And it’s all about commonplace leftist preoccupations that have little to do with Christianity – like resource extraction – and diminishing membership; could there be connection?
From here:
Hundreds of members of the Anglican Church of Canada and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada are converging on Ottawa for an unprecedented joint national gathering of the two churches, where they will tackle issues like resource extraction, homelessness, and how to live out their mission in a time of diminishing church membership.
The Anglican Church of Canada is claiming “545,000 members”, a grossly inflated number I suspect. After all, my wife and I are still on the membership roll of the Diocese of Niagara even after the bishop sued me. I wonder if that’s a first, a bishop suing one of his own parishioners?
The Anglican Church of Canada (anglican.ca) has been a self-governing member of the worldwide Anglican Communion since 1893 and has 545,000 members in nearly 2,800 congregations across the country.
The ELCIC claims even fewer members – 145,000 – and has joined with the ACoC in the hope, perhaps, of padding its denomination with disaffected Anglicans; another example of resource extraction.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada (elcic.ca), established in 1986, has 145,000 members across Canada in nearly 600 congregations and is a member of the Lutheran World Federation.
Membership decline is to be addressed by restructuring rather than examining the reason that people are leaving:
Delegates from both churches will also discuss proposals to restructure the way in which the Anglican Church of Canada and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada function, since both churches have experienced the same decline in membership as many other mainline Canadian churches.
Not all mainline churches have lost members: the Roman Catholic Church has experienced membership growth while standing resolutely against same-sex marriage, abortion and euthanasia – could there be a connection?
“Resource extraction”? These bodies own oil companies, do they? If not, what business is this of theirs?
Sounds more like urine extraction to me.
The RC church grows by opposing birth control and by it being the traditional home of the Latino population. Where I live the RC church is almost entirely Latino and most of the rest have left for Episcopal, Lutheran, and Methodist.
Am I mistaken, or is this comment as racist as it sounds? Are Latinos somehow less significant as church members than WASPs? Evangelical Protestant numbers have grown recently as well, even as a percentage of the population, much of it due to immigration. Christianity is growing worldwide, and “conservative” Protestant churches and RC’s are growing in North America, while Western mainline Protestant denominations are shrinking, but somehow one often gets the impression that leaders of these declining churches think they are the only ones that matter.
Not racist at all. Just an observation of things in the southwestern USA. yes, some leaving the RC church are leaving for racist reasons. Some perhaps because most masses, and the native language of the priests, are not English. The two local RC priests have native languages of Spanish and Vietnamese. Both are fine gentlemen, but not sure I’d want to listen to homilies in broken English every Sunday.
Our Episcopal parish has, I’m sure, a greater percentage of minority members than any other church in town. And serves many more by running the local soup kitchen. Of course some readers of this blog may not accept our female priest, our gay members, or our policy of serving communion to anyone who wishes to receive that meal as well as one that fills their bellies.
The 545,000 membership quoted for ACoC is dubious. Based on a linear extrapolation of this graph the number would be approximately 400,000. If they have new numbers, they should publish them.
It was worth skimming the article just to note that the delegates will gather at the Parliament Buildings July 6th to witness to … wait for it … the importance of drinking water.
Thanks for printing the membership numbers for Anglicans and Lutherans in Canada. I was interested in what they are.
Just at what point do the “mainline” churches ceased being referred to as mainline? They appear rather peripheral now compared to some other denominations.
What denominations would you now consider mainline? And which peripheral?
Around 1970 the Anglican Church of Canada and the United Church of Canada tried to unite. There is an Anglican-United Hymnbook too. The two churches did not end up uniting. The Church governments aren’t the same. The United Church has a Presbytry from the Presbyterian Church, a Congregational Government from the Congregational Church and Social Justice from the Methodist Church. The Anglican Church has an Episcopy is a Government under Bishops and Priests. They aren’t congregational. The two governments could not be comatible working that closely together. The Lutheran structure is more similar to the Anglicans. Both are influenced by Martin Luther but the Anglicans are also influenced by John Calvin. The United Church is under Schliermacher is a German Romantic Liberal. The Basis of Union’s 20 Articles are designed to mute the differences between the Methodists & Presbyterians. In 1925 Schliermacher was the most popular person to read about in Europe and Martin Luther was the second most popular. He was Moravian Brethren were a group in either Checkeslovakia or Bohemia influenced by John Calvin. This is an area now part of Poland that was formerly Germany. See the Dr Victor Shepherd websight about the critique of the Origins of the Operative Theology of the United Church. The United Church has affected the Anglican and United Churches. The Episcopal Church in the United States has changed too.