Three-in-five Canadians believe in some sort of life after death—a belief that has mostly held steady over the past decade, according to a new survey.
Roughly 60 percent of the 2,000 respondents believe in the afterlife, but just what that entails varies by religion.
Evangelical Christians were the most likely to believe in life after death, at 92 percent, while those of the Jewish faith expressed the most skepticism. Only 40 percent of Jews polled believe in life after death, according to the survey.
The level of belief among Evangelicals may have been high, but that same level of faith was not expressed by all Christians polled. Seventy-five percent of mainline Protestants and 65 percent of Catholics said they believed in life after death, bringing the overall average down to 76 percent for those identifying as Christian.
Muslims expressed a strong faith in the afterlife at 87 percent, compared to Hindus at 71 percent and Sikhs at 67 percent.
Overall, the level of belief in life after death over the past decade remains unchanged, coming in between 60 and 66 percent, with the exception of 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic was at its worst, according to the data collected. During that year, belief in an afterlife dropped to only 51 percent, but had risen again to 60 percent by 2022.
Belief in the Resurrection
The survey, which was released just prior to Easter, also included a question about belief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ as a real historical event. Easter is when Christians celebrate Jesus’s resurrection from the dead.The survey found Canadians to be split evenly on both sides of the argument, with men aged 18 to 34 and women older than 54 being most likely to label the resurrection as a historical event. Approximately one-quarter of those polled in all age groups strongly disagreed.
Christians were most likely to believe in the resurrection, with 59 percent describing it as a historical fact, while Jewish respondents were the religious group to disagree most at 85 percent.
