Are you ashamed of your denomination?

Churches and Associations that do not Include their Denomination in their Name (July 24, 2023)

Among Protestant churches, there have been instances where congregations have removed their denomination from their name.  It usually will be unclear whether this involved a change to its registered name or just in its general usage, such as website, signage and correspondence.  However, anecdotal observations like these are not of much use in examining any subject.

Since we have the data, let’s see if there is some empirical evidence on this matter.  In examining a list of all Canadian charities that were registered with the Canada Revenue Agency in 2020, 25,823 used Code 30 to indicate that they exist for the purposes of advancing Christianity.  These entities also entered sub-codes to indicate their denomination.

Not all of these entities are churches.  Many are religious associations such as synods, dioceses and mission organizations.  I found that 12,214 (47%) of all Code 30 entities do not have the word ‘church’ in their registered name.

If you look at the more established Protestant denominations to see how many organizations do not use their denomination name in their registered name, you will find the following: 1,116 Anglican, 213 Baptist, 789 Pentecostal, 97 Presbyterian, and 559 United; all totalling to 1,672; which represents a third of all these registered organizations.  If you narrow the analysis to just include entities with the word ‘church’ in their name, you come up with: 550 Anglican, 148 Baptist, 350 Pentecostal, 52 Presbyterian, and 31 United; totalling to 1,131; which represents 20% of all these churches.

There likely is not much good data on the reasons for these occurrences.  Personally, I wonder, if it’s partly due to a general movement in organized religion toward more liberal outlooks and practices.  Denomination names can contain a lot of baggage related to their historic beliefs and behaviours.  Getting more people in the door may mean ditching, or at least hiding, this baggage. 

Further, the initiation and retention of young people is critical to religion’s existence, and a lot of studies have shown that, on average, younger people have more liberal outlooks.  They are not always looking to join their parent’s church; at least one that ‘sounds’ like it.

If the so-called denominational baggage is truly a significant concern, then there should be a lot of churches no longer affiliating themselves with a traditional denomination.  These could be newly formed ones or breakaways from mainstream churches.

We have numbers on this subject as well.  Of the 25,823 Christian organizations listed, 9,980 (39%) were classified as sub-code 99 ‘Other’.  I looked through these entities for some established churches that did not rate their own sub-code, such as Methodist, Nazarene, Orthodox and Wesleyan.  These totalled to 1,116, which is only 11% of those listed as ‘Other’.  So, one take-away from this analysis is that the leading Christian denomination in Canada is, by far, ‘Other’.  This is bad news for the future of the mainstream denominations.