Who are the big money-earners in Canadian Christianity?

Christian Organizations’ Gross Revenues by Denomination (July 24, 2023)

This analysis will include churches as well as other registered organizations claiming a specific Christian denomination.  First, lets move aside a large portion of these revenues due to being categorized as ‘Other’.  Around 39% of all Christian organizations (9,980) are in this category and they earned around 36% of all revenues.  See the article ‘Are you ashamed of your denomination?’ for more on this subject.

From the remaining entities, six well-established, traditional Christian denominations earned over four hundred million dollars each in 2020.  As many would expect, one stood head and shoulders above the rest.  The Roman Catholic Church had total revenues of approximately $1,265 million in Canada.  This is almost double of that which was earned by the next highest earner, namely Baptist churches at $680 million. The other four are: The Salvation Army ($536 million), the United Church ($480 million), Pentecostal churches ($478 million), and Anglican churches ($409 million).

It gets a bit more interesting when you calculate the earnings per registered charitable organization for each denomination.  The top five become: The Salvation Army ($1,824,243), the Seventh Day Adventists ($713,259), Mennonite / Brethren / Hutterite ($500,576), Pentecostal churches ($354,727), and the Roman Catholic Church ($350,983).

The predominance of Christian conservatism in this analysis likely surprises few in that the concept of tithing is, as a norm, emphasized more rigorously by such denominations.

The Salvation Army as top earner per entity may elicit some surprise.  It’s likely that many do not realize, and others have forgotten, that they are first and foremost a church.  However, they are known primarily for their substantial international philanthropy.  Few would fathom a guess at their specific beliefs, practices and observation of rites.  Why is that? 

The Salvation Army can also be an interesting case in the role of humanitarian outreach in attracting people to join a religion.  It is an organization held in high esteem by most people.  Yet it has so few officers and adherents in Canada (44,0001 ).  Obviously, it’s not just reputation and outreach activities that bring people into a church.  It seems that a more even balance of outreach and evangelizing may be what is needed to grow a church.

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1. The Salvation Army, https://salvationarmy.ca/about-us/history/