Data from Statistics Canada shows the significance of the immigrant community for the church in Canada. One in 5 Christians are immigrants, and the countries those people came from might be surprising. In this case, as often, the Statistics Canada resources are a mine of interesting information and insight.
This Easter I was reminded of a Stats Canada article, “Happy Easter” from 2023 which you can find here. It has a wealth of points and references, among which was a link to data on faith and immigration. The article also identified some of the significant findings of the data. The link takes you to a table which you can modify to get to the data you are interested in. This makes it a very interesting tool for analysing where and when various Canadian Christians came from.
Where does Canada’s Christian immigrant population come from?
As the article says, in its first surprise, the greatest number of Christian immigrants come from the Philippines – 691,000. And it’s not even close! The second largest number comes from the UK (257,000), no surprise, but the UK Christian immigration is just over 1/3rd of that from the Philippines. Other sources over 100,000 people are Italy, the USA, Portugal, Jamaica, and Poland.
The table gives the decades that these people came to Canada, and breaks the sources of immigration into continent and then sub-regions. This then shows how the immigration patterns are changing. Immigration from Europe is on the decline. Immigration from central and south America and the Caribbean is increasing. Immigration from Africa and Asia is increasing substantially.
The table can be changed to show total populations of all religions (and presumably none). This gives the proportion of immigrants who are Christian. The overall immigrant population is 47% Christian, compared with 53% of the resident population. However, this varies substantially by source country. Immigrants from the Philippines are around 96% Christian, Italy and Portugal 92% Christian. Those from the UK and USA are 55% and 51% respectively. India and China have large immigrant populations in Canada, but the Christian proportion is small, at 9% and 13%
The resource also gives breakdowns by other religions and by denomination, for example Catholic, Anglican, or Pentecostal. The Catholic statistics are substantial: 50% of all Christian immigrants, 95% of Christian immigrants from Italy and Portugal, and 77% of Christian immigrants from the Philippines. It is interesting that a local Alliance Church was able to start a Philippino congregation – in rural British Columbia. The Anglican statistics are unsurprisingly definitely smaller. But Anglicans have a significant history, both good and bad, of working with immigrant communities. particularly Caribbean Anglicans.
This data resource on immigration and religion is very particular to Canada because Statistics Canada both asks the appropriate questions in its census and provides easy public access to the data. Each country obviously has different priorities in its census, but the Canadian combination of data is very powerful.
One of the reasons I am proud to be a Canadian is because Canada values immigrants. We know we need them. The endemic xenophobia I experienced in the UK was a definite factor in my leaving. The data shows the potential for growing churches through attracting immigrants, and which countries immigrants might be most attracted. Sociological theory recognises the particular significance of religious communities to immigrants for a variety of reasons (eg Dawson and Thiessen, 2014).
