The United Church of Canada is the largest Protestant Christian denomination in Canada, and the second largest Canadian Christian denomination after the Roman Catholic Church. The United Church was founded in 1925 as a merger of four Protestant denominations: the Methodist Church of Canada, the Congregational Union of Ontario and Quebec, two-thirds of the congregations of the Presbyterian Church in Canada, and the Association of Local Union Churches, a predominantly prairie-based movement. The Canadian Conference of the Evangelical United Brethren Church joined the United Church of Canada on 1 January 1968.
According to United Church statistics for 2008, there are about 525,000 members and 2.8 million adherents. About 200,000 people attend services in 3,362 pastoral charges on a regular basis. From 1991 to 2001, the number of people claiming an affiliation with the United Church decreased by 8%, the third largest decrease in mainstream Christian denominations in Canada.
In structure, the United Church has a "bottom-up" governance, where the congregation selects its clergy, rather than clergy being appointed by a bishop or other body. The policies of the church are inclusive and liberal: there are no restrictions of gender, sexual orientation or marital status for a person considering entering the ministry; interfaith marriages are recognized; communion is offered to all Christian adults and children, regardless of denomination or age.
Read more about United Church Of Canada: Governance and Structure, Ministry, Membership, History, Music, Criticism From Outside The Church
Famous quotes containing the words united, church and/or canada:
“The professional celebrity, male and female, is the crowning result of the star system of a society that makes a fetish of competition. In America, this system is carried to the point where a man who can knock a small white ball into a series of holes in the ground with more efficiency than anyone else thereby gains social access to the President of the United States.”
—C. Wright Mills (1916–1962)
“If Jesus, or his likeness, should now visit the earth, what church of the many which now go by his name would he enter? Or, if tempted by curiosity, he should incline to look into all, which do you think would not shut the door in his face?... It seems to me ... that as one who loved peace, taught industry, equality, union, and love, one towards another, Jesus were he alive at this day, would recommend you to come out of your churches of faith, and to gather into schools of knowledge.”
—Frances Wright (1795–1852)
“I fear that I have not got much to say about Canada, not having seen much; what I got by going to Canada was a cold.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)