The Collapse of the Anglican Church of Canada

Living Church.org ^ | 8th August 2024 | David Goodhew

[Cronos]

New numbers for the Anglican Church of Canada (ACoC) are out, and they show that Canada is the first major province of the Anglican Communion to have collapsed. https://livingchurch.org/covenant/the-collapse-of-the-anglican-church-of-canada/#_ftn1

Here are the data for average Sunday attendance:

2001 162,000

2019 87,000

2022 65,000

These are truly remarkable numbers. A church already in steep decline saw that decline speed up during COVID. Attendance in 2022 was 40 percent of attendance in 2001. And between 2019 and 2022, the ACoC lost a quarter of its Sunday attendance.

The church is not only smaller, but is also much, much older. Here is the data for baptisms — and it is worth looking at a longer run of years to see the true extent of the fall:

1961 44,416

1981 23,334

2001 13,304

2019 4,784

2022 3,583

By 2022, the number of those ACoC baptized has fallen by 90 percent compared to the number it baptized in 1961. And the pace of decline has grown more rapid in recent years. Baptisms have fallen by nearly 75 percent since 2001. ACoC congregations now have very few children in them and very few people coming to faith in them. The collapse of baptism is an extinction-level event.

this is not a church “in decline” or “close to collapse.” This is what collapse looks like. Ecclesial collapse includes large falls in attendance and financial woes. But these are lagging indicators. The key metrics are the numbers of those being baptized and whether a denomination has a healthy age profile, rather than one in which the bulk of congregations are of a certain age. By these indicators, ACoC has already collapsed

[Cronos]

Canada is the Titanic of the Anglican Communion. Some years ago it hit the iceberg. Since then, it has listed violently in a progressive direction. Now it is sinking beneath the waves. The figures are deeply sad, but they do not lie. And Western Anglicans would do well to learn from Canada’s baleful example. Much of Western Anglicanism is heading in the same direction, unless it changes course.

[Cronos]

[PGR88]

So, who could have imagined that marxists and sexual deviants don’t form the basis for continuity and growth of a stable christian church?

[JJBookman]

...it’s another attempt to bifurcate the Church and kill off the orthodox shoot; it has been going on since Vatican II

[Raycpa]

Now compare stats on lives actually transformed by the gospel year by year. My guess is there may not be much difference.

[xoxox]

it was doomed by that acronym, if nothing else.

[Reverend Wright]

People left because of the ACC liberalism and heresy.

I am one of them.

[ebb tide]

It’s the schismatic Orthodox who bifurcated the Catholic Church.

The Anglicans are a different story.