by Sean Frankling, Anglican Journal
Published May 31, 2024
"As the Anglican Church of Canada sets the church up for a renewed focus on evangelism with a discipleship and evangelism task force, it faces a changing society—one in which familiarity with Christianity is waning. More and more Canadians... have never encountered church before. If the church wants to reach out to Canadians today, several specialists in evangelism tell the Anglican Journal, it will need to consider how to introduce the faith to these people.
"Many clergy and academics... say they are encountering more questions and less certainty from parishioners and students than before about Bible content, the diversity of denominations and theology. There’s also census data that shows shifting religious demographics in Canada: the portion of the population reporting no religious affiliation doubled from 16.5 per cent in 2001 to 34.6 per cent in 2021. ...Religiously unaffiliated parents are less likely to teach their children about religion or attend religious services. As a result, there is reason to suspect Canada’s younger generations have a greater proportion of members with less exposure to religion in general and church in particular than their parents.
"'If Christians don’t think beyond attendance numbers,' [says Rev. David Deane, a Roman Catholic associate professor of theology at the multidenominational Atlantic School of Theology], 'we don’t share the good news that despite the shittiness of the world, hope is possible. Despite the way things are, love is real. Despite the way things are, people have a purpose. These are things that can be shared no matter where we are. But it does involve a little bit shaking the tyranny of seeing everything as focused on a Sunday morning.'"