Canada: Decline In Anglican Membership Quickening
 
The Anglican Church of Canada, one of the country's largest and oldest denominations, is in precipitous decline - losing 13,000 members each year and facing extinction by the middle of this century, says a new report prepared for the Church's bishops.

Membership in the Anglican Church has fallen by 53% over the past 40 years and continues to drop by 2% a year, the steepest recorded decline of any mainstream Canadian church.
 
Now a volunteer advisor to the Anglican Church, Mr. McKerracher relied on data from parish membership lists rather than the vague numbers collected by national census reports, in which Canadians simply indicate which church they nominally support.

His report shows that between 1961 and 2001, Anglican parish lists plunged from 1.36 million to 642,000, a decline of 53%. That decline is quickening. Membership fell by 13% from 1981 to 1991 and by a further 20% from 1991 to 2001.

Mr. McKerracher's warning to Anglican bishops, when he presented his report in October, was clear: "My point to the bishops was, 'Hey, listen guys, we're declining much faster than any other church. We're losing 12,836 Anglicans a year. That's 2% a year. If you take that rate of decline and draw a line on the graph, there'll only be one person left in the Anglican Church by 2061.' "The Church is in crisis. They can't carry on like it's business as usual."

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