Canada’s United Church: A Semicentennial Report

The Mutual Street Arena in Toronto was filled to capacity as 347 men and women Commissioners and 8,000 supporters sang, accompanied by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, “The Church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord.” That was fifty years ago, on June 10, 1925. Representatives from Methodist, Congregational, and Presbyterian congregations across Canada had assembled to consummate the first major church merger in the world.

Dr. S. D. Chown, general superintendent of the Methodist Church in Canada, spoke the fateful words: “I hereby declare that the Presbyterian Church in Canada, the Congregational Churches of Canada, and the Methodist Church, Canada, along with the General Council of Local Union Churches are now united and constituted as one church to be designated and known as The United Church of Canada.” This union brought together more than 600,000 members to form what has been considered Canada’s national church. Although the Methodists were by far the largest of the three negotiating bodies, upon a motion by Dr. Chown, the leader of the Presbyterian delegation, Dr. George Campbell Pidgeon, was elected as the first moderator of the United Church of Canada.

Church union had started long before 1925. As early as 1875 the four sections of Presbyterianism then existing united in taking the name “The Presbyterian Church in Canada.” In 1884 the four sections of Methodism united to form “The Methodist Church.” The various Congregational churches organized “The Congregational Union of Canada” in 1906. A early as 1885 the Church of England invited the Methodist and Presbyterian Churches to confer on church union. By 1892 the Presbyterian General Assembly approached the Congregational Church to confer with other churches on the general subject of church union. And in 1894 the Methodist General Conference proposed a plan of federation of local congregations. More to the point, by 1925 there were as many as 3,000 congregations, largely in the more recently settled west, operating as united churches on the local level.

The formation of the United Church of Canada proved divisive for the Presbyterians. By a vote at the presbyteries of the Presbyterian General Assembly in 1915 approved of church union. More than half of the communicants disapproved of church union. However, the vote at the General Assembly of 1916 showed that a large majority of presbyters (elders) approved of union: 406 for, 90 against. By 1921 the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Canada reached the decision “to take such steps as may be deemed best to consummate church union.” (However, about one-third of the Presbyterians refused to unite, often because of Scottish ethnic sentiment and a conservative political-economic stance. Theologically, the continuing Presbyterians were and are mixed, though there is probably a higher evangelical percentage in the Presbyterian Church than in the United Church. The present membership is 174,600.)

After the first ten years of union, the General Council of the United Church of Canada reaffirmed the ideals and principles that brought the church into being by saying that it had “found these ideals to be eminently practical in their outworking, and in the quest of them its members have found an enriched and deepened fellowship, human and divine.”

In 1956, however, an editorial in the United Church Observer, the denominational magazine, expressed concern that the church was losing its evangelical Methodist heritage:

Few would accuse the United Church of not providing liberty of prophesying or maintaining love of spiritual freedom. We have been articulate in our concern for civic justice, sacrificed not much but a little to maintain our institutions of sacred learning and kept high the educational standards of our clergy. But what about evangelical zeal? We carry on work of human redemption but with limited budgets, underpaid staff, and without enthusiasm. We even phrase our concern for Canada’s Indian people, as “our moral and legal responsibilities,” instead of opportunities to serve and win.

The editorial went on to say that the material wealth of the United Church was not matched with a spiritual wealth. “We doubt that there is a conscious retreat from sacred song. We sing in all our services. But our enthusiasm and our volume seem to vary inversely with the thickness of the carpet on the aisles and the number of Cadillacs.”

The United Church experienced an amazing growth after the second World War, particularly through the fifties and sixties. From a membership of 600,000 at the time of union in 1925 the church continued to grow rapidly until in 1965 there were 1,064,000 on the roll. In the same period the church school had grown slowly, from 579,500 to a peak of 609,600. The Missionary and Stewardship Fund grew from $3 million to a record of $13 million in 1974, and the total budget grew from $17 million to more than $76 million in the same period. In 1959 church growth was such that new church buildings were being opened at a rate of four per week. The United Church Observer said: “The growth will continue, perhaps even be stepped up in tempo, for the United Church is growing more rapidly than the population of the country.” It was predicted that by 1980 Canada’s population would be somewhere close to 30 million and that the United Church would add about 2 million to its family. But by 1968 this optimism was waning. An editorial in the Observer declared:

Five years ago we were rejoicing in a great revival. Suddenly we reached the crest and there was a small decline; and those who lose their nerve quickly, or seem not to have read their history books, become sad. It is probable attendance will continue to drop. But we don’t need to close up shop and go and hide.

Decline it was: by 1973 membership of the United Church had dropped from its peak of 1,064,000 to 975,300. The church school lost almost two-thirds of its membership: 609,600 in 1965, 247,100 in 1973. The rate of acquiring new members dropped drastically. In 1926 when the membership stood at only 600,000 about 28,400 were received on profession of faith. In 1973, with a membership of nearly a million, only 16,500 new members were added. Instead of being the fastest growing church in Canada in the seventies, the United Church now has the unenviable record of being the fastest declining Protestant church in Canada.

