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Easter church service may draw a larger crowd than usual this holiday weekend, with a new poll showing a third of Canadians are praying more often to help their families through the recession.

But experts say that may only be a temporary bump for religion, since the number of adults that believe in God has dropped significantly over the last decade.

The survey of 1,000 people, conducted for Canwest News Service and Global National, also found that overall the nationwide proportion of people who believe in God has dropped from 84 per cent in 2000 to 71 per cent in 2009.

According to pollster Ipsos Reid, the biggest faith-gap is in gender: male belief in God has dropped from 86 per cent to 63 per cent, while female belief declined just three percentage points, from 82 per cent to 79 per cent since 2000.

Among middle-aged and older Canadians, belief in God dropped 14 and 15 points, respectively, during that same period.

"One wants to say that faith is constant," says John Wright, senior vice-president for Ipsos in Toronto. "But I think it's transient for the majority of people."

A third of Canadians (34 per cent) say they're praying more often because of the economy, including eight per cent of people who claim they don't actually believe in God. A similar number (30 per cent) say they're feeling so desperate lately that God is the only entity to whom they can turn.

Richard Ascough, an associate professor of religious studies at Queen's University, suspects "all this extra praying" might lead to a boost this weekend in "C&E Christians" — those Canadians that attend church on Christmas and Easter.

"When times are tough, people turn to whatever help they can get . . . There's a willingness to roll the dice on God being able to help out," says Ascough. "But Christianity is definitely seeing growing mistrust — and not unfounded — particularly in the institution of the church."

Indeed, the new poll shows people haven't gone from believing in God to being agnostic but rather to a view resembling atheism. The proportion of Canadians who claim not to believe has climbed five points, to 15 per cent, in the last three years.

Twenty-one per cent of Canadians believe in both heaven and hell, seven per cent believe only in heaven, and 28 per cent are unsure of what happens when we die. Twenty per cent believe in an afterlife but not specifically heaven or hell, while seven per cent believe we're reincarnated, and 15 per cent say we simply cease to exist after death. Two per cent either didn't know or refused to answer.

Blake Allan, a 24-year-old research assistant from Vancouver, falls into the "cease-to-exist" category. He was raised in a dogmatic protestant sect but has since come to call himself an "atheist-humanist."

"I don't believe in metaphysical things; I believe in scientific proof," says Allan, who began questioning his religion at age 15.

"When I get really, really stressed out, I've caught myself a couple of times saying, 'Please God, help me with this.' But that doesn't mean I believe in Him in that moment. It's just how I was raised . . . so I sometimes revert to that because it was comforting when I was a kid."

Although Allan is at ease with his family's Easter celebrations, he says the holiday is nothing more than a day off work for him.

"I'm cool with the fact we have tradition. But where we are now is pretty secularized," says Allan, adding wryly: "Thank God."

The Ipsos Reid poll, conducted by from phone March 31 to April 2, 2009 with a random sample of Canadians, is considered accurate plus or minus 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.