Religion, Gender, and Sexuality among Youth in Canada

Abstract

Since 2012, we have been investigating Religion, Gender and Sexuality among Youth (18-25 year olds) in Canada (RGSY). Ours is a mixed-methods study that has used a web-based survey, interviews, and video diaries to collect data from 486 Canadian youth. Our project maps onto research that was done in the United Kingdom by Andrew Kam-Tuck Yip, Sarah-Jane Page, and Michael Keenan. They kindly offered to let us use and modify their questionnaire for our own web-based survey and now we are at the point of having some interesting international comparisons. As well, researchers in several other countries are beginning similar studies.

From dialogue to activism: How to get Generation Z and Millennials to participate in the multifaith movement in Australia

“…The Worldviews of Australia’s Generation Z (AGZ) study (Singleton et al, 2019), the Australian Interaction multifaith youth movement project (Halafoff and Gobey, 2018), and the Religion, Gender and Sexuality among Youth in Canada (RGSY) study (shipley et al, 2016) shed light on why young people are absent from multifaith initiatives and organisations in Australia. They highlight that Millennials and Gen Z have significantly different ways of identifying with and relating to religion that has been overlooked by traditional data-gathering methods and limited categories of religiosity.…”

“…The AGZ, Interaction, and RGSY studies suggest that a significant portion of Millennials and Gen Z have hybrid religious identities and are influenced by a range of religious and nonreligious sources. They have also grown up in a context where religion is under critique, and they are questioning the role of religion within a larger range of other diverse identities (Halafoff et al, 2020a; Halafoff and Gobey, 2018; Singleton et al, 2019; Shipley et al, 2016).…”