Towards a Catholic North America

Religion and religiosity are important identity markers, and changes in a country's religious composition may affect its culture, value orientations and policies. In recent decades the Protestants in both the U.S. and Canada have lost their absolute population majority. We investigate the future of the religious composition in both the US ad Canada jointly to the 2060s taking into consideration changes due to demography, the level and composition of migration, fertility differentials and intergenerational religious transmissions. We use a multi-dimensional cohort-component model to project from the early 2000s the populations of Canada and the U.S. separately according to various scenarios. The joint focus on both the U.S. and Canada allows one to better understand the commonalities and differences between these two nations which are tightly knit in terms of geography, politics, economics and culture. The results of the projections are sensitive to two main determinants: secularization and migration in terms of level and composition. Fertility also plays a role particularly in combination with migration patterns. At present, Catholics increase their proportion through immigraton as the share of Catholics among migrants to the U.S. is larger than other religions and their fertility is higher than the U.S. resident population. The contrary is happening in Canada, and fertility differentials benefit Protestants and migration lowers the Catholic share. The projections reveal that North America should not become Catholic by mid-century but close to, with an increasing importance of minorities in the religious landscape

The religious composition of the Chinese Diaspora, focusing on Canada

The religious composition of the Chinese Diaspora varies by countries with the highest Christian share in the Philippines (86 percent) and the highest Buddhist share (84.3 percent) in Cambodia. The religiously unaffiliated are more likely found in Vietnam (74.7 percent), Canada (70.1 percent), and Austria (63 percent) and less likely found in the Philippines (0.6 percent) and Malaysia (1.5 percent). A further analysis of high-quality Canadian census data allows for a more in-depth focus. In 2001, 81 percent of the 125,000 Chinese migrants (those born in mainland China who had moved to Canada between 1996 and 2001) were unaffiliated, 11 percent were Christian, and 7 percent Buddhist. Relative to the topic of conversion, data on Chinese migrants admitted to Canada between 1981 and 1990 reveals growth in the proportion that self-identified as religiously affiliated (Christian as well as Buddhist) and a decline in the proportion who reported no religion