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DR. REGINALD W. BIBBY holds the Board of Governors Research Chair in the Department of Sociology at the University of Lethbridge. Born and raised in Edmonton, he received a Ph.D. from Washington State University, an M.A. from the University of Calgary, a B.D. from Southern Seminary in Louisville, and a B.A. from the University of Alberta. He also is the recipient of an honorary doctoral degree from Laurentian University. In 2006, in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the nation, the Governor General appointed him an Officer of the Order of Canada.
Over the past three decades, he has been monitoring social trends in Canada through a series of well known national surveys of adults and teenagers, in the process gathering pioneering and historic data on religion and youth. He has presented his findings in North America, Europe, Australia, and Japan, lecturing at universities including British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, McMaster, Queen's, Toronto, Acadia, Oxford, Notre Dame, and Harvard. He is the author of eleven best-selling books and some seventy journal articles. More than 130,000 copies of his books have been sold to date.
Five of his best known works focus on religion - Fragmented Gods (1987), Unknown Gods (1993), There's Got to Be More! (1995), Restless Gods (2002), and Restless Churches (2004).
Three other books focus on youth, - the first two co-authored with Don Posterski - The Emerging Generation (1984), Teen Trends (1992), and, Canada's Teen's: Today, Yesterday, and Tomorrow (2001).
His three remaining books look at Canadian culture more generally. Mosaic Madness (1990) examines our widespread social fragmentation and what might be done about it; The Bibby Report: Social Trends Canadian Style (1995), draws on his survey findings in examining social trends through the mid-1990s; The Boomer Factor (2006) looks at the kind of Canada that baby boomers are leaving behind.
Professor Bibby has conducted research and analyzes in Canada for the Presbyterian, Anglican, United, and Alliance churches, along with the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada. He also is well-known to Roman Catholics as a researcher, writer, and consultant. His work in the United States has included a major study in the late 1990s of the ministry priorities of some thirty American denominations and close to 2,500 congregations carried out for a consortium of U.S. Protestant publishers. He also has carried out surveys and data analyses for the Solicitor General of Canada, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the federal government's Social Trends Directorate, and the Province of Alberta. In 2003 he conducted a significant national survey with the Vanier Institute of the Family on what Canadians want from family life. The results are summarized in the report, The Future Families Project: A Survey of Canadian Hopes and Dreams (2004).
Dr. Bibby is one of the country's better known academics. His work has been covered in virtually all of Canada's major dailies and has received front cover treatment by Maclean's magazine on two occasions – April 9, 2001 and July 1, 2006). In addition, he has contributed articles to the Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, Edmonton Journal, Calgary Herald, and Ottawa Citizen. His extensive national television and radio appearances over the years have included the CBC and CTV national news, Canada AM, Question Period, As It Happens, Cross Country Check Up, Sunday Edition, various Newsworld programs, TSN's Off the Record, and such well-known former Canadian mainstays as Morningside, Shelagh Rogers' Sounds Like Canada, Midday, and Pamela Wallin Live. In the United States, his work has been given exposure by such news outlets as CNN, The New York Times, the USA Today, the Wall Street Journal,the Christian Science Monitor, the Chicago Tribune, and the Los Angeles Times.
Professor Bibby's efforts to interpret his findings have taken him into an unusually wide variety of settings across North America. He is routinely sought after for comment, data, and presentations.
