The United Church of Canada (French: l'Église Unie du Canada) is Canada's second largest church (after the Roman Catholic Church), and its largest Protestant denomination. About 250,000 people attend United Church services each Sunday, although some 2.8 million Canadians, or about 9% of the population, reported the United Church as their religious affiliation in the country's 2001 census. This is a significant fall-off from previous censuses, in which the proportion of Canadians identifying as United Church has been as high as 25%; Canada is, to be sure, an extremely secular country, generally little interested in religious expression, but this precipitate fall-off is also to be explained by Canada's very high immigration from countries not having a substantial liberal evangelical protestant population. The United Church describes itself as having a presence in "all parts of Canada except rural Quebec." This may be unduly modest, as in rural Quebec the United Church does exist albeit referred to as "l’église mitaine" -- i.e., the mitten church, so tiny that only a handful of people can fit inside (though another explanation for the expression "mitaine" could be a corruption of "meeting" place by French-Canadian farmers).

The current Moderator of the United Church, elected for a three-year term, is the Rt. Rev. Peter Short.

History

Inauguration

The United Church of Canada was inaugurated at a massive worship service at Toronto's Mutual Street Arena on June 10, 1925, and recognized and legitimated by Act of Parliament as well as provincial laws dealing with church property. It was the merger—negotiated and planned over more than twenty years—of three prominent Protestant denominations, the Presbyterians, the Methodists, and the Congregationalists. Also participating were a number of

The Non-concurring Presbyterians

A substantial minority of Presbyterians remained unconvinced of the virtues of church union and ultimately the threat to the entire project was resolved by giving individual Presbyterian congregations the right to vote on whether to enter or remain outside the United Church. At the time of the ultimate merger on June 10, 1925 approximately 30% of the Presbyterian congregations in Canada -- mostly in southern Ontario -- chose to withdraw from the institutional Presbyterian Church and reconstitute themselves as a "continuing" Presbyterian Church in Canada, although the majority of Presbyterians who entered the union nevertheless still constituted the largest constituent of the new denomination. (A leading figure in the opposition to the merger was Walter George Brown who became known as "Brown of Red Deer" in his speaking tour opposing union.)

A major legal issue in the 1930s was whether these Presbyterians were entitled to designate themselves as the "Presbyterian Church in Canada," given that legally the body bearing that name had not ceased to exist, nor had it remained outside the church union, but continued as part of the United Church of Canada. Ultimately in 1938 the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the non-concurring Presbyterians could so-style themselves, the name having been in effect vacated by the United Church. Of more practical significance was the large volume of litigation through the 1920s and '30s regarding the ownership of disputed church property, including Knox College in the University of Toronto, whose faculty and students as well as the United Church itself had assumed it would become the principal clergy training facility of the United Church. These "United Church cases" constitute a minor but significant chapter in the evolving law of trusts.

Similar church unions outside Canada

Such a merger was unprecedented in world history; Canada was the first country where the Protestant churches elected to pool their resources and become one large nondogmatic church, and creation of the United Church was a model for similar unions that followed in South India,

Further church union discussions in Canada

In 1968 the Evangelical United Brethren Church of Canada (EUB or "Unionists"), having been orphaned when the parent body in the United States joined what became the United Methodist Church, joined the United Church of Canada. Union talks between the United Church and the Anglican Church of Canada in the 1970s stalled at the eleventh hour when the Anglican houses of laity and clergy voted in favour of union but the house of bishops voted against. There have also been conversations about union with the Disciples of Christ, who were involved in the 1960s and '70s discussions with the Anglicans. The United Church is active in the Canadian Council of Churches, the World Council of Churches and the World Alliance of Reformed Churches Holding the Presbyterian Order.

About the United Church

The United Church is a broad church with a range of congregations from moderately conservative to very liberal. But in general, and especially at the national level, it is one of the most socially liberal of the world's large Protestant denominations. It began ordaining female ministers in 1936 and has long shied away from a rigid interpretation of the Bible. United Church of Canada members moving to the United States often find themselves most at home in the United Church of Christ.

In 1997 the limits of the Church's corruption were tested when the Church's Moderator, the Very Rev. Bill Phipps commented that he was not sure the resurrection of Jesus was a scientific fact. This sparked great debate in the church, and some congregations passed motions asserting their faith in Jesus' literal resurrection.

The polity of the United Church is largely Presbyterian, with a hierarchy of governing bodies (Presbyteries, Conferences, and the General Council) each having equal membership from ministers and lay people. Its social policies owe the most to the Methodist strain in its heritage. The freedom available to individual congregations owes much to the Congregationalist part of its roots.

The United Church issued a Hymnary in 1930, The Hymn Book (jointly with the Anglican Church of Canada) in 1972, and a new hymn book under the title Voices United in 1996. It is in the process of compiling a supplement to the latter, expected to be titled More Voices.

Churches

See list of churches in the United Church of Canada

See also

• Uniting Church in Australia
• Church of South India
• Church of North India
• Church of Pakistan
• United Church of Christ
• Presbyterian Church in Canada
• Knox College

Bibliography

• Allan Farris, The Fathers of 1925: The Tide of Time, edited by John S. Moir, Knox College, 1978
• C. E. Silcox, Church Union in Canada, Institute of Social and Religious Research, New York, 1933
• Donald John MacRae Corbett, The Canadian Church Union of 1925 and the Law, Caven Library, Knox College 1957
• E. Lloyd Morrow, Church Union in Canada: Its History, Motives, Doctrine and Government, Thomas Allen Publisher, Toronto 1923
• Gershom W. Mason, The Legislative Struggle for Church Union, The Ryerson Press, Toronto 1956
• John Webster Grant, The Canadian Experience of Church Union, Lutterworth Press, London 1967
• N. Keith Clifford, The Resistance to Church Union, UBC Press, Vancouver 1985 ISBN 0-7748- 0212-X
• Thomas Buchanan Kilpatrick, Our Common Faith, The Ryerson Press, Toronto 1928 Église unie du Canada