It’s hard to tell when exactly, but at one indeterminate point in recent history the general tenor of Canada stopped being Anglican and Catholic and became Methodist. Anglican institutions and practicing Presbyterians set the religious and political tone since the country’s inception, and so did the Catholic Church in dominantly Catholic areas, Quebec obviously especially, but gradually things shifted and the Methodists, that is, their large renamed United Church of Canada, became the country’s mainstream denomination. (Quebec meanwhile culturally demoted the Catholic Church with the Quiet Revolution.) The figure of the United Church Minister occupied a culturally resonant place in public life–teaching literature, or working as an MP, or running a co-operative federation of one kind or another.
But the culture has been shifting again and the UCC influence, presence and importance is waning these days. If the UCC is in cultural conversations at all, it will be for its political activism (by mandate, but also in individual congregations, especially by some of its inner city clergy) and for… atheism. The bizarre case of the minister Greta Vosper, who insists on continuing to run a church and draw a salary from the UCC even though she is an avowed atheist has received a lot of softball, sympathetic coverage in the media (how can I forget the hardened investigative reporter Wendy Mesley asking Vosper in a studio interview, “So… how has all this affected you, how have you been?”) Vosper is giving atheism a bad name–I’d like to think that we usually have more integrity than this.
When I first moved to Toronto, I knew no one and had nowhere to go after work, and somehow ended up attending community events at a United church in west Toronto. It’s from the clergy staff there that I first heard of the big dip in membership after the UCC embraced same-sex marriage, and of an alleged continuous decline over time, which may or may not be related to the big swaths of the church connecting Christianity to the most progressive politics of the day. The place performed a hugely important social function, which I too benefited from. Women’s group, called Riot Grrls, had monthly meetings in people’s homes–Torontonians are not quick to invite you to their home, but they will host the church group–and annual retreats to beautiful small towns of Ontario. Coffee and mingle after Sunday service was just as important as the service itself. There was a Seniors Visiting program, a children’s program, a quirky choir that did not audition its members (but you had to come to Saturday rehearsals) and a drop-in and meal program. There were the Bible studies groups (sporadic attendance there), book clubs, property maintenance committee (ie the husbands of the riot grrls). There were a lot of rentals, to “organizations and nonprofits with similar values”. Many Protestant churches have this “works” approach to being a Christian and understand the importance of the coffee hour, seniors gentle workout group, and the clothes swap. “Whenever two or more gather, Christ is also present” is what I’ve often heard from the minister there. (I have my own secular equivalent now, though: when two or more gather in my home to eat, my mother’s around too. She could whip up a quick dinner for six on short notice and loved unfussily hosting people in our home, so by doing the same, I can almost rely on her presence. Yes, religion is what Winnicott called a ‘transitional object’, a parent substitute, I’m not saying anything new.)
Is it all enough for survival of a Christian denomination–and Christianity itself, however? Outside the Sunday service in that far west end church, there was very little Christian doctrine about, in fact. In most church groups that gathered at congregants’ homes, there was always the point at which it would transpire that most of us there were atheists. Some were “spiritual”, others New Age, third quasi-Buddhist, but there wasn’t much talk of Jesus Christ. I was curious about the current tenor of that particular church and went to its website while writing this. The home page greets you with “Looking for a vibrant Christian community that's more spiritual than ‘churchy’? You’ve come to the right place.”
By virtue of my covering classical and choral music for years, I went to many UCC and other churches since I stopped going to that first west end church. Very few today feature crosses in the sanctuary prominently, and the UCC website doesn’t either. My former closest UCC church when I lived on Upper Jarvis, a small modernist building tucked in between the office buildings on Bloor East, spent the early 2020s reading Robin Di Angelo and meeting on Zoom.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently, ever since reading this gorgeous, melancholy homage (can’t bear to call it a eulogy) by Robert Colls to the Methodist Church in Britain. Methodists in England, where they never achieved numerical majority or comparable cultural clout, have been closing sanctuaries. (In Toronto, disused churches are preserved as shells of historical facadism adjacent to the large new condos built around them. To each their decay.) They too have been embracing socialism at various turns, and had their own JS Woodsworth figures which preached ‘social gospel’, but Methodists counted Margaret Thatcher among their number too. English Methodists haven’t been going all-in on progressive fads, the way certain UCC people have felt called to. Colls’ church performed a plethora of essential social functions, including the socialization of youngsters and this seemed to be its main understanding of Christian faith in the world.
