Much has been written in recent years about the decreasing importance of denomination among North Americans. The related assumption is that people ave abandoning loyalties and-to the extent they continue to want to participate in churches-gravitate toward congregations which are in touch with their needs, with little concern for denominational labels. The issue is an extremely important one, with critical practical implications for congregations-who they target for ministry, as well as what they should be doing to engage in effective ministry. In this paper: the author draws on Canadian national survey data for 1975 and 1995 to examine intergroup attitudes and denominational switching patterns over the last half of the century. The data sets include a core of 400 people who participated in both the 1975 and 1995 surveys, making both panel and trend examinations possible. Beyond probing attitudes and actual behavior the analysis looks at the role of a number of potentially significant correlates of ongoing religious identification, including parental identification childhood attendance and previous rites of passage, along with current factors such as spousal identification and personal participation and commitment. The author concludes with a discussion of the implications of the findings for "the vanishing boundaries thesis" in Canada and the United States.