Some feel that the United Church flourished in the fifties not because church attendance was popular but because at a national level the church was concerned with evangelistic outreach. Heading the Board of Evangelism and Social Service were Dr. James Mutchmore and Dr. William Berry, who organized in 1956–58 a Mission to the Nation, attempting to revitalize “the whole national fabric by relating faith to action in such fields as daily work and economics, family community life, the international arena.” Hundreds of mass rallies were conducted throughout Canada. Large evangelistic campaigns were conducted by Charles Templeton (who later repudiated his own work). It was in 1957, when evangelism had some priority, that the United Church took in its largest number of communicants in any one year since union: 40,749.

In 1964, when the membership of the church school was at an all-time high, a “new curriculum” was published. Ninety-five per cent of the United Church Sunday schools gave it a try. But this initial success was met within the next couple of years with dismal failure. For the most part the new curriculum offered unadulterated theological liberalism. Most of the miraculous elements in both the Old and the New Testament were deleted. The virgin birth of Christ was denied. Bishop J. A. T. Robinson and Martin Luther stood side by side as heroes of the church. Form criticism and literary critcism appeared to be the new gods to which church members were asked to bow. Evangelical churches across Canada and United Church ministers with evangelical convictions endlessly attacked the new curriculum. A flood of writing, the most notable being Pierre Berton’s book The Comfortable Pew, was highly critical of the church. The “God is dead” movement and the “new morality” at the same time shook the complacency of many Christians. Although the Anglican Church declined similarly during this period, more evangelical groups like the Pentecostals and many of the Baptists showed marked increases in both church membership and Sunday-school attendance.

The record of the United Church in overseas missions has been less than exciting. At the time of union the Methodists, Presbyterians, and Congregationalists had a total of 540 workers overseas. This dwindled by 1966 to approximately 260. That is not surprising, since an official statement of the United Church General Council affirmed an attitude of mutual acceptance between Christian and non-Christian: “God is creatively and redemptively at work in the religious life of all mankind.”

If enthusiasm for sharing the Gospel overseas can be judged by the attitude of recent moderators of the denomination, one should not be surprised at the decline in mission involvement. Former moderator Dr. Bob McClure, a veteran medical missionary who is well known for his unselfish medical service in the interest of suffering humanity, does not believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ, and his approach to world missions is one of syncretism. Former moderator Dr. N. Bruce McLeod said that the church “will fulfill its mission not by turning Hindus and Moslems into Christians, but by standing with Moslems and Hindus and helping them live together in love.” McLeod questioned whether Christian missionaries should go out to convert people from other religions. “Apart from common politeness and natural impulse towards tolerance, do the terms of our faith enable us to be satisfied for Jews to be Jews, and Hindus to be Hindus? Or do we have some hidden agenda in our encounters with them, some secret intention to extract them from their religious heritage and make them Christians?” McLeod recently resigned from the Bloor Street congregation in Toronto to do some rethinking of his own faith.

Since 1966 the Anglican and United churches have been working together on Principles of Union. At the 1966 General Council of the United Church, these principles were adopted by an overwhelming vote and sung in with “Praise God from whom all blessings flow,” but since then the music has changed from enthusiastic doxology to a solemn requiem. Recently the Anglican House of Bishops released a “Statement of Counsel” in which it said:

We find ourselves agreed that the Plan of Union in its present form is unacceptable; most of us doubt that there is serious hope for a successful outcome of a further revision process. We base this conclusion in part on our perception that our churches have not yet reached a common mind on Faith and Order. We think also that the climate of feeling, at least in our own constituency, seems at the present time less favourable to organic union and more disposed toward other expressions of unity.

The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), a tiny co-participant in the Anglican-United merger talks, may proceed to join its four thousand members to the United Church alone. The action by the Anglican House of Bishops is bound to affect cooperation in local areas where union is contemplated. Recently, in a new development in a suburb of Toronto, the Anglican Church refused an offer by the United Church to cooperate in a joint venture of ministering to the community.

In 1968 a small group of ministers and laymen in the United Church, concerned about the growth of liberalism and the decline of membership, formed the United Church Renewal Fellowship. The aim was to set up small chapters across Canada for prayer and Bible study and thereby to encourage members who would otherwise leave and join some other denomination. Its quarterly periodical, The Small Voice, is circulated widely throughout the church. Although the Renewal Fellowship has grown slowly, it has had a stabilizing effect upon the church.

Recently a new group has come to the forefront in United Church life: Church Alive. It is headed by Graham A. D. Scott, who holds a doctorate from the University of Strasbourg. Church Alive is “a theological association and spiritual fellowship” whose aims are (1) to make a clear, biblical witness to Jesus Christ, crucified, risen, and exalted; (2) to engage in rigorous theological inquiry and discussion; (3) to challenge doctrinal inadequacies in the church; (4) to encourage spiritual growth through prayer, Bible learning, sacramental worship, and other means of grace; (5) to encourage a biblically prophetic approach to the culture and society. Church Alive has mustered some of the heavyweights in the United Church including Professor John B. Corston of Atlantic School of Theology in Halifax, Dr. Leonard Griffith of Dear Park United Church, Toronto, Dr. Eveleigh Smith of Westminster United Church in Regina, Dr. John Wilkie of Forest Grove United Church, Toronto, and Professor Kenneth Hamilton, well-known theologian from Winnipeg.

