Author Archives: David

Anglican Church of Canada membership falling at 10% per year

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In 2019, the church’s statistics and research officer, Canon Neil Elliot, predicted that the Anglican Church of Canada would cease to exist to exist in 2040. The prediction was based on a yearly attrition of 2.5%. Members are now leaving at the rate of 10% per year, making the church’s demise in 2040 look optimistic.

The reasons we are given for the accelerated decline are COVID – of course – and an overall de-Christianising of Canada. These are both legitimate points.

Notably absent from the diagnosis of the malaise is any hint of self-refection on the possibility that the Anglican church may have taken a wrong turn at some point. That its attempts at being more worldly than the world, gayer than Peter Tatchell, more trans than Caitlyn Jenner and altogether queerer than TNT Men cavorting at the Toronto Pride Parade, just isn’t working.

The whole thing is worth a read at The Journal:

The Anglican Church of Canada is shrinking faster than it was in the years before a much-discussed 2019 report, recently collected data suggest.

According to the church’s statistics and research officer, Canon Neil Elliot, metrics of church size including electoral rolls and distinct identifiable donation sources show membership dropping by about 10 per cent nationwide during 2020, and prelimary data suggest a similar decrease in 2021.

The findings follow Elliot’s 2019 extrapolation, presented to the Council of General Synod (CoGS) that year, which projected that if the church’s rate of membership loss continued there would be no one left by the year 2040. But the rate of decline during the pandemic years is considerably higher than the membership loss of around 2.5 per cent per year the church experienced in the years leading up to COVID-19, Elliot says. The precise reasons for this accelerated decline are unclear, he adds.

Some church leaders, however, say there’s more to the church than the number of its members—and numeric decline is no reason for despair.

“The church absolutely will be smaller, we absolutely know that … I think it’s too simplistic to simply say we’re dying. I think we’re going through an age of transformation,” says Peter Misiaszek, director of stewardship for the diocese of Toronto. “And that age of transformation will mean fewer parishes, but hopefully healthier parishes.”

Elliot adds that it’s important not to blame the shrinking of the church on anything its clergy or parishioners are doing—or failing to do. Rather, he describes the phenomenon as part of a “spiritual climate change,” which is affecting not just the Anglican church, but religious communities across North America and Europe, too.

A climate change Advent

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The two most important events in human history are God’s arrival on earth in human form as a baby at Christmas and his bodily resurrection at Easter.

During Advent, we await an event whose transcendent significance changes every life it truly touches, not just for a lifetime, but for eternity.

How can one possibly reduce this to the mundane, the humdrum, the here-and now? Impossible for most, I should think. But not for an Anglican bishop. Here we have the bishop of Eastern Newfoundland and Labrador, Sam Rose (he/him) tagging Advent with Climate Change.

He is quoting bishop Nicholas Holtam (sadly lacking pronouns) who, we can only assume, also spends his time diligently reducing Christianity to temporal trifles. He warns anyone willing to listen (almost no one): “We can run headlong into disaster”. And who better to know than Anglican bishops who have had so much experience running their own churches headlong into disaster?

Diocese of Niagara church attendance down by 35-50%, revenue down 23%

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The reduction in church attendance was announced by Bishop Susan Bell at the recent Diocese of Niagara synod. She noted that she could “feel the anxiety in the room”.

Read it all here:

For instance: and let me clear—what follows is not to deny our recent experience, but it does put it in necessary context. We are all concerned about attendance: through the necessary closure period, we faced some attrition—through death, movement, and attenuation of relationship. All unfortunate; mostly all unavoidable. But fact, nonetheless. Anecdotally, where we stand mid-pandemic, is that our people have returned at a rate of 50-65% generally. I know there are places where the figure is lower or higher but this seems to be the average, if slow, trend.

Even worse:

We have experienced some worrying attrition in our stewardship as well. Our diocesan revenue is forecast to be down about 23% in 2023

Never fear, the diocese has a Mission Action Plan, the latest in a long line of meaningless cliché-ridden banalities designed to bore parishioners to the point where they open their wallets to make it stop.

Keeping abreast of other news

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It takes a lot for Oakville to make the headlines in international news.

And in September 2022 there was, indeed, a lot on display in a local high school. A transgender teacher, who seems to want to give a new slant to the “T” in transgender, appeared on Snapchat wearing giant prosthetic breasts.

Unsurprisingly, many parents were not happy about this: there were protests, demands that the teacher be fired, and claims the teacher is sexualizing children.

