Canada's "Bible belts"
 

i.e. generally rural areas with many evangelical Christians. Some I can think of are the Annapolis Valley NS, Saint John river valley NB, the rural Niagara peninsula and pockets of SW Ontario, much of southern Manitoba, and the Fraser Valley of BC.

In the Maritimes evangelcials are mostly Baptist, while outside the Maritimes they usually have a Mennonite or Dutch Canadian presence.

For BC yes both the Fraser Valley centred by Abbotsford, and I will add the Creston region of Southeastern BC -(see Bountiful BC/polygamists). Both are very "farmy" as well. Two of the few places to buy a tractor in BC haha. Coincidence? Are all the other places you mention also "farmy"??

Given how bitterly, often violently divided our province has been between Catholics and Protestants, most Newfoundlanders - whether actually religious or not - still have a tribal affinity for one over the rest. Only 2.5% of us chose Atheist in the census, with the rest almost entirely Christian.

Within that, the big three are Roman Catholic (36.8%), Anglican (26%), and - since Confederation - United (17%; mostly Methodist in origin). These are the ones that are strongly associated with ethnic heritage (Irish, or English, etc.) and tend to be declared even by people who've never seen the inside of a church.

Outside of those three, you get denominations that are more about religious faith than cultural dogma. The biggest two among those are Salvation Army (7.8%) and Pentecostal (6.6%).

It's the latter that plays the role of a Bible Belt in Newfoundland. It's the faith mainstream society teases, uses in jokes, grows concerned about, etc (i.e. once heard an MHA dismiss another from that region by saying, "Don't you have to be at church?"). It's the faith with highway signs, stadium-filling religious concerts, religiously-motivated political opinions, etc. It's the one outsiders worry about.

In most of the province, they're a minority and don't impact the overall atmosphere of a place. But on the Eastport Peninsula, they are the dominant social force. There are Christian symbols engraved into the stucco of commercial and industrial buildings, Christian-themed hotels and tourist attractions, and a wealth of Christian bumper stickers and the like. The hairstyles are big, the LGBT youth from that region who end up in the city are traumatized. I've met quite a few of them and can't believe their horror stories even occurred in this province, but they did. Personally, I've always felt a little uncomfortable there. It's the type of place where, "What church do you belong to?" is a common second or third question upon making someone's acquaintance.

http://i68.tinypic.com/icmgjn.png

Glovertown is one of the main communities up there.

Nearer to the city, basically all the suburban communities around are called "God's country", derisively by townies, affectionately by baymen. The most notorious of these is Logy Bay-Middle Cove-Outer Cove, which even uses a Christian message as its official town motto (Three in Unity Become One, or something). The local church has a permanent statue in memory of all the aborted babies outside. But it's still pretty benign in comparison to Eastport, and the religious aspect isn't the dominant atmosphere of these more suburban places - just an obvious, notable one.

I don't believe Quebec really has one.

The Annapolis Valley never struck me as particularly religious in this day and age - I actually know far more die-hard atheists/Satanists than practicing Christians from there. Maybe it's a generational thing, but I think of a "Bible Belt" region as somewhere where all age brackets are particularly religious, not just older people. It is however a farming-intensive area and Acadia University does have Baptist roots (although most Universities on the East Coast have some historical religious affiliation).

The Lethbridge, KWC, and Kelowna areas are regions I've heard described as Bible Belt-like. The stretch between Salmon Arm and Revelstoke in BC also seemed considerably more "devout" than what I'm used to.

The Church of Rome heritage means there was never any Bible to belt! :runaway:

You'd have to go back seventy years or more, but rural Presbyterians in Quebec tended to be the real deal.

If by KWC you mean Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge, that's not really accurate. It's more rural southwestern Ontario that is a little bit devout.

http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/show...postcount=3817

I don't know of any bible belt in Northern Ontario either.

In Canada there isn't much correlation between people's declared religion and where they fall on social issues. Some of the places with the highest prevalence of declared religion in the census are the most liberal on social issues. I think the stances on concrete issues are more important whereas declared religion is a murky mix of true adherence, cultural identity, and guilt.

I wonder if some of the "Bible Belts" that people talk about today aren't merely just examples of typical rural areas that happened to contrast against more liberal cities nearby.

Steinbach and Winkler for Manitoba! Mennonite central. Steinbach actually makes the news quite regularly for its religious laws and personalities still. Example:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manito...bach-1.3788276

that article could also belong in the "Ugly Canada" thread.

Closest thing to one would be just south of North Bay, in east/central Parry Sound District.