Another who is calling the church back to the basics of the Christian faith is Alan Churchill, a former Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer who has a doctorate in New Testament from Oxford University and is now president of the London Conference. Churchill is concerned that many within the church are Christians in name only. In an interview with the United Church Observer he explained: “They know God loves them, but in the same sort of general way that they know that the government cares about them. When they read John 3:16 they’ve never taken the step of substituting their own names for ‘the world.’ ” He says that he became a Christian when he could say for himself, “For God so loved Alan Churchill that he gave his only Son.”

A new wind is also blowing at the headquarters level of the United Church. Dr. Norman MacKenzie, a secretary of the Division of Mission in Canada who is charged with the responsibility of evangelism in Canada, is arranging for a preaching mission and workshops on evangelism throughout the church. (MacKenzie was a delegate to last summer’s International Congress on World Evangelization in Lausanne, Switzerland.) Twenty-six men and women have been selected by the various conferences to serve as missioners and workshop leaders. Even though these may represent a broad spectrum of theological positions within the church and a variety of approaches to sharing the Gospel, many view the project with hope. Dr. Douglas Conlan, executive secretary of the Toronto United Church Council, believes that the church ought to get back to the basics of the Christian faith rather than expending all its energies on social services. He points out that the church in Alberta is experiencing a vacuum in its mission because the Alberta government has taken over all the social services in the communities. “We must set our priorities in order,” says Conlan.

The charismatic movement has not bypassed the United Church. Tongues-speaking ministers are to be found in every presbytery. The Reverend Bernard Warren, a graduate engineer who was converted after he was ordained, heads up the Bezek Retreat Centre sixty miles from Toronto. Warren has overflow crowds at the center every weekend, many of them ministers and laymen from metropolitan Toronto. Harold Moddle, a former executive with Bell Telephone who succeeded Warren at Toronto’s Alderwood United Church, continues to give strong leadership in what is known as Toronto’s “charismatic congregation.” Moddle is well respected by fellow ministers in the Toronto Conference for his administrative ability but says he finds most of his fellowship with charismatic priests of the Roman Catholic Church.

Emmanuel College in Toronto is the church’s largest institute for training ministers, and it has felt the impact of charismatics and other evangelicals in the student body. Principal William Fennel, a neo-orthodox theologian, says that students tried to convert him “four times in one day.” Many students at Emmanuel feel they have much more in common with Roman Catholic professors than with some of Emmanuel’s faculty. Wherever possible they also select courses at nearby Wycliffe College, an Anglican seminary where the well-known evangelical scholars R. K. Harrison and Richard Longenecker teach. Emmanuel recently appointed Professor Heinz Guenther, a German-born Bultmannian, to head up its department of New Testament.

Although the United Church has been criticized for being too long on social service and far too short on evangelism, the tide seems to be shifting. Local churches are beginning to support independent missions rather than pouring all their money into the Mission and Service Fund of the national church. With the death of the new curriculum, hundreds of churches are turning to Sunday-school material put out by Gospel Light, Scripture Press, and David C. Cook. There seems to be an awareness that all the political lobbying has not made for church growth. Theological liberalism has been weighed in the balance and found wanting.

There is a call from numerous quarters for the church to get back to the Basis of Union, a document of twenty statements of faith agreed upon by the representatives of the Presbyterian, Methodist and Congregational Churches at the time of union in 1925. This document remains the only official teaching of the United Church. Among the affirmations included in it are these: (1) Jesus Christ was “conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgina Mary.” (2) “Jesus Christ fulfilled all righteousness, offered Himself a perfect sacrifice on the Cross, satisfied Divine Justice and made propitiation for the sins of the whole world. He arose from the dead and ascended into heaven, where He ever intercedes for us.” (3) “We receive the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, given by inspiration of God, as containing the only infallible rule of faith and life, a faithful record of God’s gracious revelations, and as the sure witness of Christ.” (4) “We believe that there shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and of the unjust, through the power of the Son of God, who shall come to judge the living and the dead; that the finally impenitent shall go away into eternal punishment and the righteous into life eternal.”

There is a growing tide of opinion that as the United Church faces the next half century there will be a new emphasis upon biblical preaching and teaching. Articulate and scholarly men like Churchill, Hamilton, and Scott will be giving much of the leadership. Union with the Anglicans may come, but right now that does not seem to be a priority among either the clergy or the laity. While church merger may have gone down the drain for the time being, the feeling of oneness in Christ nourished by the thousands of interdenominational Bible-study groups across the nation is giving a new hope for a more evangelical church in Canada.

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