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By Jim Coggins
Over the past two months, BC Christian News has
developed a comprehensive analysis of the state of the church in Canada,
based on phone interviews, published research and an email survey of church
leaders from across Canada. The first article was published in the January
issue. In this issue, we summarize six more articles.
The full text of all seven articles, and the
interviews, are available on our website, CanadianChristianity.com.
THE starting point for our analysis rests in data that
weekly church attendance has dropped from 70 percent of the Canadian
population in the 1950s to about 20 percent today.
People with ‘no religion’ have risen to
almost 20 percent of the population, including about seven percent of the
population who claim to be atheists.
However, some two-thirds of the population still claim
to be Christian and attend church at least annually.
The resulting picture is of a committed Christian core
of 20 percent of the population, a secular core a little larger at the
other extreme and half the population with a looser attachment to
Christianity in the middle.
Shifting traditions
The largest denomination in Canada is and always has
been the Roman Catholic Church, making up 43 percent of the population, a
proportion virtually unchanged for a century, although only about 27
percent of Catholics, 3.5 million people, attend church regularly.
Protestants have declined from 56 percent of the
population in 1901 to 29 percent in 2001. However, most of that decline
occurred before 1981.
At one time, most Protestants belonged to three
‘mainline’ denominations: Anglican, Presbyterian and United.
However, since 1981, there has been a massive shift within Protestantism.
Attendance in mainline churches has dropped rapidly, while attendance at
evangelical churches rose 50 percent between 1981 and 2001.
More than 1.1 million people attend evangelical
churches each week, many more than the 750,000 who attend mainline
churches. Evangelical dominance is even higher in B.C.
Further, pollster Andrew Grenville pointed out that
“a high proportion of mainline attenders are evangelicals.”
Evangelical growth
The growth of evangelicalism has largely gone unnoticed
by mainstream society, partly because of the ways Statistics Canada
categorizes statistics on religion, and partly because evangelicals are
broken up into many small denominations.
Pentecostals and charismatics are growing faster than
other evangelicals, rising from 20 percent of evangelicals in 1981 to 30
percent in 2001. A single denomination, the Pentecostal Assemblies of
Canada, now has attendance almost as large as each of the big three
‘mainline’ Protestant churches (Anglican, Presbyterian and
United).
Evangelical growth is evidenced by the growing
prominence of umbrella organizations such as The Evangelical Fellowship of
Canada (EFC). Evangelicals are now being studied by centres such as Trinity
Western University’s new Religion in Canada Institute and the
EFC’s new Centre for Research on Canadian Evangelism (CRCE).
The latter has begun publishing an online journal
called Church & Faith Trends.
Program manager Rick Hiemstra said the centre’s
purpose is not just to stimulate and report academic research but to use it
to help “ministry practitioners” make appropriate ministry
decisions. The journal will serve as “a mirror for the evangelical
community and a window for others.”
The CRCE’s advisory board is chaired by John
Stackhouse of Regent College. He said the Centre could not have been
started 20 years ago because, other than the pioneering work of people such
as University of Lethbridge sociologist Reg Bibby, there was not yet
“a critical mass of scholars interested in evangelicalism.”
The CRCE is symbolic of the growth not only of
“an evangelical intellectual culture” but of evangelicalism
generally.
Moral issues
In recent decades, two issues, abortion and
homosexuality, have tended to dominate Christian interactions with Canadian
society. Christians have fought losing battles against the legalization of
abortion and same-sex marriage.
These battles have been very divisive. Same-sex
marriage has been the focal point for the recent schism in the Anglican
Church. Mainline denominations have come to accept and often even support
abortion and homosexual ‘rights.’
However, the Roman Catholic Church and evangelical
leaders say they will continue to promote, in the words of the EFC’s
director of public policy Doug Cryer, “the uniqueness and importance
of marriage as a covenant between a woman and a man” and
“protection for unborn children.”
Brian Stiller, former head of the EFC and now president
of Tyndale University College and Seminary, has called for reflection
on how Christians conduct themselves.
While the battles over abortion and same-sex marriage
had to be fought, he asked, “What did we gain by our battle?”
He suggested that the “angry, unchristlike
chatter” some Christians engaged in hurt not only the immediate cause
but the church generally.
Cameron Roxburgh, founding pastor of the multi-site
Southside Community Church in Metro Vancouver, suggested that the church
should take a more positive approach, offering “an alternative way to
live. As we demonstrate the positive approach of adoption over abortion,
and fidelity in marriage between wife and husband, we will proclaim the
kingdom of God.”
There was also a consensus among the church leaders we
surveyed that in the near future issues such as poverty and the environment
might assume equal importance with abortion and homosexuality as Christian
social issues.
While committed Christians have been at odds with
society over abortion and homosexuality, Roxburgh suggested that Christian
involvement in poverty and the environment might help the church once again
“enjoy the favour of all the people.” Acts 2:47
Persecuted minority?
An Ipsos Reid survey found that 39 percent of weekly
church attenders “strongly agree that there is a general bias against
the viewpoints that are held by deeply committed Christians.”
Continue article >>
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A number of court cases have aroused fears that a
general persecution of Christians may be coming.
