United Church Attendance Dwindling

Great news.

As the United Church of Canada struggles to fill many of its pews, the denomination will delve into contentious political issues at its 41st General Council in Ottawa this week.

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However, the United Church of Canada also has to deal with a dramatic decline in membership: membership has dipped from more than a million in the mid-1960s to less than 500,000 now.

Retired United Church minister David Ewart estimates that by 2025 membership will drop to around 250,000.

“If the trend of the last 10 years does not change, then yes, indeed that would be the membership in 2025,” Ewart said.

Even more strikingly, Ewart estimates that if current trends hold, by 2025 the United Church will be attracting zero new followers.

Ewart attributes that to liberal theology.

“Because we’re so liberal … we have a hard time selling ourselves,” he said.

Ewart acknowledges the only firm doctrine of his church is that “there is no such thing as a final statement of doctrine.”

So, while the United Church calls people toward environmental activism, it doesn’t call for personal salvation through faith in Jesus Christ.

“It’s dropped off our agenda, I would say, and consequently membership declines,” he admits.

Ewart is right, that it is the UCC’s liberal theology that is killing it.

Once you teach people that it doesn’t matter what you believe about Christ and salvation, as long as you hold to liberal / progressive pieties on social issues, not only will you lose those who are religiously orthodox and more politically conservative / traditionalist (like myself, two decades ago), but you can’t even hold the liberals.  After all, why not just stay home and sleep in Sunday morning?  There’s no reason to attend.

I look forward to the UCC’s impending death as a denomination, since liberal mainline Protestant denominations are worse than useless; they’re downright evil in their theology and politics.  They only have themselves to blame for their decline and fall.  Good riddance, when it finally happens.

And as I’ve said, there’s an opportunity for conservative traditionalist denominations, in that, if they choose to take advantage of it.

‘Christian Cancer’: Gossip the Target of Latest United Church Resolution

Interesting.

Gossip, the bane of global Christendom, will be in the crosshairs of the United Church of Canada when delegates gather for their triennial summit in Ottawa next week.

The United Church — which will be dealing with controversial resolutions on “Israel/Palestine,” oil pipelines and Canadian mining activities in Central America, among many other things — should also “take a stand against the spreading of gossip in the same manner that it has taken a stand against gambling and other evils of society,” reads a resolution put forward by Manitoba’s Assiniboine Presbytery.

In addition to ripping apart families and destroying reputations, notes the two-page proposal, gossip “can cause people to switch churches or in some instances to stop attending church altogether.”

Bruce Faurschou, the executive secretary of the church’s Manitoba and Northwestern Ontario conference, described a “riveting and energized” discussion overtaking the Brandon, Man., meeting of the Presbytery when the proposal was first put forward. “I think what it was about was that almost everyone in the room has been a victim of gossip,” he said.

Along with family reunions, hair salons and other intimate gatherings of people, churches have a reputation for being uniquely susceptible to gossip. Some Christian bloggers have even taken to calling it the “Christian cancer.”

“[Gossip] has always been an issue in the church, it’s always been viewed as a bad thing and something to pay attention to,” said Rev. Ephraim Radner, an Episcopal priest and a professor of historical theology at Wycliffe College. “It’s one of the few things for which I’ve seen someone excommunicated,” he added.

The United Church does not practice excommunication, and the gossip resolution does not come with any disciplinary requirements. “I think because I’m a church bureaucrat when I first heard about the proposal I went ‘oh my goodness, how are we ever going to enforce that?’” said Mr. Faurschou. “But it’s an educational point.”

The Bible is quite specific on the issue of gossip, with numerous warnings against “idle words, “false reports” and “mischievous tongues.” The practice even gets a mention in the Ten Commandments (Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour).

Well, without discipline, their stand is meaningless.

Still, nice to see the UCC actually get one thing right, for a change.

Would that other churches – all other churches, esp. real ones as opposed to liberal, mainline, apostate ones – followed suit, and focused their attention on gossip, a sin some might think of as minor, but one with very real and potentially devastating consequences.

The Collapse of the Liberal Church

Margaret Wente on the once-great, now pathetic, United Church of Canada.

Two weeks from now, the United Church of Canada will assemble in Ottawa for its 41st General Council, where it will debate church policy and elect a new moderator. The top item on its agenda is a resolution calling for a boycott of products from Israeli settlements. Fortunately, nobody cares what the United Church thinks about Israeli settlements, or anything else for that matter, because the United Church doesn’t matter any more.

For many years, the United Church was a pillar of Canadian society. Its leaders were respected public figures. It was – and remains – the biggest Protestant denomination in a country that, outside Quebec, has been largely shaped by centuries of Protestant tradition.

But today, the church is literally dying. The average age of its members is 65. They believe in many things, but they do not necessarily believe in God. Some congregations proudly describe themselves as “post-theistic,” which is a good thing because, as one church elder said, it shows the church is not “stuck in the past.” Besides, who needs God when you’ve got Israel to kick around?

The United Church is not alone. All the secular liberal churches are collapsing. The Episcopalians – the American equivalent of the United Church – have lost a quarter of their membership in the past decade. They’re at their lowest point since the 1930s. Not coincidentally, they spent their recent general meeting affirming the right of the transgendered to become priests.

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Back in the 1960s, the liberal churches bet their future on becoming more open, more inclusive, more egalitarian and more progressive. They figured that was the way to reach out to a new generation of worshippers. It was a colossal flop.

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The United Church’s high-water mark was 1965, when membership reached nearly 1.1 million. Since then it has shrunk nearly 60 per cent. Congregations have shrunk too – but not the church’s infrastructure or the money needed to maintain it. Today, the church has too many buildings and too few people to pay for their upkeep.

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But something else began changing in the 1960s, too. The liberal churches decided that traditional notions of worship were out of date, even embarrassing. They preferred to emphasize intellect, rationality and understanding. “When I went to seminary, we never talked about prayer,” says Mr. Ewart. “I had an intellectual relationship with Jesus. But love Jesus? Not so much.”

As the United Church found common cause with auto workers, it became widely known as the NDP at prayer. Social justice was its gospel. Spiritual fulfilment would be achieved through boycotts and recycling. Instead of Youth for Christ, it has a group called Youth for Eco-Justice. Mardi Tindal, the current moderator, recently undertook a spiritual outreach tour across Canada to urge “the healing of soul, community and creation” by reducing our carbon footprint. Which raises the obvious question: If you really, really care about the environment, why not just join Greenpeace?

According to opinion polls, people’s overall belief in God hasn’t declined. What’s declined is people’s participation in religion. With so little spiritual nourishment to offer, it’s no wonder the liberal churches have collapsed.

I for one, don’t mourn for my old denomination any more than I do for any other liberal Protestant denominations; to hell with all of them.