The Montreal region is increasingly godless, but Quebecers in the rest of the province are starting to find their way back to church on Sunday.
A new survey indicates that church attendance across Canada is at its highest level in 30 years - a rise attributed to the participation of people age 18 to 34 - and many of those who haven't seen the inside of a church in years say they still believe in a god.
The new study, by University of Lethbridge sociologist Reginald W. Bibby, found that 63 per cent of Quebecers say they have personally experienced God's presence in their lives.
And even though many people no longer support institutional religion, Bibby says, 80 per cent of Quebecers are still believers.
Bibby should know; he's been monitoring religious trends in Canada for 30 years.
Rob Bull, an elder at St. James United Church in downtown Montreal, says his experience supports Bibby's study.
"We've discovered a whole generation that has grown up without religious instruction that is now curious about spiritual matters," Bull said. "There are people who are curious about what goes on in a church and want to know what makes religion so special."
The number of people who go to church in Quebec, however, is still abysmal.
Twenty years ago, two out of every 10 Christians in the province attended services at least once a week. Now, it's one in 20.
Only seven per cent of those under 35 who call themselves Roman Catholic, for example, still go to church on a regular basis.
The situation in the Montreal metropolitan area - with a population of 3,426,350, according to a 2001 Statistics Canada survey - is even more pronounced.
The number of those in the region who say they have no religion is growing, according to StatsCan. That doesn't mean, however, that Quebecers are losing the faith.
"Anglicanism and the United Church, Presbyterianism and Lutheranism, along with Roman Catholicism in Quebec, are not exactly fly-by-night operations," Bibby writes in his latest book, Restless Churches. "They have long histories and recuperative powers. They just don't roll over and die."
If the faithful are still out there and the religious framework is still in place, according to Bibby, "it makes good sense to assume that it will only be a matter of time before they experience rejuvenation."
There is, he says, evidence of that already in the rest of Canada, where church attendance is on the upswing and at its highest level since 1985. Bibby's studies are supported by pollster Allan Gregg, who reports that 26 to 30 per cent of English-speaking Canadians go to church regularly, a dramatic increase from a low of 18 per cent in 1992.
Even in Quebec, about 2 million people attend religious services on any given weekend.
The exception is the Montreal region, where the number of those who say they have no religion has increased by more than 50 per cent since 1991, to 260,000.
"Overall, you can't trivialize the importance of religion in Quebec, it makes no sense," Bibby told The Gazette in a telephone interview from Lethbridge, Alta.
"What I find intriguing is that large numbers of Quebecers still identify themselves as being Roman Catholic, even though they don't go to church. Eighty per cent of them say they still engage in prayer. There are still signs of life in the church.
"Quebec continues to be thoroughly Catholic. If a renaissance occurs, it will be a Catholic renaissance."
Bibby says the onus is on the Roman Catholic Church in Quebec to increase pastoral services for young people at the parish level.
"Quebecers are not on a different planet. Now that there is no longer a confessional school system in Quebec, it is up to the church to create a welcoming environment for its young parishioners."
Bibby's survey shows attendance for all Protestant denominations in Canada is growing slightly.
Only the Anglicans in Quebec are suffering losses, he says.
Anthony Mancini, the auxiliary Roman Catholic bishop of Montreal, says he detects some stirring of growth among young people and young families.
But, Mancini says, just because someone claims to have had a personal experience with Jesus Christ "doesn't mean the experience will sustain you."
"A number of new experiences are happening in new communities, but the communities are not just local, they are international in character," he says.
"It's these new communities that are experiencing growth. The diocese has just handed over the parish of St. Rose to Le Chemin Neuf (an apostolic prayer group that started in France). Opus Dei (a conservative group) recently took over St. Ambroise Church, and other groups like La pain de la vie and the Monastic Fraternity of Jerusalem are making some headway among young adults.
What stands out in these instances is the sense of their belonging to a community, not just indulging in an intellectual exercise."
Mancini admits the market for religious growth is there, "but if you use the marketing approach, as Bibby suggests, Roman Catholics can, up to a point, do something about the packaging, but we can't adjust our product."
One church that has experienced a dramatic increase in its number of adherents is the Mormons, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
"We put an ad out on television and we were told to expect about 300 responses," said David Ulrich, president of the LDS Canada-Montreal Mission. "We ended up with a total of 3,000."
Similarly, the revivalistic Eglise Nouvelle Vie, on the South Shore, started 10 years ago and has seen its congregation grow from about 50 to 2,500.
But Bibby's study contradicts the widespread impression that Canadians are abandoning mainstream churches and turning to evangelical Protestant groups.
"The vast majority of Canadians stick with the choices of their parents and their grandparents," Bibby says.
Bibby polled about 300 people in Quebec and 1,300 in the rest of Canada for his survey.