What’s Ahead for the United Church?

 

 

 

Comments.    Considerations.     Questions.

  

                 by Kenneth Bagnell

   

      Decades ago a late and greatly gifted journalist — at times my casual friend, sometimes my prickly critic — said something I’ll remember forever: “Two things are uniquely Canadian: the Canoe and the United Church of Canada.”  Now years later, his words come back only as poignant. They lead me to remember my Cape Breton boyhood of the early 1950s, when I’d listen with my parents to the CBC’s 8 A.M. news to hear (always the first item) the name of the new Moderator of the United Church, described as “Canada’s largest Protestant Church.” That, as the worn cliche has it: “was then.”  In the 1960’s its official and exacting membership was 1 million, 62 thousand and 6 members. Now, the official figure, compiled at the opening of 2014, has severely dropped to 450,886. And falling. Indeed, though hurtful it really is truly severe. The UCC, as it’s now called internally, is contemplating major layoffs at headquarters. What happened? If you want the reason in one basic word it’s this: “secularism.” That, naturally, needs elaboration.

      The actual word secularism, first entered the public vocabulary in the mid-1800s, to convey the separation, if not outright rejection of all religion, especially those involved in public affairs or at least inclined toward that activity. To put the word “secularism”) professionally defined go to world’s major dictionary Webster’s. It reads: “Belonging to the world and its affairs as distinguished from the church and religion: civil, lay and temporal.” There are numerous and varying degrees of secularism’s approach and influence. In the modern world, the most aggressive is privately urging government to discourage public utterances of strong faith be they church, synagogue or mosque. In Canada, secularism is, by our nature and social values, a broad but subtle disposition encouraged by small associations of practicing agnostics and atheists. They are, as Canadians always are: mild and soft spoken, well within the law, yet quietly, in my experience, they hope for the worst for what they call “organized religion.” We ought not to be indifferent to this fact: be aware that the more aggressive hope as many of us as possible will join them as rejecting our faith, be they Christian, Jewish , Islamic or Buddhist.  (Unfortunately, one major denomination, out of its usual naïve goodwill, has invited them as “secularists” into “dialogue.”) A mistake. Christian scholars have revealed that atheists seeking dialogue are entirely self-centred, and bury the word “atheist” in favor of the less provocative “secularist.” They dialogue exclusively out of self-interest, thus exploiting the church.   

     What does this mean to our society?  For one thing if it picks up momentum, the first public cause to be diminished will be the needy at home and elsewhere. Yes, charitable causes. One recent example must suffice: the Syrian Refugee Crisis. As for the United Church its worrying decline did not reduce, even a little, its charitable character. It, and other faith groups, fulfilled the thesis of an article in The Globe & Mail, about a year ago which said this: “Churches, mosques, synagogues and temples are by far the biggest givers of charitable donations…. A person’s religious faith is among the best predictors of whether and how much they will give to charity.” True now and in the future. The Catholic Church, obviously the largest, donated $3.5 million. The United Church despite its radical membership decline, raised a million dollars; more is on the way.  An important point: it usually costs up to $50,000 a year to sponsor families. Various United Churches across Canada, have, in addition to finances, gone many extra miles to locate, then help furnish homes for the refugees.

     So, given all this social benefit to all, we ought to know why the memberships of our churches, so vital to our communities and country are facing this rapidly increasing decline. (The latest report, promptly and efficiently sent me by the national staff a few days ago, indicate that the current rate of decline (in 2013-2014) has pretty well stayed at what it was in the last yearly report, (2012-2013) hovering at not quite a 3 percent decline yearly. (Some years the rate has actually been higher.) 

     As I’ve mentioned the overall influence is the rising tides of secularism. In this context I would define “secularism” as indifference to faith, dismissal of worship and full rejection of any stewardship, by which I mean accepting  any responsibilities for the financial wellbeing of congregations Christian or Jewish. Yet despite this painful reality, there are congregations across Canada that face these challenges with confidence and even more: social and spiritual creativity. The congregation I know best and of which I am an active member (Eglinton-St. George’s in Toronto) has not just secularity trends to cope with, but also ministerial absence problems.  Despite this, ESG is to me one of the most creative and courageous congregations in a Canadian faith group. Its members have been very creative: some who have established a Sunday after wordship lecture series called  Compassionate Justice in which informed specialists, often criminologists, deal with reforming both law and prison treatment. Moreover women have organized another series on  wellbeing as we age, in which medical specialists, all highly expert, many of them from renowned Mount Sinai Hospital, speaking. Many of the subjects, with audiences going beyond the congregation, explore issues for the aging. There are many other and new and creative programs at what we call ESG, all in the face of today’s numerical decline of the church.

     There is one other aspect that deserves notice before we surrender to discouragement. I mean the role of the churches in the many issues outside organized religion in which church members generously support charitable causes. The causes are not faith-based but they are largely supported by men and women who are people of faith. I mean The Red Cross; UNICEF; The Plan International for Children in roughly fifty countries and of course hospital volunteering in virtually every town and city.  And there’s hardly any need to mention the Refugee Crisis. When I inquired recently, at its very helpful media relations people, the United Church alone, has committed to bring, as I understand it, quite a bit over a thousand families to Canada, settled each in livable quarters with contributed furnishings and helped them in many other ways .Other faith groups have done likewise. (By late February 25,000 Syrian refugees – probably more — had arrived in Canada.) This goodwill and compassion may do more than we realize not just for the refugees but for their sponsoring churches. Why?

     That aspect was raised by a United Church minister last Sunday when I visited his church, one I’d never been in: Fairlawn United in north Toronto. In his sermon, Rev. Christopher White, mentioned the possibility that the constructive goodwill and proven public value the churches have recently displayed nation-wide on refugees could lead to renewed confidence in the churches. It may well be, he suggested, that the positive contribution of the churches in this crisis will be an instructive example, thereby helping renew faith’s value in human welfare. In any case, we ought to stay hopeful always. One of history’s greatest poets, Robert Frost, knew that. He spoke of it in a brief but telling sentence: “I always entertain great hopes.” So should we.

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