Comparing neighbors: Social service provision by religous congregations in Ontario and the United States

Our article proceeds as follows. In the next section we examine religiosity and religious involvement in Canada and the U.S. to set the context within which we introduce our hypothesis: Ontario urban congregations will differ significantly from their counterparts in the U.S. in social services provision and in the impact they have on civic society at large. In the third section we provide a brief methodological note describing the samples and instruments used to conduct the study. Next, we report our findings: first we give the demographic and other relevant characteristics of the congregations in our samples; then we report on our findings on the areas of social-service provision that congregations are engaged in, their budget allocations for social service provision, and details for five representative programs from each congregations. These details include findings on who benefits from the programs and how much it costs congregations to provide the programs. Finally, we put forth our conclusions showing that, although Ontario congregations do engage in surprisingly substantial social service provision, they differ significantly from their counterparts in the U.S. in the type and value of services and in their impact.