Christian religious identity and sexual behaviour in Canada today

Abstract

Christianity has been an important social institution in governing sexual behaviour. However, like many post-industrial nations, Canada’s attachment to Christianity has been in decline since the 1960s. The proportion of the population affiliated with Christian churches has diminished, and the relationship between church and state has loosened. In addition, more variation has emerged within Christian religious organizations relating to sexual morality, creating greater possibilities for the acceptance of more expansive sexualities in some denominations. While scholars have long found that religious affiliation and religiosity are important determinants of sexual morality, sociological approaches to sexuality would suggest that the shifting social contexts of the past 60 years in Canada might loosen constraints on sexual behaviour, perhaps even among those who retain ties to Christian churches. To assess the relationship between Christian religious affiliation and self-reports of sexual activity, we analyze data from an original survey of sexual behaviour ( N = 2,126). The authors focus on two sexual activities that have been deemed immoral in some Christian teachings: masturbation and performing oral sex on a partner. They use ordinal logistic regression to compare the recency of participation in these sexual behaviours among those with several types of Christian affiliation, comparing each group with those who have no affiliation. They find that Catholics and mainline Protestants—the largest religious communities in Canada—do not significantly differ from those with no religious affiliation in how recently they engaged in these behaviours. However, the authors find that those with affiliations to Evangelical Christian religions are significantly less likely to report that they engaged in these behaviours recently. They argue that, in the current cultural context of dechristianization, some Christian communities engage in sexual activity in measurably different ways than others.