items of interest

with contributions from Douglas Todd, Jack Broom, Paul Kalina, Joyce Mulama

"GREATER VANCOUVER must be teeming with people who are hard-nosed, rationalistic, positively cynical, and antireligious. At least that's what you'd think from last week's Statistics Canada finding that 34.4 percent of Greater Vancouverites—or 676,000 people—recently ticked off a box on a census form marked 'no religion.' This rapidly growing cohort of religious 'nones' is being seized upon by some as proof religion and spirituality are rapidly dying out on the West Coast, which is riding the crest of a national wave toward greater secularization....

"Just who are all these People? ... It turns out only a minority of religious 'nones' are acerbically antireligious.... Most religious 'nones' appear to be people who are temporarily disillusioned with organized religion, but who nevertheless think of themselves as spiritual, searching for meaning and purpose....

"One of the most intriguing things about religious 'nones,' perhaps, is how they're pressing society to broaden the definition of spirituality. The famed US sociologist of religion, Peter Berger, began a trend decades ago to restate the spiritual impulse in wide terms, seeing it in humans' search for transcendent hope, universal order, and even a sense of humor and play. As a result, many scholars and everyday people are now beginning to see spirituality as humans' attempt to embrace wider horizons of meaning: to pursue values that will help us transcend the anxious worldly race for power, prestige, and money. Picking up on such ideas, [University of Lethbridge sociologist of religion Reginald] Bibby has found through polling, for instance, that 88 percent of Canada's religious 'nones' hold firmly to the transcendent value of hope...."

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