I am of two minds on the ‘works’ approach (I admire it and see the need it’s satisfying, but worry it won’t be enough to perpetuate Christianity as a belief system) and very dubious about churches and ministers making partisan-political statements, so I wanted to talk to a UCC minister about it all, and about the job: how it changed, and how to prioritize competing demands placed on it. After some web surfing I landed on Islington United, and clicked to listen to the podcast. “We don’t think the same and don’t vote the same” the minister said in the introduction, and I was intrigued. That we don’t all vote the same is not heard often enough in our institutions.
My working life: Reverend Maya Landell, Islington United
I ask Rev. Maya when we meet in her office behind the handsome sanctuary on Burnhamthorpe Road what her average week is like. For the lead minister among the staff of eight, a lot of the week is preparation for the Sunday service, she says, alongside a lot of pastoral care. “Sunday worship requires musical preparation, and deciding who’s reading the Scriptures and bringing it to life. We also live-stream so there are parts of the job that are a little bit like stage directing - making sure all the pieces are there, that the newcomers feel as welcome as the current members, and so on. My style of delivery is conversational, but the sermons are written down.” A lot of the structuring of the service is done well in advance. “My minister of music Jason and I, we’re already prepped for until the first Sunday of December. To that basic structure, we keep adding things, asking ourselves who is coming on any specific Sunday, and how to welcome them.”
How local are the sermons, I wanted to know, in an age when everyone likes to talk about global conflicts? “Both of those things are alive in different parts of the worship experience,” she says. “We light memorial lights every week for anyone within our local community who’s died but also if there’s something happening in the world that we try to be responsive to. There's fair amount of prayers and holding space around what's happening in Palestine and Israel, and the war in Ukraine and Russia - but we would not be partisan.” The goal is not take a side, but to advocate for peace. “And our response is always connected to the United Church of Canada, the national office. They’re the front line because they’re connected to our global partners, wherever those things are happening. And how do we connect the local and the global”... she thinks for a moment. “We take the ancient words of Scripture and have them connect to our lives right now.”
The UCC, I tell her, has this reputation now of being not a very “churchy” church. And I’ve been noticing the absence of crosses in its iconography… How much is this reputation of a not very Jesus-y church warranted? “Here in Islington, we are definitely trying to hold both the past and the future together. In other words, we are not neglecting the past. The best way to experience that is to be here on a Sunday, me talking about it isn’t the same, but I would say that one of the keys to that for us is that Jesus is important to people’s faith journey.”
“Like, we are not a community centre,” she continues, and I whoop inside. “What I say every Sunday is, we don’t think the same, vote the same, or love the same.” That’s what struck me first, I tell her, when I visited the church website: it appeared pluralistic, and also, actually Christian. “The United Church of Canada, pew to pew to pew, people think differently theologically and politically. This world needs us right now to be able to be a community that isn't all the same, but can be together. And while we’re hanging out, voting, thinking, and, loving differently, we're following in the way of Jesus. That means we explore what His life, His hope, His way, how it has changed the world.”
How does she explain that the tolerant, easy-going churches like the UCC have been losing membership whereas the more ardent branches of Christianity and some adamant, passionate sections of other monotheistic religions have been gaining supporters? The in-group, out-group clearly delineated, people seem to want that? “Yeah, I don’t have the global stats handy here, but, yes, that sounds right, I think that wherever things are very clear...who's in and who's out… there may be growth there. If someone is searching for a way and if a certain way is presented and can be taken without much room for thinking, I can see the appeal of that choice. With the UCC, there is growth in different pockets. Like us here, the long timers are figuring out how to connect people’s individual faith journeys, which can be idiosyncratic, and that other thing that’s bigger and older than any of us. It’s like going back to the Disciples times of figuring out what we do. My first sermon here was “And now what?” What do we do next? This curiosity is very important. What has allowed us to bring together people who think differently? It’s not a safe space; it feels impossible.”
