United Churches in trouble or transition?
In 2014, Chatham’s 136-year-old Victoria Avenue United Church was demolished for a lack of funds to cover the nearly $1 million in necessary repairs.
In 2010, Rutherford’s United Church, just north of Dresden, closed after 70 years of serving its rural community.
The two are the more recent United Churches to close their doors in the Chatham-Kent area — a notion unheard of only a few decades ago. Boasting more than one million members in 1970, the United Church of Canada now has approximately 400,000 members.
As the church prepares to mark its 90th anniversary on June 10 — when Canada’s Congregational and some Methodist and Presbyterian churches came together to organize the nation’s largest Protestant church body — there are calls for revival and readjustment.
“The United Church, currently, is in retreat and survival mode,” Dr. Reginald Bibby, sociologist at the University of Lethbridge, writes in an email. “(They’re) trying to simply ‘keep on keeping on’.”
Bob Ripley was a former pastor at Victoria Avenue Church who says he began to question his own faith before retiring from his position. In 2014, Ripley wrote in his daily newspaper column that he changed his mind about Christianity and was turning away from the church for good.
“Where once I proclaimed the doctrines of Christianity with passion and sincerity, I am now convinced that religion, all religion, is man-made,” Ripley wrote in his column.
Ripley still pays close attention to the United Church’s situation. According to him, if the church wants to survive, a different route might be required — one, inevitably, with fewer churches.
“It will be difficult for organized religions to sustain themselves in 20, 30 years, due to the costs,” Ripley said. “We may see a return to house churches, but that’s on a much smaller scale. Churches are closing ... because they cannot be sustained.”
This is often true. According to Rev. Tom Hiscock at the First St. Andrews United Church in London, congregations often need to amalgamate, or else disappear entirely.
“About 20 years ago, I developed an ‘endangered species’ list,” Hiscock said. “Congregations that probably weren’t going to make it, you know — in and around the area. And almost all of those churches have amalgamated with someone else, or closed.”
It is a fiercely contested trend, but credible sources indicate that overall church attendance is declining across the nation, and not just within the United Church of Canada. In 2005, a Statistics Canada report was released on all religious attendance for every five years since 1985. Notable among its finding was a yearly drop-off in weekly attendance. In 1985, 30.3% of Canadians reported weekly attendance. Twenty years later, that number dipped to 21.2%.
“Drifting away can take different forms,” Ripley said. “There are those who stop going altogether, to only twice a month, twice a year. And then finally, some on Christmas Eve, for sentimental reasons.”
Bibby offers another cause for concern.
“Members are disproportionately old,” Bibby writes. “Among adults who are involved in the United Church, some 75 per cent are over the age of 55 … and just 10 per cent are under 35.”
This differs from Canadian Roman Catholics, wherein half are over 55 years of age, and 20% younger than 35.
That aside, many members of the United Church are bucking the trend. In Thursday's pre-conference meeting in London, Rev. Wanda Burse of the Rural United Pastoral Charge was happy to hear a positive message.
“We really have all ages at (St. Paul’s United Church, on Communication Road, just north of Highway 401),” Burse said. “Lots of older people, but a fair number of children every Sunday. The focus now is on millennials, and how they're of a different mindset.”
Some of the change to the United Church of Canada was sparked in 1988 when it changed its official position regarding homosexuality. The move prompted division within the national church, prompting outright anger within some of its congregations. Locally, a legal battle ensued when the Dover Centre Pastoral Charge — representing Dover Centre, Oldfield and Baldoon — tried to change their denomination. Instead, the United Church claimed the buildings and the churches were closed in 1990.
Elsewhere in Chatham-Kent, several congregational splits occurred, with new and independent congregations emerging in Chatham, Dresden and Ridgetown.
“I hope it becomes more vibrant,” Burse said of the United Church in Chatham-Kent. “I don't know where I'd ... which denomination I would want to go to. We actually try to tackle real issues in society. Sometimes, it seems, appears, like we're the first to do that.”
Still, Hiscock believes the United Church could swing back.
“I think the United Church is actually in a good place,” Hiscock said. “We are not fighting with science. We think science and religion can exist side by side. When I begin to look at the universe, and begin to see how big it is, I’m humbled. I need God.”
