United Church of Canada

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The United Church of Canada ( French : l'Église Unie du Canada ; German: United Church of Canada ) is the second largest church in Canada after the Roman Catholic Church and the largest Protestant denomination .

The United Church was founded in 1925 as a union of four churches: the largest and second largest Protestant church in Canada at the time, the Presbyterian Church in Canada and the Methodist Church of Canada , as well as the Congregational Union of Ontario and Quebec , a smaller but historically still right significant group of Protestantism, and the Association of Local Union Churches . The latter group was a predominantly prairie movement that pushed the older churches toward a larger national federation and originated in Melville, Saskatchewan in 1908.

While evangelical Protestantism, both politically and theologically, has drifted further and further to the right , particularly in the United States , the United Church has maintained a more liberal stance, particularly with regard to the social gospel movement , women's and minority rights ( ordination of women / Blessing of same-sex couples ), as well as ecumenical relationships within Christianity .

About 121,000 people attend Sunday services in the United Church, and about 2.0 million Canadians (approximately 6% of the population) named United Church as their church affiliation in the 2011 census. In previous censuses, the proportion of United Church members was higher, up to 25% of the population. Canada is a country where secularization has advanced and, in general, a smaller and smaller segment of the population is interested in religious expressions and lifestyles, but the decline in the United Church's population can also have other causes:

  1. increasing migration of new Canadians from countries where Christianity is less widespread or takes other forms
  2. a lower participation of youth in religion, which is reflected in the decreasing number of participants in Sunday schools and youth groups; the proportion of children in households of the United Church may also be lower than in households with other or no church membership
  3. Resentment of conservative churchgoers about the increasingly liberal attitudes of the church with regard to issues such as homosexuality or exegesis
  4. Increasing acceptance of a lack of church affiliation

The United Church says of itself that it is present "in all parts of Canada except rural Québec ". Although there are a few communities in rural Québec, which is traditionally very strongly Catholic , which are known as l'église mitaine , they are very small. So one explanation for the term mitaine (mitt) is that only a handful of parishioners fit into the church. Another explanation is that mitaine is a corruption of the English term meeting .

history

founding

The United Church of Canada was organized at a major service in Toronto on June 10, 1925. It was recognized and legitimized by a law of the Canadian parliament , as well as by regulations of the individual provinces that had to do with church property. It represented the union - which had been planned and negotiated for over twenty years - of the Presbyterians , the Methodists and the Congregationalists . Also included were some so-called "local union churches", which are based on the non-denominational basis of the document Basis of Union in rapidly developing Canadian Vests had been formed.

The Non-concurring Presbyterians

A sizeable minority of Presbyterians were unconvinced of the merits of merging. The threat to the overall project was countered by a plan according to which the individual Presbyterian congregations were given the right to vote whether to join the United Church or not. At the time of the merger, about 30% of the Presbyterian congregations in Canada - mostly in southern Ontario - decided to withdraw from the institution of the Presbyterian Church and reorganized as "continuing Presbyterian Church in Canada ". However, the Presbyterian majority that joined the coalition was still the largest group within the United Church.

Similar church unions outside of Canada

Such an association was unprecedented in world history; Canada was the first country where the Protestant churches voluntarily decided to pool their resources to form a single, large, non-dogmatic church. The creation of the United Church was a model for similar but later unions in South India , North India , Papua New Guinea , Australia , the United States , England, and elsewhere. The United Church has continued its policy of openness to church unions.

About the United Church

General

The United Church is made up of a wide range of congregations, from moderately conservative to very liberal , but overall it is one of the most liberal of the larger Protestant churches in the world. The ordination of women was introduced as early as 1936, and a rigid interpretation of the Bible had long been rejected.

The church order of the United Church is largely Presbyterian , with a hierarchical body structure (presbyteries, conferences, and the general synod), each of which is composed equally of the ranks of the clergy and the laity . The social policy of the Church is most committed to the Methodist tradition, while the freedoms which the individual parishes enjoy, in accordance with the Congregational tradition most likely.

liturgy

Until the late 1960s , United Church congregations largely followed the historic Presbyterian Book of Common Order as the agende for their Sunday services. Then, in the course of the liturgical reform movement , which was also to be found among the Roman Catholics and Anglicans, the United Church also increased its liturgical diversity.

doctrine

The weekly preaching of the apostolic was part of the routines of the Sunday services until 1968. Then the church distributed an additional, church-own creed called A New Creed . The United Church regards itself as part of the universal, Catholic Church , and therefore the early Christian creeds are not replaced, only supplemented; however, the United Church Creed, and not the early church creeds, is what occurs most frequently in Sunday services.

The United Church of Canada is planning an advertising campaign to attract new members. The campaign aims to highlight the tolerant attitude of the church towards same-sex marriage as well as the humorous treatment of theological issues in order to counter stereotypes and prejudices about churches (humorless and intolerant).

Ecumenism

The Church is a member of the World Council of Churches (WCC), the Canadian Council of Churches , the World Council of Methodist Churches, and the World Fellowship of Reformed Churches .

Moderators

The highest decision-making body of the church is the General Council , which corresponds to a synod . The negotiations are led by a moderator who is also the first public representative of the church. Ordained or lay people can be elected for a three-year term of office. The last of the 42 public officials (until 2016) are:

literature

  • N. Keith Clifford: The Resistance to Church Union in Canada. 1904-1939 . University of British Columbia Press, Vancouver 1985, ISBN 0-7748-0212-X .
  • Donald John MacRae Corbett: The Canadian Church Union of 1925 and the Law . Caven Library - Knox College, Toronto 1957 (Thesis BD).
  • Allan Farris: The Fathers of 1925 . In: Allan Farris: The Tide of Time. Historical essays . Edited by John S. Moir. Knox College, Toronto 1978, pp. 95-124.
  • John Webster Grant: The Canadian Experience of Church Union . Lutterworth Press, London 1967 ( Ecumenical studies in history 8, ZDB -ID 847146-0 ).
  • Gershom W. Mason: The Legislative Struggle for Church Union . The Ryerson Press, Toronto 1956.
  • Thomas Buchanan Kilpatrick, Kenneth Harrington Cousland: Our Common Faith. With a brief history of the Church Union Movement in Canada . The Ryerson Press, Toronto 1928.
  • E. Lloyd Morrow: Church Union in Canada. Its History, Motives, Doctrine and Government . Thomas Allen Publisher, Toronto 1923.
  • Munroe Scott: McClure. The China Years. A biography . Penguin Books Canada, Markham 1979, ISBN 0-14-005466-0 ( Biography of Dr. Robert McClure 1).
  • Munroe Scott: McClure. Years of Challenge . Penguin Books Canada, Markham 1985, ISBN 0-14-007624-7 ( Biography of Dr. Robert McClure 2).
  • Claris Edwin Silcox: Church Union in Canada . New York Institute of Social and Religious Research, New York NY 1933.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ United Church Statistics The United Church of Canada
  2. ^ Canadian church group launches controversial campaign. Retrieved September 6, 2016.
  3. ↑ The United Church of Canada has elected the Rev. Richard Bott ... on united-church.ca, July 26, 2018