Falling membership in the Anglican Church of Canada (ACC) was largely ignored for decades but, since Keith McKerracher's presentation to the House of Bishops last October, the issue has been unavoidable. The story was reported by the national press and became a hot topic in Anglican news sources and blogs.
Mr McKerracher presented much information on decline in the ACC, but it can usefully be summarized like this: In 1961, the ACC had 1.36 million members; in 2001, it had 642,000 members. In forty years, the number of Canadian Anglicans dropped by 53 percent.
Why has this happened? One possibility raised by several observers, most notably Michael Ingham, Bishop of New Westminster, connects decreased membership with the fertility trend of a particular ethnic group:
In Canada, declining membership may be related to declining birth rates in the white, Anglo-Saxon population - in the past, the bulk of Anglican membership.
I contend that Bp Ingham and others offering this explanation are mistaken. This idea seems to be based on a misunderstanding of how demographic trends manifest themselves in population numbers. A declining fertility rate means that population will be lower in the next generation–not immediately. It takes decades for lower fertility to affect the total number of people. It is only as the present generation dies off and fails to be replaced by a comparable number of newborns that population declines.
Thus, Canada has had declining fertility for decades, but the population continues to increase, even after immigration is taken into account. The number of births in Canada still exceeds the number of deaths, even though fertility has fallen well below replacement level.
Although exact figures are not available, as far as I know, I'm sure that the birth rate today among Anglo-Canadians is much lower than it was in the early 1960s. Yet the number of Canadians reporting English ethnic origin in the 2001 Census was much higher than in 1961.
This spreadsheet shows figures on population of Canada and number of Canadians reporting English ethnic origin from the national Censuses of 1961 and 2001, conducted by Statistics Canada. More detailed source information is given at the bottom of this post. (Note that the statistics on ethnic background cited here refer to England only.) The figures on ACC membership are those reported by Mr McKerracher for the same years.
In 1961, almost 4.2 million Canadians told the Census that their ethnic origin was English; in the same year, 1.36 million Canadians belonged to the ACC. In 2001, almost 6 million Canadians reported English ethnic origin; but only 642,000 belonged to the ACC. In percentage terms, ACC membership in 1961 equalled 32.4 percent of Canadians with English origin; by 2001, it had fallen to 10.7 percent. (Not all ACC members in either of those years were of English background, of course. I'm only comparing the two numbers to assess Bp Ingham's contention that the decline in ACC membership is connected with demographic trends among English-origin Canadians.)
This analysis shows that the drop in ACC membership is not attributable to a decreasing birth rate among Anglo-Canadians. The age structure of English-origin Canadians is getting older, as is that of the entire population of Canada, but their overall numbers continue to grow. What is happening, it seems to me, is that, as elderly Anglicans of English background depart this life, they have not been replaced by younger Anglicans. The ACC has failed to attract the children and grandchildren of older Anglicans. Given that many of these potential younger Anglicans were, in all probability, baptised in the ACC, one might say they have voted with their feet: they walked away from the Anglican Church of Canada. That scenario would also account for the fact that over 2 million Canadians identify themselves as Anglican to the Census. As infants, they were baptised Anglican and may have attended for several years, but as adults they have had little or no contact with the church.
This analysis, of course, completely overlooks the fact that the Gospel is intended for all people irrespective of ethnic background. The Christian church in general, and the Anglican Church in particular, is thriving in many parts of Africa and Asia. Even here at home, the implication that the ACC should focus on those of English origin is contradicted by the ethnic diversity in the church.
I look around the congregation where I worship, and I see people from a wide variety of backgrounds. Most have English ancestors, true; but we also have First Nations people as well as some of German descent or from parts of Asia. Also, there are many with ancestors from Scotland and/or Ireland who do not fit into the Anglo-Canadian profile mentioned by Bp Ingham. (My own forebears came from Scotland.)
Bp Ingham is certainly correct that demographic change presents major challenges for the ACC. So, what is the ACC going to do about this? Mr McKerracher was nonplussed by the efforts announced thus far.
If The Framework, and Letting Down the Nets, the stewardship and gift planning initiative, is going to be the church’s total response to its decline in membership, I would be inclined to bring forward my somewhat tongue-in-cheek estimate of the date by which the church will have to close its doors by a couple of decades.
. . .
I will continue refusing to believe that nothing can be done to turn membership in our church around until there has been a robust agenda addressed solely to the issue. I also refuse to believe that the church’s fortunes will turn around on their own, “because they always have,” which seems to be a view of many.
This Canadian Anglican, for one, hopes that the church will soon develop a “robust agenda” and initiate a concerted effort to address the challenges of demographic change and, especially, precipitous membership decline. This seems to be one problem that the Episcopal Church in the USA is taking more seriously than is the Anglican Church of Canada.
Bp Ingham link via Midwest Conservative Journal.
Living Church link via American Anglican Council BlogSite.
Sources of Census statistics:
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