The Dynamics of Religious Economies 107
established church to increase its appeal to the people. When Protestant competition
first challenged Catholicism in the 1940s and 1950s, the Church turned to the state for
protection (Gill 1999). By the late 1960s, after the state proved ineffective in eliminating
the challengers, the Church increased its own evangelical efforts using techniques that
were remarkably similar to their Protestant competitors, for example, “Bible reading,
lay leadership, and close-knit fraternal groups” (Stoll 1990: 30). The Church’s ability to
increase seminary enrollment, and to generate other institutional resources from (and
for) the people, has been positively related to the level of competition being faced (Stark
1992; Gill 1999). The higher the rate of evangelical Protestants in a nation, the more
aggressively the Catholic Church markets the faith.
The process of desacralization also has accompanied the gradual deregulation of
religion in Latin America. Initially, the state led the charge, seeking to reduce the in-
fluence of the church in the political, educational, and economic arenas. Throughout
Latin American nations, the Church lost properties and landholdings, education be-
came more secularized, religious toleration was granted, and the civil registry was not
administered by the Church. But as religious competition increased and the people
became the core of the Church’s resources, the Church started to distance itself from
the state. Based on quantitative data on Latin American nations, and cases studies of
individual nations, Anthony Gill (1998:104) reports that “religious competition is the
best predictor of episcopal opposition to authoritarian rule compared to a variety of
other potential explanations.” Now appealing to the people for favor, rather than the
state, the church no longer offers a blind allegiance to political leaders and is frequently
a potent force of opposition.
Conflict and Commitment in Quebec
The previous examples have illustrated how religious deregulation leads to an imme-
diate increase in religious supply and to gradual increases in the level of religious in-
volvement and desacralization. Yet the final proposition, that sometimesconflict can
substitute for competition, has not been addressed. Here we turn to Quebec, Canada, to
illustrate this proposition.
When Canada was seized from France by force of arms, those French residents not
deported to Louisiana remained a subjugated ethnic minority. In this situation, mass at-
tendance was inseparable from political and cultural resistance, with French Canadians
long displaying remarkably high levels of religious commitment. According to national
surveys reported by Barrett (1982), 83 percent of Catholics attended weekly in 1946 as
did 65 percent in 1970. Why? Because the church was the only major organization
under the control of French Canadians; all other institutions including political parties
were dominated by English Canadians.
Writing in 1937, historian Elizabeth Armstrong explained that in the “175 years
since the conquest [the Roman Catholic Church] has become more and more closely
identified with the interests and aspirations of the French Canadian people until it
almost seems that the Church is French Canada” (Armstrong 1937/1967: 36). For French
Canadians, the Catholic Church protected their rights, guarded their institutions, and
preserved the French culture and language. Armstrong recognized that the people’s
allegiance to the Church even surpassed their allegiance to the faith: “Doubtless there
are many people who do not accept the teaching of the Church, but they are apt