Faith in Manitoba

Even though attendance at worship services has fallen dramatically since the 1940s, when two out of three Canadians said they went to church regularly, that doesn’t mean that people have stopped identifying with religious groups. According to the 2001 census, about 69 percent of Manitobans—over 800,000 people—identify with a religious group, even if they don’t go to church, mosque, temple or synagogue very much, or at all.

Of that number, 475,200 Manitobans say they are Protestant, while 292,970 say they are Catholics. As well, there are 13,000 members of the Jewish community, 5,000 Muslims, 5,745 Buddhists, 5,485 Sikhs, and 3,840 Hindus.

In the Protestant camp, there are 176,820 members of the United Church of Canada, 85,890 Anglicans, 51,540 Mennonites, 50,335 Lutherans, 29,740 Ukrainian Catholics, 22,505 Baptists, 6,900 Greek Orthodox and 4,600 Ukrainian Orthodox. There are almost 65,000 others who consider themselves to be evangelicals, “born again Christians” or Apostolic.

In Winnipeg, Roman Catholics accounted for 30 percent of the population in 2001, 18 percent are members of the United Church.

But not everyone identifies with a faith group; in 2001 21 percent of Winnipeggers, or 136,600 people, reported they had no religion at all—up from 16 percent in 1991. Province-wide, 201,800 people said they adhere to no religious group.

For a more detailed look at faith in Winnipeg, see Religion by the Numbers (PDF) written by John Longhurst.

 

 

 

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