Which denominations are not holding up their end of the load?

An Examination of Christian Religious Decline in Canada by Denomination (June 1, 2023)

In the preceding article I outlined the extent of decline in the Canadian church.  There is a good chance that many people will have their own thoughts as to who the ‘culprits’ are.  This is not helpful, in my opinion.  But ignoring the facts is not of much use either.

In a series of Canadian Gallop and Bibby polls1, Roman Catholic weekly church attendance dropped from 83% in 1952, to 41% in 1980, and then to 29% in 2005.  Protestant church weekly attendance went from 38% in 1957, to 24% in 1980, and then rebounded a bit to 29% in 2005.  As I noted earlier, weekly attendance may not be a suitable indicator of religiousness when used alone, but it should be useful for examining trends.

Whereas both denominational groupings showed troubling downward trends, Roman Catholic attendance dropped by 65% while Protestant attendance dropped by a lesser degree: 24%.  A big loss for the Roman Catholic Church in Canada was due to the Quiet Revolution, spanning 1960 to 1966, which Wikipedia describes as “. . . a period of intense socio-political and socio-cultural change in French Canada which started in Quebec after the election of 1960, characterized by the effective secularization of government, the creation of a state-run welfare state (état-providence), as well as realignment of politics into federalist and sovereigntist (or separatist) factions ...”2  Roman Catholic Church weekly attendance in Quebec dropped from 88% to 14% during the 48 year span of 1957 to 20053.

The trend in Protestant denomination decline can also be subdivided into Mainline Protestant and Conservative Protestant churches.  Mainline church weekly attendance dropped from 35% to 20%, representing a 43% decline.  However, the overall Protestant numbers were somewhat buoyed by Conservative Protestant attendance figures which actually rose during this period; 51% to 64% (a 25% increase)3.

Some interesting figures come from a 2015 Canadian poll (Bibby)4 which looked at the group which claims to embrace religion, the group which rejects it, and those somewhere in between.  The poll asked respondents, regardless of where they see themselves in these three categories, to indicate which denomination they identify with.  The poll found that of those who identify with a Conservative Protestant denomination, 70% claim to embrace religion.  For mainline Protestant denominations, the figure was 31%.  For those who identify with the Roman Catholic church outside of Quebec, 42% say they embrace religion, while only 27% in Quebec say the same.

So many factors are in play behind these figures.  And the factors likely differ, a bit or a lot, from one denominational faith to another.  Also, there is room to disagree about which grouping a Protestant church belongs to.  In the case of the Bibby polls, mainline churches include United, Anglican, Lutheran and Presbyterian.  Conservative (sometimes called Evangelical) churches include Baptist, Pentecostal and ‘other,’  

Take what you can from these figures, and perhaps let it be a start for deeper reflection.

____________________

1. Bibby, Reginald W, Resilient Gods: being pro-religious, low religious or no religious in Canada,

    UBC Press, 2017, page 33

2. Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quiet_Revolution

3. Bibby, page 33

4. Bibby, page 72