The social action group Equipping Christians for the
Public Square warns: “The public square has become a hostile arena
for social-conservative Christians . . . Militant secularism seeks to
eliminate our culture’s acknowledgement of the Divine.”
However, a 2006 survey found 63 percent of Canadians
would be willing to vote for an evangelical (down from 80 percent a decade
earlier); and 68 percent would be willing to vote for an atheist (down from
72 percent).
In other words, while the secular core might want to
silence Christians, the half of Canadians in the middle seem willing to
tolerate both extremes, as long as neither extreme tries to impose its
views on society as a whole.
Further, with the decline in church attendance leveling
off somewhat, Stiller, suggested, “The pendulum of secularism has
swung as far as it can.”
Immigration
The majority of immigrants to Canada before 1971 came
from ‘Christian’ Europe. In 1971, over 60 percent of immigrants
came from Europe and 12 percent from Asia and the Middle East. Those
figures have now been reversed.
Immigration has helped maintain Roman Catholic numbers.
Roman Catholics made up 43 percent of immigrants in the 1960s and 23
percent of immigrants as late as the 1990s.
However, immigration has contributed to the Protestant
decline. Protestants made up 39 percent of immigrants before 1961 but only
11 percent of immigrants in the 1990s.
Immigration almost doubled the numbers of Muslims,
Sikhs, Hindus and Buddhists in Canada in the 1990s. Muslims now make up
about two percent of Canadians, and the others about one percent each.
Immigration has also increased the number of people
with ‘no religion,’ as 20 percent of immigrants fall into this
category.
The impact of immigration has been mixed for the
Christian church. There is some encouraging evidence that the church is
becoming multicultural. While Christians have won few converts among people
from the Middle East, there are vibrant Christian churches among immigrant
groups such as the Chinese.
In Quebec, the number of “allophone”
churches has almost doubled in the last decade, spurred by rapid growth of
often independent evangelical Congolese, Haitian and Latin American
congregations.
These churches will soon outnumber English-speaking
Protestant churches and maybe even rival French-speaking Protestant
churches in that province.
Further, immigrant congregations are often very vibrant
and active. Brian Stiller, president of Tyndale University College and
Seminary, said, “In Toronto, the newly arrived ethnic communities
tend to be the spark plugs for evangelism.”
David Macfarlane, director of national initiatives for
The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, concluded, “Growing churches of
the future, in the large cities, will be either multiethnic or
intercultural.”
Strengths & weaknesses
Some of those surveyed suggested that there is so much
variety in the Canadian church that it does not make sense to talk about
“a Canadian church.”
Nevertheless, they could draw some general conclusions.
Observed strengths of the Canadian church included stability, an emphasis
on prayer, innovative approaches to evangelism and a holistic understanding
of the intellectual, social and physical dimensions of the gospel.
However, responders questioned the ability of the
church to adapt to a post-Christian society or to Canada’s urban
environment.
Roxburgh expressed concern about a consumerist approach
by churches that has “reduced the gospel to a personal and private
salvation.”
Political scientist John H. Redekop suggested the real
problem is “a weakening among Christians . . . of the sense that
unbelievers are eternally lost.”
David Macfarlane stated, “The main challenge
facing the local churches is that they need to regain their sense of
mission.”
Summing up the strengths and weaknesses, Stackhouse
suggested that the Canadian church demonstrates “a kind of amateurish
complacency.”
University of Manitoba historian Gerry Bowler suggested
that the Canadian church demonstrates the strengths and weaknesses of
Canadian society as a whole: “Except in hockey, Canadians do not
value excellence or fevered enthusiasm in public enterprises. Our motto is
‘Go for the bronze!’ Toleration and a pleasant mediocrity are
our watchwords . . . Some of our churches are doing fine; many are
withering on the vine; the shrinkage in attendance nationally is slow but
inexorable. We are not experiencing a vigorous efflorescence of faith as
in, for example, Brazil or Korea or much of the United States, but neither
are we a museum piece like Western European Christianity.”
Participants in BCCN’s ‘State of the
Canadian Church’ survey:
Gerry Bowler, cultural
historian, University of Manitoba;
Bruce Clemenger, president,
The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada;
Doug Cryer, director of
public policy, The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada;
Tim Day, senior pastor, The
Meeting House, Oakville, Ontario;
David Harris, editor, The Presbyterian Record;
Rick Hiemstra, program
manager, Centre for Research on Canadian Evangelicalism;
David Macfarlane, director
of national initiatives, The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada;
Lloyd Mackey, veteran
Christian journalist and political commentator, Ottawa;
Damian Macpherson, director
for interfaith affairs, Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Toronto;
Willard Metzger, director
of church relations, World Vision Canada;
John Redekop, veteran
political science professor and author, Abbotsford;
Cameron Roxburgh, founder
of Southside Community Church, Metro Vancouver;
Glenn Smith,
director-general, Christian Direction, Montreal;
John Stackhouse, professor
of theology and culture, Regent College, Vancouver;
Brian Stiller, president,
Tyndale University College and Seminary, Toronto.
We also relied on the extensive research of: Reginald Bibby, sociologist,
University of Lethbridge; and Andrew Grenville, chief research officer, Angus Reid Strategies.
February 2008
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