has, along with conspiracism.
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Religion doesnât even have to disappear first. There is already plenty of rightwing Christian fascism going around.
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Exactly, but Trumpâs beloved good people who prayed in Congress after they stormed it with slaver flags wonât be pew warmers. Where evangelicalism prospers then fails is the problem. Itâs failing everywhere in the WEIRD world, doing quite well in Brazil and very well in Africa. Iâm intrigued as to how Quebec avoided the fascist follow up.
âStarting in 1960, Quebec experienced a general cultural and political transformation. New media, higher levels of education, and new forms of political protest combined to support a new national consciousness, with calls for secession from Canada.â
Hi Laura,
Starting in 1960, huh? Then the answer is obvious. This is the WHY.
âBe careful not to make a covenant with the natives of the land against which you are going, or they will prove a snare in your midst.
No, you shall demolish their altars, smash their sacred pillars and cut down their sacred poles.â
Exodus 34:10-14
This is the HOW.
The first step was the sexual revolution and the legalization of abortion. The sexual revolution resulted in a massive move away from religion and as people moved away from religion to advance their sexual proclivities, they also began aborting their babies at the insistence of progressives who opened the tophets with Roe v. Wade. Then, every sexual proclivity which the churches had forbidden was supplied with a political initiative that then attacked (delegitimized) each of the Levitical prohibitions (Leviticus 18:19-24). These initiatives were provided with a separate political platform which became LGBT ideology: splinter groups designed to attack the âHATEâ of religion which still observed the Levitical prohibitions. Of course, the Levitical prohibitions are also maintained by orthodox Judaism but they are protected by their self-segregation, which is the only segregation allowed in the United States, so without TV, newspapers not in Yiddish, radio, or internet, they are protected from the Leftâs LGBT propaganda.
It was compelling, but it didnât just happen. It was designed.
If the religion is a matter of rite and tradition rather than personal conviction and commitment, there is less difference between highly religious and highly unreligious than the surface suggests. Pre-exilic Israel, many areas with a state church, and the nominally Christian consumerism popular in certain US circles are some of the examples.
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Conclusion from the article:
Quebec today is a vastly more adÂvanced and sophisticated place than it was in the 1950s, an era that few but the most reactionary regard with nostalgia. What it has largely lost in the process of change and growth has been institutional religion, and with it much sense of Christian identity. In about a generation, one of the worldâs most religious societies became one of the least.
I harbor skepticism about the implied quality of religious identity (much less âChristian identityâ) that the article presupposes are [still] found in the U.S. If such identities as we have here gave rise to so much of the political occultism that we see among âevangelicalsâ today, then how truly religious (in any good way) could it have ever been in the first place? It seems to me that the jury may still be out on what it was that Quebec really lost when they turned their backs on the institutional religions of their own history.
That said, and as to what it has gained in its place ⌠that is a truly sobering consideration for reflection. As some comments above imply, cultures do not long sustain a vacuum of authority structures. So the inhalation of fascist tendencies (even among ostensibly still âChristianâ society here in the U.S.) is well noted. How does a culture exude both populist âfreedom from tyrannyâ attitudes while at the same time pining after strong leaders to tell them what to do, like sheep bleating for a shepherd?
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Sure, the 60s provided a lot of upheaval and change. But a lot of that same upheaval happened in the United States too, and we are far less secularized currently than Quebec. So I think weâd have to go deeper than that â maybe look at how faith was treated and viewed and passed on before the 60s happened. (BTW, we try to avoid discussions of abortion and LGBT issues here on the forum, especially in conjunction with politics â not because they arenât important, but because they tend to lead to strong opinions, and the intersection of science and faith is enough of a hot-button issue for right now.)
What is this, the Handmaidâs Tale?
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I lived in Quebec for 6 weeks in 1985, when my parents were going to a crash course French language stint in the Universite Laval. It was certainly an interesting cultureâI wasnât equipped to understand it much when I was 14, but some things do stick out. Most folks were very kind. The land was beautiful. There were huge black flies in the woods, and acres of acid rain-stripped forests (that has improved now, I think). I made the mistake of asking for a license to sin (pecher with an accent grave) rather than fish (pecher with a circonflex) and got a wry smile out of the grocery market cashier!
Culturally, it would still shock us in the 21st century US with the emphasis of sex. It was more like modern France. Sometimes, the prepubertal children were sexualizedâI donât think current American secular standards would find them appropriate. It was a different culture, certainly.
We attended a small, evangelical church. We were bored, not knowing personally any other children and not fluent in the language, so my brother and I purchased boards of balsa wood and made airplanes without drawings. A Quebecois professor stopped us and congratulated us on our creativity when taking the side walk to the beautiful neighborhood park. When we did meet folks, they brightened up at hearing we were from Michiganâperhaps because it was fairly close
They were very nationalistic. Many seemed to like Americans more than the English Canadians. One told me that their struggle for independence was like the American one.
