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 1. What are the main challenges and issues the Canadian church is facing?
The number one issue facing the church in Canada in the 21st century is the absence of any notion of The Church. This is nothing that we have really lost; ever since the banning of Protestants from the colony of New France in the 1600s we have chosen to value sectarianism over The Kingdom, or perhaps to state it more fairly: to view sectarianism as an essential strategy in building the Kingdom. There is no meaningful expression of the concept of Christendom and as a result Christians cannot confront the challenges they face in the expectation of the support or even tolerant understanding of their core ligionists. We do not have Christian colleges; we have small, struggling Catholic or Protestant colleges.
We do not have Christian television; we have a myriad of low-budget entrepreneurs competing for niches in the religious-media marketplace. Do we have any journals that speak for, or to, Canadian Christianity as opposed to a splinter of it? Whom can one identify as the intellectual voices of Canadian Christianity? What institutions or para-church bodies can we say speak for a majority Canadian Christians? To ask these questions is, alas, to answer them. Should we ever meet this challenge, all the other issues - modernity, orthodox/liberal schism, worship wars, church/state tensions, etc. -- will seem quite solvable.
The second issue of importance in the coming years is going to be the access of faith groups to the public square. Two trends mitigate against Christianity being allowed a respected hearing or even any standing outside of the home. The first is the rise of the human rights industry as a tool of the secular left; it has been enormously successful in ensuring the triumph of one set of rights chiefly gender and sexual over the imagined constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion and religious speech. The traditional place that Christianity as had in Canadian society had inoculated it from a full-scale assault but the second trend - the demand by Canadian Islam for tolerance for its religious distinctives - now mandates that all religions be marginalized in the public sphere. We may look for increasing state interference in child-rearing practices, tax-exempt status, church and religious-educational hiring policies, freedom of preaching or publishing on controversial issues, etc. Religion will soon be seen as having no right to public utterance if it dares to contradict accepted social mores.
2. What are the bright spots, encouraging trends, new movements in Canadian Christianity?
Two encouraging trends: 1) immigration of foreign Christians and of those, particularly East Asian newcomers, open to Christianity. This will increase our numbers and strengthen the voices of orthodoxy. 2) the coming Anglican schism. Despite my lament for Christian unity see above an official sundering of the Canadian Anglican church will believers in both or all resulting fragments to worship and speak more boldly. Compromise in matters of adiaphora is all very well but compromise is a strategy and should not be elevated to a governing virtue. Over decades it can turn a church into a body of frustrated and impotent Laodiceans, allowed to be neither hot nor cold. The great potential now lying in many Anglican parishes will be released once the smoke has cleared and everyone will be the better for it.
3. What is the character of the Canadian church?
There is no 'Canadian church.' see question one.
4. How is the church doing qualitatively?
The answer to that is the same answer one can give to questions about the state of almost anything Canadian: so-so. Except in hockey, Canadians do not value excellence or fevered enthusiasm in public enterprises. Our motto is "Go for the bronze!" We are taught to define ourselves as a nation by our particular approach to the delivery of medical care. Toleration and a pleasant mediocrity are our watch-words. Canadians regard suicide bombers and Jehovah Witness tract distributors with the same degree of disdain.
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 USA but neither are we a museum piece like Western European Christianity.
We are not noticeable at a provincial or national level but on a micro scale Canadian Christians continue to do wonderful work with the destitute, lonely and lost. If such workers were raptured away tomorrow the inner city would notice the absence long before the media or politicians.
5. What is the state of the church in Canada numerically, both in terms of the number of church members and the number of Christians?
I haven't checked the figures since the 2001 census results were published but I don't believe our diminishing presence nor the trend to secularism have been slowed. What we all hope for is the situation expressed by Greta Garbo in "Ninotchka" 1939 where she plays a grim Soviet commissar visiting Paris. When asked how things are back in the USSR she replies that the latest purges have been a great success and that there are now going to be "fewer but better Russians".
6. What is the attitude of the larger Canadian society to Christianity?
See question one and four.
7. What is the ethnic makeup of the church in Canada and what impact is immigration having on Canada? Are we converting immigrants to Christ?
Anecdotally, based on the evidence I see at the University of Manitoba, foreign students are continually seeking out and being reached by Canadian Christian groups.
8. Are other religions gaining adherents?
Certainly, but in the same proportion as Christianity? Probably not.
9. Are we winning our children or losing them?
It depends who "we" are. Evangelicals seem to be putting up a good fight; Catholics too but they seem to have lost that battle in Quebec. Older Protestant denominations seem to be aging at a rapid rate.
10. How multicultural is the church, how representative of the Canadian population?
Canadian Christianity seems to be very multicultural though it may wish to have a conversation in a little while about the wisdom of ethnic-oriented churches. Are they a short-term solution or a long-term vision?
11. What are the most important moral issues that the church will be wrestling with in the next few years?
Abortion is due for a come-back as an issue. The same-sex issue is over for at least the next generation . With the appearance of the first wave of geriatric Baby Boomers, end-of-life issues will be the next great moral struggle. Within 20 years suicide will be seen as the socially correct thing to do for the elderly and do-not-resuscitate policies will be mandatory.
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