Coming from eastern Ontario I thought the North (drove highway 17 this September) was pretty bible-belty. There were road signs saying Jesus loves you everywhere.

The Upper Ottawa Valley is a strong bible belt from my observations as well. Significant Polish and Irish Catholic populations in the rural areas.

It is also one of the most conservative parts of Ontario.

Umm not Kelowna.

Here's some data for Ontario, using "Baptist + Pentecostal + other Christian" as a proxy for evangelical:

Census divisions (20%+):

Elgin 26.8%
Haldimand-Norfolk 22.6%
Chatham-Kent 21.1%
Oxford 21%

Federal ridings (20%+):

Kitchener-Conestoga 26.6%
Elgin-Middlesex-London 24.5%
Chatham-Kent-Leamington 24.4%
Niagara West 24%
Perth-Wellington 23%
Haldimand-Norfolk 22.7%
Oxford 21%

Not sure if there is a real bible belt in Alberta, but there are pockets of very religious people. The main one I can think of centers around Three Hills, home of the Prairie Bible Institute, people there are very churchy for obvious reasons.

Another one would be Cardston, that's home to a very large Mormon population, pretty sure there are no liquor stores or bars in that town. The Mormon Temple is cool looking at least lol.

Southern Alberta along highway 3 struck me as being very religious, even more so than the interior of BC (which really varies from town to town). Seemingly every farmer had slapped a giant aborted fetus poster on an abandoned semi-trailer and parked it in his field.

This is a bible belt thread, and not a "religiousness" thread, but it's possible that the census tracts with the highest percentage of "very devout" residents could probably be South Asian Muslim communities in Toronto suburbs. That's obviously not something the census asks, but you might find some large-scale social survey on the matter.

Also, there's a striking number of Pentecostal/Evangelical churches in the lower income suburban 416.

This reminds me of a talk I once went to in NYC. An author was writing about evangelicals in America, and the general mood of the East Village audience was that that was a "Red State/Flyover Country" phenomenon. The author corrected them by pointing out that you could take a subway ride to any number of Spanish-speaking Evangelical churches in the Bronx whose pastors were just as ardently conservative as those in rural West Virginia.

The high result for Kitchener-Conestoga is almost certainly due to the high number of Anabaptists (not at all evangelical) in the area. The riding covers most of the rural areas of the region where they are mostly concentrated.

Deer Lake has a huge evangelical thing going on. They get the travelling evangelists coming through and preaching the gospel with upbeat and raucous music, then have faith based debates about readings of the bible on Facebook (I know a few personally and get to witness these). I'm not sure what they call it, but it's become a significant movement in addition to the traditional protestant denominations.

The whole town shuts down on Sunday, everything is closed. In the summer you see people out walking around in their Sunday best going to and from church. We had a couple of guys come out and play junior hockey with us when I was a bit younger and they always made sure we said a prayer before leaving the room for game time, and they were never shy about trying to make religion a topic of discussion in the locker room (ie: what church were you baptized in). The whole town is a bit bizarre, especially on Sunday, it feels like you're in the Twilight Zone and maybe stepped out of your car into 1926.

The Cardston area of Alberta is basically Canada's Mormon belt. They're not evangelical, but they're "religious right" socially and politically.

I think you may be confusing that area with what I believe to be the true bible belt, which is around Lewisporte and Embree. The exit off the TCH with the sign warning you about burning in hell if you don't attend their church is there, and is really the only positive about driving across the island :haha:

https://www.google.ca/maps/@49.12103...7i13312!8i6656

Can't wait to go to hell because I'd rather catch my ferry on time than exit off the highway and worship the imaginary skyman.

Yes, you're right. Oops. That is the main area. Eastport is the one I've visited on my own though lol.

No real surprises there.

I knew the rural southwest was quite socially conservative (yet the Liberals were very strong there at both levels until recently, now that is one of their worst regions in Canada). The rural east from what I can tell has more conservative Catholics.

Where is the LOWEST proportion of them? (I'm guessing in Toronto, and particularly in the downtown ridings where I think it is less than 1%).

Probably something like University-Rosedale or St. Paul's.

Or an overwhelmingly Catholic riding.

Alberta always gets a reputation as "religious rednecks" yet I believe it ranks near the middle of the pack in terms of religious adherence. It's lower than Saskatchewan, Manitoba and at least some of the Atlantic provinces, but definitely higher than British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec.

In Quebec, one area that might strike me as having some religious tradition being maintained today might be the Quebec City south shore through the Bas-Saint-Laurent region, and perhaps into the Beauce region (although it seems more libertarian there). It's definitely the most conservative part of Quebec overall.