The Canadian Quebecois accent was considered more of a âcountryâ accent, as opposed to the French motherland one. Instead of âoui,â or âsi,â they might say âouaai,â which sounds like âwhy.â I learned that it corresponds to our âyeah,â rather than âyes.â
I enjoyed it. Iâd like to go back with my family to visit sometime.
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Thanks for sharing⌠thatâs neat about the language â especially that itâs had time to develop into something distinct from France. Their nationalism sounds like pre-Civil-War America⌠when some saw their states more as their âcountry of origin.â
We have friends in Montreal who love the culture there. Iâd love to visit sometime⌠itâs only about 4.5 hours from where I live, but I understand they require passport cards now in order to get into Canada (going through customs was pretty simple when I was a kid).
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Hi Laura,
If you canât study the politics of religion, you canât study religion. Religion is politics. Knowing nothing about Quebec, I am certain that Quebecâs total fertility rate has fallen drastically just as they have withdrawn from religion.
I was curious and went to Wiki to look:
[begin snip]
However, Quebec is still below the replacement fertility rate of 2.1 children per woman. This contrasts with its fertility rates before 1960, which were among the highest of any industrialized society. For example, between 1951 and 1961, the population grew nearly 30% with minimal immigration, a natural growth rate matched today only by some African countries.
[end snip]
Interesting, LGBTQ behavior was never bad, just non-reproductive. See Leviticus 18:19-24.
I canât stop. Iâm immersed in religious studies. Nice to meet you. Iâll go away.
In a sense, yes⌠by âpoliticsâ I was referring more to civil politics â partisanship, etc. You are welcome to continue discussing here if the intersection of Christian faith and science are of interest to you â we just (per our guidelines) tend to avoid certain topics on the public forum because they are hot-button issues that many people are already arguing about elsewhere.
I took a cursory look at the Quiet Revolution and from what I gathered, secular nationalism developed in Quebec in the 1960s. While the US has Christian nationalism, Quebec nationalism replaces French-Canadian regionalism and Catholicism as the thing that bonds Quebec society. It kind of reminds me of French republican nationalism.
I think you got it backwards. Iâm not familiar with Quebec history, but I think we should consider how significant cultural changes like secularization happened because of modern developments like industrialization, urbanization, etc. There were people moving away from traditional, rural life to urban life where there was more individual freedom, especially with the economic growth and prosperity of the postwar years after 1945. The sexual revolution was a byproduct of these changes. I think it is fair to say that the 1920s, which experienced rapid changes due to the Great War, also had its own sexual revolution with all the young people who wanted to forget about the pandemic and the war.
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My take on this is slightly different. I do blame the church for their obsession with sex, and how this put people off. My local (Catholic)church when I was growing up was particularly bad in this respect. Iâm not even talking here about LGBT or some kind of deviations. When you keep hearing all the time you will go to hell because you didnât wait for your wedding or that you can only make love if you want a baby, otherwise itâs wrong, ohh I wonât even mention how evil contraception isâŚPeople start to think you canât lead normal life as a Christian. I have no idea about Quebec, but is it such a stretch to imagine that this kind of scenario played a role?
And on another important note, to me this smacks of hipocrisy, and if nothing else put you off religion, this will.
Whilst everybody concerns themselves with sins of flesh, they seem to be OK with pride, envy, hatredâŚI never came across Christian campaign against legalisation of gambling.
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Oh, we have definitely had that in Texas. It was resolved by the state running the lottery, but no casinos. Itâs OK if the state does it.
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⌠Or greed. Or gluttony. Or pride. Or not working on the Sabbath. Even though the Bible and Jesus spend a lot more time talking about some of those things (at least greed) rather than sexual sin. My theory is that people like to concentrate on the sins that they themselves have either successfully avoided (or maybe arenât even tempted by) or short of that - can at least keep it hidden (easier for men since they arenât the ones getting pregnant). And once you have a shot at âcleanlyâ partitioning off some sin (at least in appearance) to some identifiable set of culprits, then itâs off to the races as the church will excitedly major pretty much on that. The liberal knee-jerk reaction of this generation has been to partition the same set of sexual sins off as untouchable: i.e. now nothing sexual is allowed to be seen as sin unless it is an oppressor group victimizing a vulnerable group. Thatâs the only sexual sin now culturally recognized where liberals can play the part of prudish Pharisee right alongside the best of their puritanical forebears that they so strive to despise. But weâll see how long that fad lasts.
The world between those two extremes is a lonely wilderness indeed.
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Very well put. Every generation has a chronological snobbery, it seems, and I have noticed it in myself
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