In 2004, when Statistics Canada asked people about their religious affiliations, 16.5 percent of respondents said they were “nones”—people who had no religion at all. Just 17 years later, that figure more than doubled to 34.6 percent.
The increase has prompted many researchers to ask what, exactly, is causing people to leave religion. Here are some of the main driving factors.
1. Conflict between science and religion
In a 2024 study of millennials who identify as spiritual but not religious, Galen Watts of the University of Waterloo and Sam Reimer of Crandall, a Baptist university, asked 50 participants why they became nones. “It was common sense that ‘religion’ was a holdover of a primitive pre-modern past,” the authors said, noting that the terms that came up most frequently from interviewees were “anti-intellectual,” “cultish,” “ignorant” and “superstitious.”
2. Religious intolerance and mistreatment of LGBTQ+ people.
In the same study, respondents said they saw religion as dogmatic, strict, inflexible and intolerant. As one participant expressed, “religion is about homophobia and it’s about women submitting to things.” Another mentioned the exclusionary beliefs and practices towards LGBTQ+ people within some religious groups as a reason for stepping away from religion.
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3. The impact of the American Christian right.
Many North Americans have cited the alliance between American evangelicals and right-wing politics as a reason for distancing themselves from religion. In Blessed are the Undone: Testimonies of the Quiet Deconstruction of Faith in Canada, authors Angela Reitsma-Bick and Peter Schuurman interviewed 28 Canadians, ranging in age between 17 to 79, about the decline in religion. The number-one answer was the impact of the American Christian right.
“The support of evangelicals in the U.S. for Donald Trump played a big role,” Reitsma-Bick said. “They asked themselves, ‘how can we be on the same team as them?’” During the most recent U.S. election, more than 80 percent of U.S. evangelicals voted for Trump.
4. The mistreatment of minority groups.
Christian churches in Canada have a long history of oppressing and abusing Indigenous people, primarily through the establishment of church-run residential schools that operated for more than 160 years. “When this topic was raised, the emotional tenor of interviews almost unanimously turned sombre, with the majority of non-Indigenous informants displaying feelings of shame and regret,” the authors of the 2024 study of millennials wrote.
Reitsma-Bick and Schuurman arrived at a similar conclusion in their book, with interviewees citing the way some religious groups mistreat 2SLGBTQ+ people as the second most common reason for leaving religion.
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5. New social norms
Unlike 50 years ago, there is no longer social stigma associated with not attending religious services or identifying as non-religious. Today, agnosticism and atheism are much more accepted. Modern secularism, reflected in the ability to shop or attend events on Sundays, has encroached on what was once a day reserved for Christian worship.
In their 2020 book, None of the Above: Having No Religion in Canada and the U.S., Joel Thiessen and Sarah Wilkins-Laflamme note that as the population of religions “nones” has grown, more children are raised not attending religious services. As a result, they are more likely to grow up without religion, unlike previous generations who had to make a conscious decision to leave their faith.
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John Longhurst is a writer based in Winnipeg.
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