The Death of the Churches

An Anglican priest commented to me yesterday that the Anglican Church in Canada, on present trends, will disappear in fifteen years, by 2040. There are only grey heads in the pews now, and they are dying off.

My friend Xerxes, who is United Church, estimates 2035-2040 for their extinction date.

These are the two largest Protestant denominations in Canada.

The decline has been going on since about 1960; but apparently there was a big drop with COVID. Sources also blame the residential schools scandal, or, as I would call it, the residential schools hoax.

The Catholic Church is not doing that much better. Extinction not in sight, but affiliation and attendance is definitely declining, mostly in Quebec. I cannot find figures for Canada outside Quebec, but for the country as a whole, in ten years from 2011 to 2021, the Catholic population declined from 12.7 million (38.7% of the population) to 10.8 million (29.9%).

One should, perhaps, not worry. “Let go and let God”; He will manage affairs. On the other hand, one thinks of Sodom and Gomorrah. We cannot assume He loves Canada unconditionally. It does not help that we have embraced child sacrifice and various sexual perversions, the stated reasons that he obliterated Canaan and the cities of the plain.

It is true that more evangelical denominations, collectively, have shown “stability or slight growth.” But this does not make up for the mainstream decline.

On the brighter side, these figures may be unnecessarily alarmist. They seem to be based on census figures, so that the last year for which figures are available is 2021-- the height of the Covid pandemic. If Covid was responsible for a large drop in numbers, as is said, and certainly put people out of the habit of going to church, it seems possible there has been some recovery since, or will be over time, which will not show up in these figures until 2031.

The culture may also have been turning since 2021. It has politically, after all, with the resurrection of MAGA and the striking failure since of wokery in advertising, in the media, and in Hollywood.

There are signs of revival since 2021, if largely anecdotal, among Catholics and evangelicals.  Record numbers of adult baptisms, celebrities publicly converting, reports of miracles, and of descents of the spirit at mass prayer meetings.

When I turn my head at my local Catholic church, most of the heads are not grey. There are many children, young families. 

It is also perhaps natural that mainstream Protestantism is dying. It is perhaps not so much that the people have left the churches; it is more that the churches have left the church and abandoned the people. I went to grad school with Protestant ministers; the faculty was almost entirely Protestant ministers. They tended to scorn traditional belief; it was uncool among them to profess faith in anything. The people on the pew were ignorant peons, clinging to their superstitions. Anglicanism and the United Church preach no consistent doctrine, seeking only to reflect back to the congregation whatever they think they want to hear. Religion bores them, or frightens them; they have pretty much shifted their interests to politics and vaguely “doing good” for the poor or otherwise supposedly disadvantaged. 

This makes them redundant: why belong to the United Church instead of the local NDP constituency organization, or the local Red Cross or soup kitchen? Indeed, aren’t you just wasting time and effort by comparison?

The remaining reason to join a church, surely, is to hang out with people you know and like; as a social club. This gives little reason for anyone new to join the organization, or this organization instead of another; when the present cadre dies off, that will be the end of it. 

And as a social group, a weekly Sunday meeting, these churches face new competition for everyone’s free time and interest: endless streaming and reading on the internet, social media, video games, online conferencing, AI companions. All voluntary organizations, from the Masons to the St. Andrews Society to the bowling league, are bleeding members. There is too much else to do.

The mainstream Protestants, I think, aew doomed. Yet there is a path for Catholicism, and a crying need, if Pope Leo and the hierarchy have the wisdom, let alone the piety, to seize the times. They need to emphasize what makes going to mass most different from an ordinary day, a Catholic life most different from just living your life. That is, they need to give a solid reason to spend your time in Church instead of somewhere else. The very opposite of the direction things have been going since Vatican II. 

Catholicism has a secret weapon here: the eucharist. It requires your physical presence. It cannot be replaced by anything online. It significance and its infinite value should be emphasized by surrounding it with as much distinctive ritual as possible: more bells and smells, more organ music and choir, more reverence in its handling, and yes, a return of the option of a Latin mass. 

I am encouraged to see that my local cathedral, last Sunday, started reserving the front row of pews and kneelers for those wishing to receive communion on the tongue. This is, in effect, a return to the communion rail. I asked after the mass where this innovation came from. The celebrant said it was from the bishop; he did not know if it came from higher up.

Perhaps the Holy Spirit.

At the same time, the evangelical groups also demand physical presence for their celebrations, with the electric presence of the Spirit and laying on of hands. Catholicism shares this in the charismatic movement, and this too should be leaned into.

All this is desperately needed, by the many souls abandoned by their own churches, and to restore Canada to God’s grace.