The Halton School Board has been deflecting all demands that they do something about this – enforce a dress code, for example. Now, finally, the Board has come up with an answer: they can’t do anything because it would violate Canada’s Human Rights Code, it would be discriminatory and non-inclusive. And the board might get sued.

Is this all an elaborate hoax, as some think? An ingenious advertisement promoting home-schooling? Or a sign that our civilisation is flushing itself down the toilet with ever increasing vigour and enthusiasm?

Read it all here:

Many challenges face employers wanting to implement staff dress codes and chances are, should they try, the policy would fail.

That was the bottom line as Sari Taha, the Halton District School Board’s superintendent of human resources, described for trustees the legal complexities in instituting a staff dress code, at the Nov. 9 meeting of the board.

Motivating trustees to seek clarification on such a policy was the global uproar and parental outrage that followed an Oakville transgender high school teacher’s overtly sexual classroom attire. One of the strongest complaints from the community was the board’s lack of a dress code for staff.

There are major challenges the board would face in instituting a dress code: the dress code must be compliant with the Human Rights Code; and dress codes adversely impact women and other groups disproportionately, often leading to discrimination claims and rendering policies unenforceable, he said.

Canadian Primate claims Nigeria, Uganda and Rwanda have separated from the Anglican Communion

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Archbishop Linda Nicholls stated in an email to the Anglican Journal that provinces that did not attend the latest Lambeth conference have “separated from the Anglican Communion”.

Does she mean by this that Anglicans in Nigeria, Uganda and Rwanda are fake Anglicans, pale imitations of the genuine article?

When Canadian Anglicans left the Anglican Church of Canada for the Southern Cone and later formed ANiC, this was the claim explicitly made by ACoC clergy, so it is not unreasonable to conclude that Nicholls it is implying this. The fact that the provinces that did not attend Lambeth have full, vibrant churches while liberal western Anglicanism is little more than a twitching corpse whose nervous system is still functioning but has disconnected from any resemblance of sentience does not bother the archbishop. One almost gets the impression she is glad to see the back of these troublesome conservative provinces.

The other interpretation is that liberal western Anglicanism “separated from the Anglican Communion” some years ago by abandoning orthodox Christianity. Not only is it an Anglican fake, but a Christian fake.

From here:

The Anglican churches in Nigeria, Uganda and Rwanda have effectively separated from the Anglican Communion by refusing to participate in the Lambeth Conference, says Archbishop Linda Nicholls, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada.

Like many other Canadian bishops, however, Nicholls also says she left this summer’s meeting in Lambeth, U.K. with a prevailing sense of hope for the future of the Communion.

About 650 bishops attended this summer’s Lambeth Conference, a gathering of Anglican bishops from around the world which last met in 2008. Much media coverage of the conference focused on disagreement over same-sex marriage, particularly after primates of Nigeria, Rwanda and Uganda refused to attend in protest at the invitation of bishops in same-sex unions. The same three provinces had already boycotted the 2008 gathering—attending a meeting of conservative bishops, the Global Anglican Futures Conference, in Jerusalem instead—as well as the meeting of Anglican Communion primates in March 2022.

Reached via email, Nicholls said the Lambeth boycott is a sign those provinces have left the global grouping of Anglican churches.

“Some have already indicated by their non-participation that they have separated from the Anglican Communion,” she said, confirming she meant the provinces of Nigeria, Rwanda and Uganda. “Others continue to participate despite disagreement and I see that continuing into the future.”

Anglicans in heat

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What happens when a church ceases to believe in the transcendent, in heaven, in hell, when its god shrinks to manageable dimensions, when the hereafter is less important than the here-and-now?

It becomes obsessed – in those rare moments when it isn’t exploring the nether regions of homoerotic fantasies – with climate change.

Saving souls from overheating now is more important than in eternity.

As the headline trumpets: “Climate change tops agenda at WCC Assembly, say Canadian delegates”.

From the Journal:

Climate change tops agenda at WCC Assembly, say Canadian delegates

The top concern of this year’s World Council of Churches (WCC) Assembly was unquestionably climate change, says Canon Scott Sharman, the Anglican Church of Canada’s animator for ecumenical and interfaith relations.

The assembly also released statements on issues of reconciliation and unity, the war between Russia and Ukraine and the conflict between Israel and Palestine. But Sharman says the amount of discussion on climate change; the way it cropped up throughout plenary sessions on other topics, like racism and Indigenous issues; and even a march for environmental justice organized by delegates to the assembly all served to stress one central theme. In the words of a statement the WCC delegates released on the meeting’s last day, “We are running out of time. This Assembly is the last chance we have to act together to prevent the planet from becoming uninhabitable. In particular, no further delay is possible if we are to have any chance of staying within the safer limit of +1.5°C global warming and of avoiding vastly more catastrophic climate change.”

