According to a Quebec priest, if the diocese does not change it will die; he doesn’t elaborate on whether this will be a good or a bad thing, relying, presumably, on the affable temperament of his readers to lead them to think the latter. I am not affable.
His solutions are to become more ecumenical, bilingual and accepting of all the gay people longing to attend Anglican churches. Rev. Yves Samson is himself gay and seems at a loss to explain why he is already not attracting more sexually like-minded individuals. Surely it can’t be because gay men and women have no more interest in an ecumenical Anglican eco-cult than heterosexuals.
From here:
As Rev. Yves Samson speaks to his congregation in the Quebec town of Trois-Rivières, two things stand out: the bilingualism of the sermon and the dearth of parishioners.
Samson holds nothing back when he says that, without radical change, the Anglican Diocese of Quebec could soon be extinct.
“If we want to keep going on (the old) track we will all die,” Samson says in an interview after his French and English sermon to a room full of near-empty pews in the St. James Anglican Church.
The numbers are interesting:
Some numbers about the Anglican Diocese of Quebec, which serves a large part of the province, including Quebec City, Sherbrooke and Trois-Rivières:
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Priests: 25.
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Parishes: 52, with 45 per cent running a deficit in 2012.
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Congregations: 87, with 64 per cent saying they would close or be amalgamated by 2019.
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Annual income: Below $20,000 for roughly 70 per cent of congregations.
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Regular services: Forty-two per cent of congregations have fewer than 10 a year.
The Anglican Church in Québec is dying because a) organised religion as a whole isn’t doing super well here, b) it’s perceived as English, and no amount of French spoken in its churches can change that perception, and c) it’s not about the End Of The World.
Eschatologically-minded churches do fairly well in Québec.
I can’t be arsed to care, though. Churches, denominations — they appear and die all the time. I’m happy to belong to a dying Church that I love. Something else will replace it. It always does, I’m not really worried about Christianity.
I concern myself about Christianity not the institutional church. Buildings are bricks and mortar. People have a spark of the divine within them and those that want the spark ignited will do whatever it takes………..anywhere.
For me the protracted dying of ‘the church’ is bittersweet.
The first issue that should be considered by Rev. Samson is his clear rejection of the authority of Scripture. Living what is called “the gay lifestyle” is totally contrary to the authority of Scripture. The use of the word “gay” has been seriously perverted by the GLB community. The only way the church can be revived is for it to return to the true Gospel and that is something the ACoC refuses to do under the apostate leadership of the primate and his apostate colleagues.
It’s always a mystery to these people why people don’t want hypocrisy.
“Eschatologically-minded churches do fairly well in Québec.”
Different recent sources suggest that evangelical churches can claim the support of 0.5% of the Francophone population of Québec. Is this what you are talking about?
Indeed. Though still small in absolute numbers, they are in a period of sharp growth. Whereas we all know what’s happening to the Anglican Church, and to a lesser extent the Roman Catholic Church.
On the ground it’s particularly striking when your Anglican church is across the street from such an evangelical congregation of some denomination or other (as ours used to be). There you are with 12 people on a good Sunday, and more than three hundred show up across the road. 😀
For what it is worth, the ACoC is seen as some extension of the English Monarchy. A ‘hold over’ of the colonial past if you will. The ‘establishment’ church. In an attempt to attract new folk, the hierarchy commissioned a more contemporary approach called the BAS. It is tad pedestrian for my tastes but allows for those that, while looking for a church home, could at least get their heads around a contemporary wording of the Mass. Cranmer’s Elizabethan prose is beautiful but difficult to access even among those that are relatively well educated. Perhaps a modest ‘tweaking’ of the Elizabethan prose might have worked but for purists of the BCP it was seen as sacrilegious.
There are success stories within the ACoC when the BCP and the BAS are offered in tandem. Particularly amongst those who are more Protestant minded. Anglo Catholics, of which there are precious few remaining, look to the English Missal , the English Alternative Services Book or other resource material’s.
0.5% is still a very small minority. Even if this proportion quintupled over the net couple of decades, that would still create an only slightly smaller minority.
Is there any reason to expect even this growth, never mind something more substantial?
_Nobody_ goes to church in Québec. This is the kingdom of “religion is evil” and “I’m spiritual but not religious” (hardly surprising considering how blithely the Roman Catholic Church screwed things up — both in real and PR terms). So any Christian movement that shows an uptick — particularly one where even French-speaking non-practicing cultural Catholics show up — is notable.
But notable as what?
If you’re talking about the existence, and even modest growth, of a new religious minority of tens of thousands of people in a community of nearly seven million people, that’s one thing.
If you’re talking about this religious minority eventually leading this society towards a complete revamping of spiritual practice and an altogether new role for religion in public life, that’s quite another thing.
Which is it?
My personal feeling is that evangelical Christianity might work for a small minority of Francophone Québécois, it will do so for reasons unique to this minority. New religious movements work for people who need them, but there’s no evidence as of yet of any deep-seated interest in Francophone Québec in evangelical Christianity or any other religious movement. For all we know, evangelical Christianity in Québec might be tied very closely to one ethnicity or regional identity. I’m reminded of the way in which, in France, evangelical Christianity is very closely connected to Caribbean immigrants and the Roma, but still has very little traction outside of these communities.
No, I’m simply saying that for the diminishing community of native French speakers who go to church in Québec, evangelical churches are the ones where there is growth, and other churches are experiencing a decline. This is of course mainly felt at the level of individual buildings and congregations.
I’m not trying to suggest there’s a huge upsurge in interest in Christianity in francophone Québec. French speakers in Québec, as a rule, don’t give a toss.
“the diminishing community of native French speakers who go to church in Québec, evangelical churches are the ones where there is growth, and other churches are experiencing a decline. ”
Fair enough.
Some preachers like to use the threat of hell to persuade people to enter the kingdom of God. People are saved by the unmerited grace of God. Grace is free. Unfortunately, not everyone accept it. Grace can be rejected like rejecting the sunshine by going indoors and drawing the drapes.