65% of religiously committed Canadians have “high” or “very high” community involvement

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

4 December, 2025

OTTAWA – The more religious Canadians are, the more involved they seem to be in their communities, according to a survey of 5,000 Canadians by the Angus Reid Institute (ARI) in partnership with Cardus. In fact, religiously committed Canadians are almost three times as likely as Canadians in general to display “very high” community involvement.

“It makes sense that community involvement tends to rise with religious commitment,” says Ray Pennings, executive vice president of Cardus. “The vast majority of the religiously committed group identifies with some form of Christianity, which traditionally emphasizes community involvement, such as helping others, volunteering, and donating to charity.”

The correlation between religious commitment and community involvement is in line with previous work Cardus has done on the Halo Effect—– the dollar value of the social and economic contributions that religious congregations make to Canada, including:

• providing community space, often at below-market rates or for free

• providing addiction recovery, counselling, or mental-health services

• sponsoring and settling refugees

• running food banks.

The Halo Effect of Canada’s religious congregations is estimated to be about $18.2 billion annually—almost 10.5 times greater than tax exemptions and credits those congregations receive.

Almost a quarter (24%) of religiously committed Canadians fall into the “very high” community involvement category. Fifty-six percent of them report volunteering, 81 percent donating to charity, 83 percent helping those in need, and 38 percent participating in community projects—higher levels of participation than any of the four groups on the Spectrum of Spirituality.

Definitions

Community Involvement – “Very high” community involvement includes regularly engaging in most of the following activities: volunteering time, donating to charity, helping those in need, using local community centres or libraries, socializing with neighbours, participating in neighbourhood community or hobby groups, and attending religious services. The “high” involvement group does many of these activities, though less frequently. Those in the “medium” involvement group do fewer activities overall, while the “low” involvement group rarely does any of the listed activities.

Spectrum of Spirituality – Those who are religiously committed typically display higher rates of belief in God, behaviours like prayer and reading a sacred text, and regular attendance at religious services, among other factors. The privately faithful engage in some religious behaviours but are often skeptical of organized religion, the spiritually uncertain believe in a higher power and may sometimes think about a reality beyond the physical world, and non-believers completely reject religion.

Full survey details are available on the ARI website.

-30-

MEDIA INQUIRIES

Daniel Proussalidis
Cardus – Director of Media & Public Relations
613-241-4500 x508
media@cardus.ca

Shachi Kurl
Angus Reid Institute – President
604-908-1693
shachi.kurl@angusreid.org

Cardus – Imagination toward a thriving society
Cardus is a non-partisan think tank dedicated to clarifying and strengthening, through research and dialogue, the ways in which society’s institutions can work together for the common good.