Religion, Non-Belief, Spirituality and Social Behaviour among North American Millennials

Abstract

This report stems from the SSHRC-funded research project Surveying Millennials’ Nonreligious Homophily and Social Distance, led by principal investigator Sarah Wilkins-Laflamme, assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and Legal Studies at the University of Waterloo. Collaborators on the project include Lori Beaman and Peter Beyer (University of Ottawa), Reginald Bibby (University of Lethbridge), Stephen LeDrew (Memorial University), Géraldine Mossière (Université de Montréal), Joel Thiessen (Ambrose University), and Steven Tomlins (Institute on Governance, Ottawa). Dr. Wilkins-Laflamme conducted statistical analyses with data collected in March 2019 from the Millennial Trends Survey. The results in this report from these statistical analyses address key topics of the research project, including current religious, spiritual and nonreligious identities and dynamics among young adults in Canada and the USA, friendship networks and homophily, as well as attitudes towards public religion and members of (non)religious and spiritual groups. Special thanks to the Survey Research Centre at the University of Waterloo (https://uwaterloo.ca/survey-research-centre/) for their key role in the survey data collection and cleaning.