Not Dead Yet: Is the Decline of the Canadian Church a Myth?
Comedy buffs are likely familiar with the “I’m Not Dead Yet” scene in the 1975 film Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The comedic premise is that a British peasant attempts to leave his “stone dead” father on a medieval body collector’s cart… despite the father’s proclamations that he is very much alive. The inability of the collector and peasant to acknowledge evident ‘proof of life’ reminds me of the common misconception that the Canadian Church is in dangerous decline. Our work at the Canadian Institute of Empirical Church Research (CIECR) – especially our investigation of charitable T3010 forms collected by the Canadian Revenue Agency (CRA) – has made us wonder about this narrative. To us it is increasingly clear that the Canadian church is, like the peasant’s father, “not dead yet,” and in some cases may even be “getting better.”
Big Picture: a flesh wound
In the decade before Covid, there was a net loss of 463 registered Christian churches[1] in Canada. As a raw number this might seem like a lot, but overall the Canadian Christian Church had only 2% fewer net congregations in 2019 (23,675) than they did in 2009 (24,138). This means that pre-Covid there were about the same number of churches in Canada, despite the much-cited 10% drop in Christian affiliation.
What about engagement in churches? Isn’t there less attendance, baptisms, volunteerism? We aren’t entirely sure about these numbers – though we are getting a better picture as denominations share their data – but we do know about their money. Specifically, we know how much people are giving churches (i.e. offerings and bequeathments), and we have good evidence that such gifts are a strong proxy for attendance and overall congregational engagement. Here’s the stats: From 2009-2019, total receipted giving grew from $3.7 billion to $4.3 billion:[2] a 13.4% increase. Now it could reasonably be argued that relative to the 19% inflation increase during this time this is effectively a 5.6% drop. Even so, this is hardly a sign of imminent demise of the Canadian Church as a whole, and as we drill down, we find major denominational traditions have very different trajectories.
Denominational breakdown: complicated trajectories[3]
While some strands of the Canadian Church are experiencing serious decline, for some it is slight, some are maintaining, and some are even seeing growth. To complicate matters, changes in the total number of churches are often not connected to changes in financial well-being. The attached chart provides a summary of the net change in the total number of churches and in their receipted offerings, according to their CRA classification.
A bit of context for the chart: the CRA has typically categorized Christian churches based on their understanding of larger overarching traditions in Canada.[4] It is worth noting that their catch-all “Other” category contains a wide diversity of churches. This includes both non-denomination congregations and new, non-Western denominations established in Canada by more recent immigrants. Despite their “othering” by CRA, this group represented 40% of all Christian churches by 2019.
Change in Net Churches and Receipted Giving (2010-2019) by CRA Category
(Canadian Institute for Empirical Church Research, 2024)
As you can see in this summary, the most concerning decline is taking place in three traditions. From 2009-2019, the Anglican Church, United Church, and Catholic Church lost about 1 out of every 7-8 congregations. However, while the United Church dropped nearly a quarter of its giving, the Anglicans and Catholics nearly broke even – though they did not match inflation. This makes us wonder if Anglicans and Catholics are partially consolidating smaller congregations rather than simply losing them. Presbyterians and Lutherans[5] lost 1 out of every 12-13 of their congregations; but the Presbyterians are a little ahead – before inflation – and the Lutherans had the second worst regression in giving. Of the three more evangelically conservative groups, Baptist and Salvation Army congregations had a small net loss of just under 1 out of 25 churches, and Pentecostals broke even. The change in giving between the three varied significantly over that decade. The Salvation Army struggled to match the 19% growth in inflation, while the Baptists and especially Pentecostals almost matched it.
Three groups experienced net growth. Anabaptists lost a dozen churches, but their giving grew by a third. Adventists added nearly a tenth of churches to their net but just exceeded inflation rates in their giving. “Other Christian” churches increased their net churches by a tenth and their revenue by more than a third. Given the size of this last group and its evident success, it may evidence fundamental realignment about which churches and denominations Christian will most support in the future.
In summary, (1) a third of the CRA registered church groups experienced meaningful decline in the pre-Covid decade (the United Church financial drops are serious), (2) a quarter saw small decline with Lutherans, Presbyterians, and Salvation Army falling worryingly behind inflation, and (3) more than two-fifths made modest gains, either in net churches, giving, or both.
There is of course an even more complicated story to tell. For instance, we have found much of the net site decline is happening in rural Canada (though not necessarily financially) and that immigration and population are perhaps less influential than might be imagined – and these are stories that CIECR will be discussing more in the future. For now, we can confidently say that the Canadian Church is far from dead… but like the old man in the sketch it is not exactly thriving. Like the Flourishing Congregations Institute, we remain committed to challenging not only myths that lead to despair but also incomplete truths that might lead to a tolerance for slow decline.
[1] While congregation (or church or parish, etc.) typically implies a single coherent group that meets regularly at a single site, CRA “churches” may include multi-site groups, four-point parishes, or other compositions that are united under a single programmatic and financial banner.
[2] Incidentally, based on these numbers, if the Canadian church was a business, it would just about make it into the top 100 based on annual revenue.
[3] For the Python nerds the alternative title is European or African Swallows?
[4] In 2012 they increased their categories from 12 to 15, which makes comparison by category challenging. Also note that this blog does not feature non-trinitarian categories like Jehovah Witnesses.
[5] CRA names this group of churches “Protestant” but practically it is almost completely composed of Lutherans churches.
Scott Mealey
Associate Director of the Canadian Institute for Empirical Church Research, Wycliffe College.