With the WCC only meeting every eight years, says Sharman, he and other attendees felt a sense of urgency to come together on an effective response.

Beatitudes for National Coming Out Day

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Not only do we have a National Coming Out Day, but it has its own beatitudes.

I was unaware of both until the Diocese of Huron – always a reliable source for the most delusional fantasies cherished by the looniest fringes that lurk on the outskirts of what is left of our civilisation – advertised the fact:


For those of you for whom the original Sermon on the Mount is just not out enough, here are the rest of them:

October 20th is International Pronouns Day

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I don’t know about you, but I’ve been looking forward to celebrating this all year. Casting such trivia as chromosomes into the dustbin of useless outdated science, there’s no better icebreaker at an Alpha meeting than to say – as I am now a fully integrated Canadian – “hi, my name’s Cuthbert and I use ey/em pronouns, eh”. It’ll be a riot.

The Diocese of Huron has this helpful guide on when a they is a ney and a him is a nem (page 8):

October 20 is International Pronouns Day. This day seeks to make respecting, sharing, and educating about personal pronouns commonplace. Referring to people by the pronouns they determine for themselves is basic to human dignity – it is about respecting and honouring people for who they are – in fullness. It is about breaking down the gender binary, stereotypes, and assumptions – and hearing people for who they are and the language that feels right for them. It is about celebrating the diversity of God as emulated through God’s diverse children.

The most common pronouns are she/her and he/him. Additionally, the most common gender neutral pronoun is they/them – this has been used as a singular pronoun since as far back as 1375 – so it is certainly not new! For example, rather than saying: “He and I went to the store”, you would say: “They and I went to the store”. It also helps avoid the awkwardness of saying “I can’t wait to meet him or her!” – instead, you can simply say: “I can’t wait to meet them!” There are many pronouns beyond she/her, he/him, and they/them – this includes mixed pronouns (when people use multiple different sets of pronouns, such as “she/her and they/them”), and neopronouns (other sets of gender-neutral pronouns, such as ney/nem, ze/zi, ey/em, etc).

Anglican Church of Canada does not oppose euthanasia

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It is legal for a doctor to euthanise a person in Canada. Not just someone whose death is imminent, but also a person with a mental disorder who has decided – or been persuaded – that is it better to die than live. The ACoC is going along with this because it is not interested in “opposing the law”. In the Anglican Church of Canada, we call this being prophetic.

And, after all, abortion up to and during birth, prostitution and smoking marijuana are also all legal and the Anglican Church of Canada doesn’t oppose them either. So at least its consistent. Consistently cowardly, spiritually bankrupt and in thrall to the zeitgeist.

From here:

The Anglican Church of Canada should continue to focus on providing pastoral care to people who are considering medical assistance in dying (MAID), not on opposing the law, says Archbishop Linda Nicholls, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada.

Bill C-7, passed in March 2021, opened up the option for patients whose deaths are not imminent—and, as of next March, those suffering only from mental disorders—to seek MAID, attracting some controversy. As the Journal reported in the first part of this series, some advocates for the rights of people with disabilities have criticized it on the grounds that it offers death as a replacement for adequate care. (See “Justice and the new assisted death”) And at least two authors of In Sure and Certain Hope, a 2016 document offered as a resource for discussions around MAID, believe the bill raises questions which may require a new response from the church.

But any new response by the church is unlikely to involve taking a public stance on the law, Nicholls says.

“It’s been clear for some time that the mood in Canada [is] not … to consider what churches have to say about this,” she says. “It’s been seen as imposing Christian values—which I think is a little unfair, as I don’t think all of the arguments have been based on a faith perspective.” Meanwhile, the shrinking staff of the church’s national office has limited capacity to take on a question of this size, she adds, especially as the law, in her view, is a “fait accompli.”

A Lambeth group LBGTQ photo

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You can spot Canada’s very own Bishop Kevin Robertson, who is married to another bloke, on the far right.

I admit, they do make a charming group, but what continues to puzzle me is sorting out which is a G, a B or a Q – I think I have the Ls.

And that’s just the beginning of the problem, because we also have 2, S, 2s, P, A, I, and + to deal with. Although I suppose + must include the rest of us, which only makes it even more confusing since the group photo should really have been of all the bishops.

If you think that’s mixed up, it’s about to get worse. Lesbians have gone to war with transgenders, so they will have to be split up in the next Lambeth group photo, or they’ll be hitting each other with their handbags.