A Sunday morning coffee hour at a United Church in Ottawa may seem like an unexpected shelter for LGBTQ refugees from Africa.
But for more than a year, Kitchissippi United Church has been just that. The group began when an immigration lawyer asked the church’s minister, Rev. Jenni Leslie, if she could create a place for these refugees to gather.
The group, which is considered a “faith community” within the United Church, has grown quickly. It now has 78 members and has hosted various events, including road trips and information sessions about the impacts of trauma.
“It’s an amazing thing that has happened,” said Leslie, about the group, which goes by the name God’s Beloved. “It’s just … so gratifying to see people who have been through so much trauma smile.”
As the United Church of Canada celebrates its 100th anniversary this year, the denomination’s leaders say faith communities of immigrants — like God’s Beloved — are crucial to its growth.
But some scholars of religion doubt whether the denomination can reverse a trend of 50-plus years of continual decline.
‘Conditions for renewal’
The United Church of Canada was formed in 1925 when a number of Protestant denominations — Methodists, Congregationalists and most Presbyterians — merged.
Since then, the United Church has been one of Canada’s prominent Protestant denominations.
But like many religious organizations, its numbers are decreasing. According to numbers the United Church provided to Canadian Affairs, the church had about 325,000 members in 2023 — half the 651,000 members it had in 2000. At this month’s General Council meeting, church leaders projected the church will have 110,000 members in 2035.
Yet, United Church leaders remain enthusiastic about the organization’s growth, whether at universities, established churches or among immigrant faith communities.
“The number of exceptions [to the stories of dying churches] is growing,” Rev. Jennifer Henry, who helps oversee the United Church’s growth, told Canadian Affairs in April.
When many Canadians think of the United Church, they think of a small group of elderly people gathered on a Sunday, says Cameron Fraser, director of growth and ministry development for the church.
With its progressive social views, the United Church can often be thought of as “the NDP at prayer, or the NDP with organ music,” he said earlier this year. That may be a good description of many United Church congregations — but not all, he says.
In its 2023-2025 Strategic Plan, the United Church identified growth as its overall goal. “Our overarching goal is to create the conditions for renewal, dedicating focus, energy, and resources to slowing — if not interrupting — a decrease in participation, giving, and impact,” the plan says.
Specifically, the denomination plans to create 100 new communities of faith, with migrant communities as a particular focus.
The organization’s 2024 Strategic Plan describes its progress, noting, “25 migrant and diasporic communities are on their way to becoming United Church communities of faith.”
These so-called “church plants” include people from Filipino, Hong Kong, Korean and African-descent communities, that plan says.
A sanctuary
It is unclear whether God’s Beloved in Ottawa will become its own separate congregation, says the group’s leader, Rev. Daniel Addai Fobi, who is himself a refugee claimant from Ghana.
Right now, his focus is caring for the people in the group — many of whom faced persecution because of their sexuality in their countries of origin. In Addai Fobi’s case, he came to Canada without his wife or children after receiving death threats for speaking in favour of LGBTQ rights.
For Addai Fobi, the group’s name — God’s Beloved — says it all.
“In Africa, [LGBTQ people] are made to know that God hates you, so you are an enemy of God. But here, the story was changed to God’s beloved.”
In Canada, the United Church has prioritized reconciliation with LGBTQ people and other historically marginalized groups.
On Aug. 8, at its 45th General Council meeting in Calgary, the United Church of Canada’s outgoing leader, Rt. Rev. Carmen Lansdowne, apologized to past and present LGBTQ church members for discrimination they may have experienced in the church and for times when the church ignored their concerns.
“The church should be a place of sanctuary and belonging for all people,” the apology says. “You deserve a church that reflects God’s unconditional and abiding love.”
Rev. Kimberly Heath, a pastor in Brockville, Ont., whose parents were United Church missionaries in Zambia, was voted in as the church’s new leader Aug. 9.
Henry, who helps oversee the United Church’s growth, says the United Church’s commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion “are core to who we think the church is, but they’re also core to who we think God is.”
But the church’s emphasis on diversity and inclusion also informs its growth strategy.
“While broader North American trends of secularization have affected our denomination and religious affiliation as a whole, opportunities for outreach remain,” the 2023-2025 Strategic Plan says.
“For example to migrant communities, progressive spiritual but not religious individuals, and younger Christians no longer comfortable in conservative Christian contexts.”
‘The opposite of what works’
Kevin Flatt, a historian who researches North American Protestants, says Canada’s secular culture makes it hard for any Christian group to grow.
But the United Church has seen the sharpest decline of any Protestant group in Canada — a trend he traces to its decision in the 1960s to formally become theologically liberal.
The United Church stopped teaching that the Bible is the word of God and instead emphasized Jesus’ moral and social teachings, rather than his divinity.
The motivation for these changes was to remain relevant as society became more secular, says Flatt, who teaches at Redeemer University, a theologically conservative Christian university in Ancaster, Ont.
While there is logic to this thinking, he says, “it turns out to be exactly the opposite strategy of what works.”
Flatt says churches with more traditional or conservative views tend to have more committed members and are more likely to experience growth.
Churches with more traditional beliefs “are able to stake out an identity that gives them a coherent purpose and distinguishes them clearly from the rest of society,” he said.
People are less inclined to join a church that just repeats what most people in society believe, says Flatt.
Still, he says the United Church has an important role in Canadian history.
“I think the United Church has always had a conception of itself as the soul … of English-speaking Canada,” he said, noting many small towns have United churches.
“There is this sense of, somehow, English Canadian culture and the United Church are linked.”
‘A common story’
If English-speaking Canada was core to the United Church’s past, ethnic communities may be critical to its future.
Churches only reflect God properly if people of all races, sexualities and disabilities are part of them, says Fraser, director of growth and ministry development for the church.
“There’s this incredible breadth of the way that United Church people have lived and continue to live their faith across the country,” said Fraser.
“[For] many, it is about belonging to a common story, a love of a common story, rather than an exact shared list of beliefs.”
In Ottawa, Addai Fobi says he prays for the day when people in Ghana are not forced to subscribe to a set list of beliefs.
“We are all hoping that Africa just accepts people for who they are,” he said.
Both Addai Fobi and Rev. Jenni Leslie recognize their prayers may only be answered after they die.
But if Kitchissippi United Church has helped a group of refugees know they are loved by God, then the church has fulfilled a greater goal of fighting injustice, they say.
Stories like this reflect the community good that Fraser hopes churches bring to those around them.
“We pray that we do more than take up all the good parking spots on Sunday morning.”
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