Culturally, the Rev. says, the place of the church has changed, and so “people who are here are choosing to be here, as opposed to everyone being here by default.” Yes, I wonder what the business model is, so to speak, of a church, now that the tithe doesn’t exist, peasants are not tilling its lands, monarchs are not trembling before bishops, and Christians are aging out of life-long church memberships? It’s a combination of memberships, rentals, and central church funds, she tells me. “Partnerships, rental opportunities. We share space here with a German international school whose values are aligned with ours. Because the need for public space and affordable public buildings, housing aside, community space is just hard to get. So the funding model is shifting from just donors every day. The 12 families that built this place gave sacrificially in the hope and knowing that this community would need that. And people's ability to give sacrificially in this time is different.”
The area around Islington north of Bloor and Dundas West is already becoming a new big development hub between downtown Toronto and Mississauga, and a large influx of population is to be expected over the next decade. “We're not assessing people on their ability to give, though,” she says. “People can participate by giving their time or their talent or their treasure.” Has she noticed the Bowling Alone effect - people joining fewer groups, amateur sports leagues, book clubs, volunteering less, throwing fewer bake sales for good causes, preferring to stay indoors, next to their screens? “Oh yes. That’s the air we breathe now. That all stems, I think, from how our working lives changed. Our work life used to be contained and now it's spilling over into everything else. And parenting has changed too. Like, my daughter is in competitive swimming. I volunteer 85 hours a year just to do that plus drive her etc. Our free time is gone. An accountant used to go to work nine to five, come home, have dinner with their family, and then have some hours at night to come here and volunteer to write cheques and so on. But I don’t think the accountant today needs to be coming to the finance committee; I want the accountant in the choir.”
Ah, so rather than the extension of their work life, the church life and community engagement would be something completely different? “Yes. I want the doctor meditating, the accountant singing in the choir. That’s the shift. The organization was built on ‘use your gifts all the time’ - my thing is that now the community needs to let you use the other parts of you. We don’t need you, as a writer, writing in the church; I want you to come and experience something here that’s going to let you go out into the world and be a better writer. That’s the shift we’re after, and that would not be what other organizations are thinking. They'd be like, what cancer society, what lawyer do I need on the board? I want the volunteers to come and participate in a community offering that is going to strengthen them for the rest of their life as opposed to more of the same or depleting.”
Doe she find that easy here, does Islington have a thriving community of small voluntary groups? “Yes, if one person is passionate about how what they're doing is helping people, others are drawn to it. So we have a very active garden group which is growing food inside and outside all year round. There’s the Mabelle Food program which distributes food packages every Wednesday, often produce from our own gardens. But volunteer groups are sometimes in jeopardy if the leader steps down… we’re just learning about how to sustain programs long-term.”
This is an issue for volunteer-run groups everywhere. “Yes, and here, my message to them is, it's okay if it stops for a while. Something new will come. If we really are the people of “in life, in death, in life beyond death, God is with us”, then it's also alright for things to die. Because something new is going to come.”
Speaking of resurrection. This is for a lot of people the stumbling block on their path to Christian faith. It’s the hardest sell; and it’s a huge chunk of the doctrine. “I don’t know that it’s a huge chunk! I think it's Paul's interpretation of what it meant to follow Jesus; it was fairly directive about it being about Him returning. And the teachings of Jesus in the Gospels are about the Kingdom of Heaven being here and now. So fine, if you only read Paul’s Gospel, which we’ve done a lot of… but I think, for me, inviting people to be curious means being curious about what comes after as well. I don’t have all the answers about that. And I don't need to be afraid of it. Because the God who created me for love, in life and death and life beyond death, will make sure that love will carry. I don't have any doubt about that.”
Ministers officiate at a lot of weddings and funerals. How do you prepare to speak at a funeral of someone you’ve never met? “I meet with the family, ask them to come here. I've been a minister now for a long time, so there's a set of questions that I ask to help me really get to know the person that they loved. We choose music that the person loved or that will help the family feel cared for and honored.”
Do you think that Christianity has, I ask the Rev, the best language for grief and after? I’ve lacked the secular equivalent when I needed it. And over on the Christian side, there are centuries of phenomenal language and poetry. “Yeah, I don't know if it's the best in terms of other traditions, but… my parents are ministers. My husband’s a minister. I didn’t come to faith by accident. I think that what Christianity at its best gives people is a language to meet the existential limits of our lives. And to be alive, whatever we believe, is to face the Who am I, Why am I here, What Matters, and What happens to me when I die. The questions that we know the people before us have been asking too. I’m not reading the Bible to know more about God; I’m reading the Bible to see how people wrestled with what it meant to know God and be in relationship with God. There’s comfort in that gift.”