Attendance declines with 'liberal' attitudes
There are two main characteristics about formal organized religion in Canada. First, the vast majority of Canadians believe in God (and in percentage terms, most espouse the traditional Christian God). Second, the vast majority of Canadians rarely attend Church.

Why? What's the disconnect between faith and church attendance?

Part of the answer can be seen in this week's historic General Synod in Winnipeg where more than 400 bishops, clergy and ordinary members of the Anglican Church of Canada, this country's oldest Protestant Church, are holding their first such meeting in three years.

There are two main issues: electing a new Canadian leader; and voting on whether or not to let Anglican priests bless same-sex partnerships. And there, dear hearts, is the rub.

The fact is, the more "liberal" a Church becomes, the more Church attendance declines. And in Canada, as elsewhere, Churches have been taken over by the liberals and - with the exception of the Roman Catholics and evangelical churches, which continue to espouse more conservative theologies (and enjoy attendance growth) - attendance has plummeted.

Which is why the future of the Anglican Church of Canada hangs in the balance this week.

Two years ago, the Anglican Church's House of Bishops released a troubling report showing that between 1961 and 2001, Anglican adherents plunged 53 percent, from 1.36 million Canadians to 642,000, a loss of 13,000 members each year.

The Anglicans were not alone. The United Church of Canada - far and away the most liberal Christian denomination, and once Canada's largest Protestant Church - suffered a loss of 39 percent of its members, dropping from 1.04 million to 638,000. What's more, membership losses don't tell the whole story, since even among those who maintain Church membership, most don't attend Church regularly.

That same study found that Presbyterian Church membership - the Church I grew up in - dropped 35 percent, with Baptists down seven percent and Lutherans, four.

And so it goes.

There is a reason why people attend Church, and that is to attest to their faith, to pray, and to learn more about what they believe to be God's message. But when that message becomes denuded, when ministers and priests decide that catering to current political movements trumps traditional truths, then people simply vote with their feet. I did. And given the numbers, I'm obviously not alone.

Whatever your particular views about the propriety of homosexuality and/or same sex marriage, for example, the Bible is quite clear on it, just as it is about a host of other human behaviors deemed to be immoral.

It has always been a tell-tale sign for this observer that those who oppose the formal celebration of this lifestyle by the Church routinely cite Biblical passages to buttress their case, while those who favor acceptance of the gay lifestyle routinely ignore Biblical strictures and favor political arguments to support their case.

There are, of course, other reasons why Church attendance has declined, i.e. the dramatic drop in birthrates among the traditional constituencies of the so-called mainstream Churches, but even here, much of that drop can be attributed to the easy availability and subsequent popularity of abortion, another issue which has resulted in many more traditional believers walking away from their respective Churches.

At the time of this writing, of course, the Anglicans have just arrived in Winnipeg and have not voted on the samesex issue.

But that issue has already split the world-wide 77-million member Anglican Church, as the Western Churches tend to adopt a more "liberal," i.e. non-Biblical, approach, while the growing areas of the Church, Africa and Latin America, adhere to the traditional moral views of the Church.

Whichever way the vote goes - and, this being Canada, it is most likely to go in favor of formal same-sex recognition - the Anglican pews, already dramatically empty in most places, will become even less populated by parishioners.

In the U.S., where Church attendance is dramatically higher than in Canada, the worldwide Anglican Church has already given the U.S. Anglicans an ultimatum to either drop their support for gay clergy and same-sex unions by September or face expulsion from the communion.

Heading into Winnipeg, a group of retired liberal Canadian bishops pleaded with the delegates to approve samesex blessings and then get on with more "critical" matters, "such as poverty and global warming."

Which pretty well says it all. To the liberals, politics, i.e. global warming, is "critical," while traditional morality is a minor annoyance to be disposed of by all those thoughtful people who have, let it be said, overseen the dramatic decline of a Church to the point that the aforementioned 2005 internal Anglican study predicted that Church "is facing extinction by the middle of this century."

Pity.