COVID may have hastened Christianity's decline in Canada
National Post, 23 May 2021
The pandemic is only a passing story. The real question is what will happen once the restrictions are lifted. Will the faithful come back?
Pentecost Sunday, which falls 50 days after Easter, doesn’t get quite the attention that Easter and Christmas do, but traditionally it is just as important. Christians often refer to it as the “birthday” of the church, when frightened and cowering disciples were converted by the power of the Holy Spirit into fearless evangelists. They would be the missionary martyrs who would carry the Christian faith, as the scripture puts it, to the ends of the earth.
Pentecost 2021 is not a happy birthday for the Christian churches in Canada. From the seven months and counting abolition of religious liberty in British Columbia, to severe restrictions on worship elsewhere, Christian disciples may well feel, as their ancestors did at the first Pentecost, huddled together, fearful of the authorities.
Yet the pandemic is only a (slowly) passing story. The real question is what will happen once the restrictions are lifted. Will the faithful come back?
I keep on my desk the January 2020 issue of the Anglican Journal. The headline on its cover focuses the attention of anyone engaged in pastoral work: Gone by 2040?
“We’ve got simple projections from our data that suggest that there will be no members, no attenders or givers in the Anglican Church of Canada by approximately 2040,” reports Rev. Neil Elliot, a B.C. priest. He has a doctorate in sociology, and conducted a comprehensive review of Anglican data sets as part-time statistician for the national church.
His figures are not disputed; the entire issue of the Anglican Journal features senior church leadership confirming the data with their own experience.
The Anglican Church of Canada had about 1.3 million members in 1961. By 2017, that number had dropped to 282,000. The remaining faithful are largely older.
Many Anglican parishes have been shuttered for the entire pandemic, even more than was required by public health restrictions. Will the long-term effects of the pandemic accelerate the decline? Will it mean, in effect, that there is no long term at all? Will the expiration of the Anglican Church be in 2030, less than a decade away?
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