But with 90 turbulent years behind them, the United Church knows the next chapter will be defining. It may even be a question of survival.
In 2010, Rutherford’s United Church, just north of Dresden, closed after 70 years of serving its rural community.
The two are the more recent United Churches to close their doors in the Chatham-Kent area — a notion unheard of only a few decades ago. Boasting more than one million members in 1970, the United Church of Canada now has approximately 400,000 members.
As the church prepares to mark its 90th anniversary on June 10 — when Canada’s Congregational and some Methodist and Presbyterian churches came together to organize the nation’s largest Protestant church body — there are calls for revival and readjustment.
“The United Church, currently, is in retreat and survival mode,” Dr. Reginald Bibby, sociologist at the University of Lethbridge, writes in an email. “(They’re) trying to simply ‘keep on keeping on’.”
Bob Ripley was a former pastor at Victoria Avenue Church who says he began to question his own faith before retiring from his position. In 2014, Ripley wrote in his daily newspaper column that he changed his mind about Christianity and was turning away from the church for good.
“Where once I proclaimed the doctrines of Christianity with passion and sincerity, I am now convinced that religion, all religion, is man-made,” Ripley wrote in his column.
Ripley still pays close attention to the United Church’s situation. According to him, if the church wants to survive, a different route might be required — one, inevitably, with fewer churches.
“It will be difficult for organized religions to sustain themselves in 20, 30 years, due to the costs,” Ripley said. “We may see a return to house churches, but that’s on a much smaller scale. Churches are closing ... because they cannot be sustained.”
This is often true. According to Rev. Tom Hiscock at the First St. Andrews United Church in London, congregations often need to amalgamate, or else disappear entirely.
“About 20 years ago, I developed an ‘endangered species’ list,” Hiscock said. “Congregations that probably weren’t going to make it, you know — in and around the area. And almost all of those churches have amalgamated with someone else, or closed.”
It is a fiercely contested trend, but credible sources indicate that overall church attendance is declining across the nation, and not just within the United Church of Canada. In 2005, a Statistics Canada report was released on all religious attendance for every five years since 1985. Notable among its finding was a yearly drop-off in weekly attendance. In 1985, 30.3% of Canadians reported weekly attendance. Twenty years later, that number dipped to 21.2%.
“Drifting away can take different forms,” Ripley said. “There are those who stop going altogether, to only twice a month, twice a year. And then finally, some on Christmas Eve, for sentimental reasons.”
Bibby offers another cause for concern.
“Members are disproportionately old,” Bibby writes. “Among adults who are involved in the United Church, some 75 per cent are over the age of 55 … and just 10 per cent are under 35.”
This differs from Canadian Roman Catholics, wherein half are over 55 years of age, and 20% younger than 35.
That aside, many members of the United Church are bucking the trend. In Thursday's pre-conference meeting in London, Rev. Wanda Burse of the Rural United Pastoral Charge was happy to hear a positive message.
“We really have all ages at (St. Paul’s United Church, on Communication Road, just north of Highway 401),” Burse said. “Lots of older people, but a fair number of children every Sunday. The focus now is on millennials, and how they're of a different mindset.”
Some of the change to the United Church of Canada was sparked in 1988 when it changed its official position regarding homosexuality. The move prompted division within the national church, prompting outright anger within some of its congregations. Locally, a legal battle ensued when the Dover Centre Pastoral Charge — representing Dover Centre, Oldfield and Baldoon — tried to change their denomination. Instead, the United Church claimed the buildings and the churches were closed in 1990.
Elsewhere in Chatham-Kent, several congregational splits occurred, with new and independent congregations emerging in Chatham, Dresden and Ridgetown.
“I hope it becomes more vibrant,” Burse said of the United Church in Chatham-Kent. “I don't know where I'd ... which denomination I would want to go to. We actually try to tackle real issues in society. Sometimes, it seems, appears, like we're the first to do that.”
Still, Hiscock believes the United Church could swing back.
“I think the United Church is actually in a good place,” Hiscock said. “We are not fighting with science. We think science and religion can exist side by side. When I begin to look at the universe, and begin to see how big it is, I’m humbled. I need God.”
But with 90 turbulent years behind them, the United Church knows the next chapter will be defining. It may even be a question of survival.