Not just Catholic. There are large Pentecostal churches on Highway 17 at Cobden and Pembroke.

Yes this area is super creepy weird vibe Christian zone. 3 is our main highway east so ive been through several times. And I wanna say that Alberta (rural) is one large bible belt from the many times I come through. Probably the province most bibly. And no I don't include the most urban parts of Alberta in this generalization.

Using the same groups as proxy for Evangelical, out of curiousity I looked at central Toronto:

* Beaches-East York: 10.3%
* Davenport: 9.0%
* Don Valley West (not central, but very affluent/"elitist"): 8.1%
* Eglinton-Lawrence: 10.3%
* Parkdale-High Park: 9.5%
* Spadina-Fort York: 9.5%
* Toronto-St. Paul's: 9.8%
* Toronto-Danforth: 9.4%
* Toronto Centre: 10.8%
* University-Rosedale: 7.2%

Not as low as I personally expected. That could be because of immigrant-focused evangelical churches?

There are also some smaller groups of more liberal Christians, like Quakers or the Metropolitan Community Church, that fall under the "other Christian" as well.

While they're very small groups, they may make up a non-insignificant share in these urban ridings.

Manitoba's bible belt isn't very bible thumping compared to pretty much anywhere in the rural Midwest. We have one pretty sedate anti-abortion highway-side billboard that I know of. Compare that to dozens of them, everywhere, in the rural Midwest.

That said, I think that speaks more to how overly-religious Americans are compared to Canadians or Europeans than to the Manitoba bible belt being a subject of contrast. Not only does it feature the Mennonite communities that Jeff mentioned, it continues to draw some very religious German immigrants to its Christian local culture and abundant lebensraum.

At the risk of sounding terminally Orange, I can't associate Roman Catholics and "Bible Belt". To me Bible Belt refers to a very Protestant thing.

But that's not Northern Ontario!

That's basically because of one guy in Englehart and another in Heyden (I think) who got people to put those signs up on their properties along Hwys 11 and 17. Don't forget that the signs are always on private property and usually in unorganized townships where there are no regulations.

The only somewhat bible belt parts of Northern Ontario I can think of:

-Englehart
-a few places along the North Shore of Lake Huron
-Heyden and maybe Goulais River (north of Sault Ste Marie) but that's only going by what people have said and not personal observation.
-Along Hwy 11 between Fort Frances and Rainy River along the Minnesota border. (not sure if this is true but have heard this from others)

My wife and I laughed at that each time we have visited NL. Equally interesting are the spray-painted messages on the nearby overpass that criticize that church's message.

I think the lowest may be found in Northeastern Ontario, specifically Timmins and Hwy 11 communities from Cochrane to Hearst. Timmins alone is about 70% Catholic and it's higher in the towns. Our region yields very poor results for conservative candidates in elections.

After B.C., Alberta is at the bottom of religious adherence & identification (Ontario and Quebec rank higher). In Canada religiosity and conservatism aren't really that closely linked.

That's because those with Catholic backgrounds are much more likely to identify as such. Quebec is still overwhelmingly Catholic by identity, while having low levels of church attendance.

Also "Bible Belt" is not synonymous with any religious identification.

Manitoulin Island to some degree as well (at least outside the many Indigenous reserves), although that you may not consider Northern Ontario.

The most religious areas in the province (and by far!) are all 'ethnic' Montreal neighborhoods.

Yes, it absolutely does have of a bit of a bible belt feeling to it outside the First Nations! Manitoulin Island is definitely part of Northern Ontario. I meant to mention it with parts of the North Shore of Lake Huron but I forgot. I'm pretty sure that Manitoulin is one of the few areas where the Protestant population is larger than the Catholic population in Northern Ontario.

Manitoulin is very anglophone and has many people from British background with the exception of the Indigenous populations. Many Haweaters (what the residents are known as) are quite conservative politically by Northern Ontario standards.

Here are some stats that I took from Wikipedia but come from the 2006 census:

Ethnic groups

61.1% White (European-Canadian)
38.9% Aboriginal (First Nations)

Religious groups

42.3% Protestant
37.3% Roman Catholic
2.7% other Christian
17.7% other/none

The most common first languages on Manitoulin Island in 2011 were English (85.8%), Ojibwe (8.8%), French (3.0%), German (0.6%), and Dutch (0.3%).

The towns of Smithers/Houston, etc. in the Bulkley Valley in NW BC have a very strong evangelical presence. Apparently, the number of churches thereto is disproportional to most other B.C. towns.

Even the Christian Heritage Party has always done well here federally in this segment of the federal riding.

