CLOSETED IN CANADA:

Canadians praying in private, Statscan says (MICHAEL VALPY, 5/03/06, Globe and Mail)

Millions of Canadians are secretly more religious than they let on, murmuring prayers, meditating and reading sacred texts in the privacy of their homes but staying away from formal worship, Statistics Canada said yesterday.

Using data from Statscan's 2002 Ethnic Diversity Study, the agency said that while only one-third of adult Canadians attend religious services at least monthly, more than half engage in religious activities of their own at least monthly.

The agency's report, published in the journal Canadian Social Trends, will likely become part of the heated debate among religion sociologists over whether Canada is becoming more or less secular.

According to the report's authors, senior Statscan analysts Warren Clark and Grant Schellenberg, the findings indicate that adult Canadians attach a higher degree of importance to religion than religious attendance figures alone would indicate.