Désaffiliation chez les évangéliques de deuxième génération au Québec : le rôle de l’inatteignable conversion et de l’insoutenable pureté sexuelle

Abstract

Canadian evangelicals are known for their high religious retention, meaning that a good proportion of the children from these communities preserve the same religious faith as their parents once they become adults. For this reason, Canadian evangelical communities have not received much attention in recent years regarding disaffiliation, even though this phenomenon exists throughout Canada and most notably in the Quebec province. Canadian statistics reveal a certain religious resilience over the past two decades, but they conceal a significant proportion of those who have disaffiliated at the same time. This article examines this disaffiliation movement from a socio-anthropological and qualitative perspective and highlights the role of two key dimensions in the disaffiliation process among young evangelicals socialized in this context. On the one hand, he argues that the dominant model of conversion transmitted by the first generation, namely a rupture-conversion model, contributes to disaffiliation. Subjected to strong pressures, the disaffiliated claim to have inherited a conversion model that is difficult, if not impossible, to adopt. In addition, the ideal of sexual purity and marriage that can be linked to American purity culture has a strong impact on the issues of identity and belonging to these religious communities. Young adults disengage in significant proportions from their church communities when they cease to observe this ideal, which is built around a social “all or nothing” logic.