Vanderhoof, B.C. (just west of Prince George and much further east of the Bulkley Valley) also has similar religious demographics.

I would suggest that the foregoing represents the concentrated "hardcore" evangelical presence here in B.C.

In BC I would definitely say Abbotsford/Fraser Valley and the Okanagan. Even Kelowna itself is pretty red-neck although it is changing.

I tend to {probably incorrectly} find all of Sask & AB as Bible Belt save the large cities. I think less so of Manitoba with Steinbach being the obvious exception. In Ontario and East I really don't get the idea that you could pin point any areas as "bible belt". Certainly there areas that are more conservative than others but you don't seem to get the religious stratification that you do in the West.


This is similar to the US where even liberal California & Washington have hard-core bible belts and the South is a given. Other younger states ie Ariz/NV/Col/Utah etc also have big bible belts. On the other hand you have NY, Mass etc with almost none despite neither really being anymore liberal than Cal or Wash.

I just find in the West you get more hard core pockets of religious Conservativism that you just don't get in the East. This is also reflected in the politics of the West which are far more stratified.........left or right but little in between with the exception of Manitoba.

Although the Okanagan gets the "Bible Belt" moniker sometimes, I think that is dated. Growing up there I knew very few people who were religious, and I knew almost nobody who regularly went to church. Around 1/3 of Kelowna claims no religious affiliation, hardly Bible Belt territory and, according to Wikipedia, a larger proportion of no "religious affiliation" residents than Toronto. BC is incredibly irreligious by North American standards, with only the Fraser Valley bucking that trend (although with the influx of people moving there for low housing prices, I expect that to change).

http://vancouversun.com/news/staff-b...e-lack-thereof

Yes in the West you have more of a bifurcated pattern (high levels of non-affiliation as well as pockets of religiosity). Colorado and Washington state are good examples (pretty much all of Utah is a "Bible belt" if you're counting Mormon areas), as are BC and Alberta.

NY and New England are very Catholic and the Protestants are more mainline than evangelical.

For BC:

Census divisions:

Fraser Valley 28.6%
Bulkley-Nechako 24.7%
Peace River 24.2%
North Okanagan 22%
Kootenay-Boundary 21.3%

Federal ridings:

Abbotsford 34.9%
Chilliwack-Hope 28.8%
Langley-Aldergrove 25%
North Okanagan-Shuswap 21.7%
Prince George-Peace River-Northern Rockies 21.2%
Mission-Matsqui-Fraser Canyon 20.6%

I have direct experience of the Dutton-West Lorne-Rodney-Iona megalopolis from the 80's as being quite religious (although not in an evangelical way but having the church as a major gathering place in an otherwise rather sparsely populated area of large farms). In that area there were literally only 2 types of churches...RC which attracted mainly Dutch Canadians and some scattered Portuguese and the Presbyterian churches which attracted the majority of the people with their long standing scottish roots.

With the scottish subset only really crucial farm work was done on a sunday.

In southern Ontario, areas with a lot of dutch immigrants (although the emigration from the Netherlands was a 1940's-1960's phenomenom) tend to be strongly church going if they are part of the Christian Reformed Church.

Definitely.

Those areas of the province (Quebec City south shore, Beauce, etc.) that vote for more conservative parties are economically conservative.

They're not religiously or socially conservative at all, and in terms of "values" are exactly the same as all the other areas of Quebec where the predominant religious group/affiliation could be best described as "lapsed Catholic".

Growing up, my area was on the edge of a bible belt. The central to north Saint John River valley tends to be quite religious in my experience; from Woodstock up to Grand Falls basically if not beyond. (I'm not sure how religious the Acadian portions of the provinces might count for Bible Beltedness).

Woodstock itself is still quite religious, but seems to slowly be growing out of it. Fredericton itself still has a lot of churches and a lot of pull from said churches, but for the most part it is agnostic? (not sure what the proper term might be). Basically, the more urban it is, the less impact the churches tend to have on the area as far as I can tell.

Very true.

Quebec is the classic example of this, with its high rate of reporting as "Roman Catholic" but very low levels of religious practice and observance.

Quebec in this way is quite similar to a number of other older Latin Catholic societies around the world.

Acadians are not big bible thumpers but they do tend to be slightly more religious than the Québécois. This is also quite typical of all francophones outside Quebec, who did not go through the Quiet Revolution which included a rebellion against the institutional and political power of the Catholic church in that province.

In the other 9 provinces, the "power to be fought" wasn't so much the Church as it was the anglophone majority, and the Church was in fact often an ally of minority francophones. Which probably explains why more of them are still loyal to it.