DEATH BY A THOUSAND CUTS - ANGLICAN CHURCH OF CANADA

COMMENTARY

By David W. Virtue, DD

www.virtueonline.org

May 5, 2025

The Anglican Church in Canada is in deep trouble. Its very future is at stake. By any reckoning it is on life support.

A panel of Anglican experts recently outlined six paths to ‘big change’ in church. A commission wrote a 48-page document offering six pathways along which the church could organize work to update and strip down its governance to improve efficiency, clarity and inclusion.

The church’s acting primate urged Anglicans to join the work of transformation. The church is approaching a time of important decisions—one which Anglicans can and should embrace with hope, Archbishop Anne Germond, acting primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, told Council of General Synod (CoGS). Her comments came as a commission established by former primate Archbishop Linda Nicholls recommended major cuts to the size of the church’s organizational committees and governing bodies.

The commission’s recommendations are aimed at adapting the church to the needs of a smaller membership and a 21st-century social and political landscape, said the report. However, the lay representative of the ecclesiastical province of the Northern Lights, described it as a “chainsaw approach” to rapid cuts.

All this is code for ‘we don’t have enough money coming in to keep the bureaucracy going and the lights.’ Here are the data for average Sunday attendance.

In 2001 it was 162,000, by 2019 it was 87,000, by 2022 it was 65,000. Would anyone be surprised if today, in 2025, it was under 50,000! How could a church be sinking this rapidly last beyond 2040!

These are truly remarkable numbers. A church already in steep decline saw that decline speed up during COVID. Attendance in 2022 was 40 percent of attendance in 2001. And between 2019 and 2022, the ACoC lost a quarter of its Sunday attendance.

As The Living Church noted, this is not a church “in decline” or “close to collapse.” This is what collapse looks like. All the trends show that this decline will continue.

Decline always begins in the pulpit. An uncertain sound brings uncertain results. It always ends in unbelief and ultimately flight. If the church does not have a coherent message because it doesn’t believe its own beliefs, why in heaven’s name would anybody want to attend. If the Bible is of secondary importance to the culture wars, then the jig is up. Best to close the doors.

The average age of a Canadian Anglican is in the high 60s with boomers being the biggest givers. They will be gone in another decade or so.

The two options are, (1) waiting around to die, or (2) pulling the plug now, selling off the assets for whatever you can get, putting it into the pension plan while you can, and hope that the proceeds continue long enough before dementia sets in and you don’t know the difference.

There are exact parallels with its sister church, The Episcopal Church; the big difference is that TEC still has billions of dollars it can throw at what it euphemistically calls mission, in the hope it will stay in business a little longer. But mission isn’t in accord with Mt. 28, that is, going into all the world to preach the gospel. For the ACoC and TEC it is going into all the world and preaching inclusion of sexual minorities, justice (with any aggrieved group); throwing reparation money at ancient sins, and making sure that trans folk who want a little snip and tuck of vital organs, get it done with the church’s support.

With the sale of cathedrals and churches becoming more common, a new form of “justice” is providing housing for the marginalized and immigrant. That makes vestries feel a lot better about themselves if the money goes to a good cause. God forbid that the priest and laity should actually “gossip the gospel”, definitely not inclusive enough. Such a narrow-minded view of things would have the late pope pooping his papal underwear.

But people make the church, not money, and there are no new generations pouring into either Canadian or Episcopal churches to keep the red doors open. Dioceses are beginning to merge as smaller ones shrink and cannot afford either a headquarters or a full-time bishop. It costs a lot to keep a miter on a bishop’s head.

“This is not just tweaks, this is big change,” commission chair Archdeacon Monique Stone told CoGS. At least she had the honesty to admit it.

The Anglican Church of Canada will not be around for your grandchildren. Somebody will leave a plaque under a large Maple tree inscribed with the words; “The last Anglican Church is buried here.”  RIP.

END