Christ Church Cathedral in Vancouver Canada: the membership number and attendance going southwards

There are now just 357,123 members of the Anglican Church of Canada (ACoC), compared to the 1.3million members in 1962.

The alarming fall in the membership and the poor attendance in church, have sparked fears that the church may cease to exist by 2040.

The U.S.-based Episcopal Church, the counterpart of ACoC is also declining rapidly.

In contrast, the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) is on the verge of overtaking the ACoC in attendance, reports Anglican.Ink


“There is no sign of any stabilisation in our numbers; if anything the decline is increasing,” noted the Rev. Dr. Neil Elliot in a statistical report presented to the Canadian House of Bishops. “Some had hoped that our decline had bottomed out, or that programs had been effective in reversing the trends. This is now demonstrably not the case.”

The report includes the first comprehensive set of official statistics since the early 2000s. Data confirms anecdotal stories from across much of the Canadian church that Anglican Christianity is vanishing there.

In 1962 (the height of Anglican participation) the ACoC reported more than 1.3 million members, out of a total Canadian population of approximately 18 million, seven percent of Canadians affiliated with the Anglican Church. By 2017, Canada’s population had risen to more than 35 million (+94%) but only 357,123 members were counted on the rolls of the Anglican Church there, 1 percent of the population.

Attendance is one objective metric when evaluating church vitality. Figures for baptism, marriage, and total number of clergy are also relevant. According to the ACoC report, the church listed 5,441 baptisms in 2017 (down from 13,304, or 59%, in 2001) and 2,071 marriages the same year (down from 6,009, or 66%, in 2001) and 3,491 clergy (down from 3,675, or 5%, in 2001).

As David Jenkins of the Anglican Samizdat blog wrote, the Anglican Church of Canada is declining faster than any other Province within the worldwide Anglican Communion other than TEC, which has an even greater rate of decline.