Twilight of the Golden Calf: A Denouement of the Dominant
Canadian society since its inception placed faith-based organizations or religious institutions in a privileged or special pedestal within the society, where the emphasis existed on the dominant Christian religion and the domineering denomination of Roman Catholicism followed by Protestantism. If you’re looking to question this dominant position and fundamental tenets in a critical manner, then you should be ready for predictable backlash and consequences. Of those questions over time, including scientific, they have been asked of the Christian faith in Canada, which, slowly and in increments — generation by generation, attenuates the hold of Christianity on the culture.
Pew Research on July 27, 2013 wrote “Canada’s Changing Religious Landscape” explaining a known and ongoing, and continuing, trend of the decline of religion in Canada. People question, quietly; people leave churches; people lose friends and family, and community; people become more open in freethought and naturalistic perspectives on the world. The Globe and Mail described this, rather dramatically, as a “battle for Christianity in Canada,” as if reading Professor Kenneth Miller’s — qualifier: someone who I really like — argument for the ‘battle for America’s soul.’
Nonetheless, the numbers tell the tale of a decline rather than an incline of the numbers of believers in Canadian society as a proportion of Canadian citizenry. In fact, one of the stabilization forces for the numbers of the faithful in Canada, in spite of the declines, comes from the immigration of more religious people, as reported by the Catholic Register. In fact, Gary Nelson, President and CEO of Tyndale University College and Seminary in Toronto, in Christianity Today said churches need to reintroduce themselves as “as a place, as a possibility, and as a neighborhood impact, as opposed to a place people ‘attend’ or ‘go’.”
Why the foci on immigration and the need to rebrand the church in Canada as a happening, as if Hillsong Church as the hip, cool, and dynamic Justin Bieber-endorsed church — just ignore “a statement on its website urging people to vote against legalizing same-sex marriage in Australia” and asking a “couple to step down from leadership roles because they were gay”? The news items, the rebranding, the circumlocutions of critiques and controversies, because of the troubles of several denominations to fill the pews, the seats, with believers.
The attempt to be cool comes from the fact of several things happening in Canada, and abroad, seen — from within the Christian communities’ general view — as not cool: namely, the declines in the church numbers leading to church closures. Bonnie Allen in CBC News described the shrinking numbers and burdensome costs for the maintenance of churches. Over time, fewer Canadian dollars, of which you need more, in the collection plates and rising prices on fixing old buildings forces churches to close down. It is finances and economics, not lack of faith.
In the next decade, Allen reported, the projections are 9,000 churches closing down into the future because of the aforementioned two-factor problem of fewer believers and rising costs. “As of 2009, there were 27,601 buildings for worship, training or promotion owned by religious organizations in Canada, a statistic found buried inside a Natural Resources Canada energy audit,” Allen wrote. This places the 9,000 as an important comparative number.
From centuries-long perspective of the narrative of Canadian history, we live in the midst of a phase change in Canadian religious life and demographics with consequences for all facets of Canadian culture and political life because religion, Christian religion, “since its inception” has been in every facet of the country.
