2012“Why Bother With Organized Religion?” Canadian Review of Sociology 49:1. In press.
2011“Continuing the Conversation on Canada: Changing Patterns of Religious Service Attendance." Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 50:4.831-839.
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 four decades, Reginald Bibby 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 twelve best-selling books and some seventy journal articles. To date, more than 150,000 copies of his books have been sold.
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).
Four other books focus on youth, - the first two co-authored with Don Posterski - The Emerging Generation (1984) and Teen Trends (1992), along with Canada's Teen's (2001) and The Emerging Millennials (2009). The latter is something of a companion volume to his 2006 trends book, The Boomer Factor (2006), in that it draws on his most recent national survey of teenagers to examine the impact of the Boomer era on today's newest generation of youth.
Professor Bibby's two remaining books, as with The Boomer Factor, look at Canadian culture more generally. Mosaic Madness (1990) examined the factors back of our social fragmentation at a time when we believed we were experiencing a unity crisis. His extensive trend data were pulled together in The Bibby Report in 1995, and updated and expanded in The Boomer Factor a decade later.
His most recent book is the fourth in his "gods" series and is entitled, Beyond the Gods & Back: Religion's Demise and Rise and Why It Matters. The book examines religious developments in Canada, past and present. It documents the growing polarization between people who embrace and reject religion, and explores the implications for personal and social life. The book is unique in it use of extensive new survey data that help to make it possible to see Canadian developments in global perspective.
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 monograph 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 three occasions – April 9, 2001, July 1, 2006, and April 13, 2009). 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 The New York Times, the USA Today, CNN, 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.
