On June 10, 2024, the United Church of Canada was officially 99 years old, and a year of events leading up to our 100th anniversary will be happening across the country, as well as in the Miramichi area, culminating on June 10, 2025, our 100th anniversary. However, it is hard to know where we will be going in the future if we don’t know where we’ve been.

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>    The organization we know as the United Church of Canada actually came into being in 1925 with a huge worship service of over 10,000 people at the Mutual Street Arena in Toronto. This saw the union of the Methodist Church of Canada, the Congregational Union of Ontario and Quebec, about 70% of the Presbyterian Churches of Canada, and the Association of Local Union Churches from the Prairie Provinces. The United Church thus became the largest Protestant Christian denomination in Canada and the second largest Christian denomination behind the Catholic Church of Canada. Total membership in 1925 was approximately 600,000. The country’s total population that year was a little over 9 million people.

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>    The question then becomes: why did these diverse churches start the process of union even as early as 1902? Well, the reasons may sound eerily similar to the situation today. Many towns in western Canada, rural Ontario, and the Maritimes had small churches of Methodists, Congregationalists, and Presbyterians all in the same small communities. They were competing with each other for congregants and ministers. Often, one minister would serve his congregation and also perform pastoral care for the other two churches. The situation was untenable and the people then had enough sense and practicality to do something about it. Thus was born the United Church of Canada.

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>    Unfortunately, the Maritimes did not lead the way in the union movement. Its real start began with the Union Churches which formed on the Prairies in the early 1900’s. The movement continued to grow across the country until its culmination in 1925 in Toronto.

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>    Even with the Great Depression of the 1930’s and the Second World War in the 1940’s, membership continued to grow. Yet it was the Baby Boomer generation of the 1950’s and the 1960’s that caused membership to peak in 1966 when the United Church had 1.1 million members from a national population of about 20 million people.

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>    For a number of reasons, our membership has declined since that time as has all Christian organizations. Although still the largest Protestant denomination in Canada,  by 2018 there were only 388,000 members. Of those, only about 121,000 attended services regularly. Spread that number out among 2800 congregations across the country, on average that’s about 43 members per congregation, showing clearly how church attendance has declined since the 1960’s.

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>      Here are some interesting facts about the United Church of Canada since 1925.

 

• The first ordained female minister was Reverend Lydia Gruchy of Saskatchewan who was ordained in 1936.

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•  In 1943, the Anglican Church of Canada and the United Church entered into union talks. Progress was made over the next three decades. By 1965, it seemed that this union was imminent, but by the mid 1970’s union had fizzled out.

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• In 1925, the United Church operated 12 native residential schools designed to assimilate native children into Canadian culture. Thinking on this policy began to change in the 1940’s and the United Church closed its first school in 1949 and its last in 1969, but not before much personal damage had taken place.

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• The CGIT ( Canadian Girls in Training ) was the first example of youth work in the church and it can trace its roots to 1915. However, it really got going in the 1930’s. There were boys groups as well including Trail Rangers for 12-14 years old and Tuxis boys for 15 years and up. Most of these groups no longer exist with the boys’ groups disappearing first.

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• The first United Church hymnal was created in 1927 and served the church until 1971. A new hymnal was created in that year to satisfy the potential union of the United Church and the Anglican Church, which of course never happened. Our present day hymn book, Voices United, was published in 1996 and is still in use today.

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>      Being an open and progressive church, the United Church has faced many controversial decisions over the past 99 years. For example, in the 1930’s, the church decided that capitalism wasn’t the best policy/ structure for this country and that a more social system would serve Canadians better. These ideas came about because of the economic and social upheaval of the Great Depression. Many feared the collapse of capitalism and didn’t support the church’s stance.

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>      In the 1940’s, the church refused to back conscription during the Second World War, a very divisive issue. In the 1950’s, the church supported the notion of Medicare and also decided to recognize the People’s Republic of China, a Communist country. Both of these ideas were very unpopular at the time with the fear of the spread of Communism throughout the world.

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>      In the 1970’s, the church supported American draft dodgers of the Vietnam War who came to Canada. And in the 1980’s, the decision to allow gay ministers created much controversy and division.

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>      These and many more issues have plagued the church throughout its history, but most of these decisions are pretty much accepted as progressive today. Generally, the United Church has been ahead of the times and sometimes has paid the price for it. However, the church continues to evolve and it continues to tackle the hard issues of the day.

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>      So as we soon mark 100 years, we delight in knowing that God has a continuing purpose for the United Church of Canada. We are changing still. Things are not the same as they were in 1925 or even when the baby boomers filled the churches in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Still, there is modest growth and huge possibility. God is not done with us jet! Our Christian voice may be smaller, but it is needed today more than ever.

 

         Amen.