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Times have rarely been worse for churches in Canada. As secularism skyrockets and Sunday attendance plummets, the grim task of shutting down once-thriving congregations is now an almost weekly reality for every denomination from Anglican to Catholic to the United Church of Canada.
But as Quebec’s soaring Catholic Churches go condo and Atlantic Canada’s picturesque community churches are sold off as scrap timber, one style of Canadian church seems to be surging ahead where all others falter: Large-congregation Protestant “megachurches.”
Dazzling, modern and offering a menu of practical, applied religion, the megachurch may well be the future face of worship in a secularized Canada.
According to the U.S.-based Hartford Institute for Religion Research, Canada hosts a total of 22 megachurches, which the institute defines as churches with a “sustained average weekly attendance of 2,000 persons or more.
http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/12/27/protestant-megachurches-surging-in-canada-even-as-secularism-grows-and-most-sunday-attendance-plummets/
VANCOUVER — Creationism, a religious world view that adamantly rejects Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, is on the rise among evangelical Protestants and most of the world’s Muslims.
And it’s cause for concern. Social and political consequences are erupting from the resurgence of literal belief in the creation stories of the Bible and the Qur’an, says a specialist on evolutionary theory among the world’s 1.2 billion Muslims.
Nidhal Guessoum, a Middle Eastern physics and astronomy professor, is among those who say critical thinking, freedom of thought and even human rights come under threat when hundreds of millions of people literally believe that God created the universe in “six days” and Adam from nothing.
It is not only the majority of residents in Muslim countries such as Pakistan, Indonesia and Turkey who adamantly reject the teaching that humans and other species evolved over millions of years from less complex creatures.
So do tens of millions of evangelical Christians in North America. Christian creationist beliefs in a so-called “young earth” have been promoted, for instance, at Metro Vancouver’s largest Protestant congregation; more than 4,000 people show up each weekend at Burnaby’s Willingdon Church.
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But as Quebec’s soaring Catholic Churches go condo and Atlantic Canada’s picturesque community churches are sold off as scrap timber, one style of Canadian church seems to be surging ahead where all others falter: Large-congregation Protestant “megachurches.”
Dazzling, modern and offering a menu of practical, applied religion, the megachurch may well be the future face of worship in a secularized Canada.
According to the U.S.-based Hartford Institute for Religion Research, Canada hosts a total of 22 megachurches, which the institute defines as churches with a “sustained average weekly attendance of 2,000 persons or more.
http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/12/27/protestant-megachurches-surging-in-canada-even-as-secularism-grows-and-most-sunday-attendance-plummets/
VANCOUVER — Creationism, a religious world view that adamantly rejects Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, is on the rise among evangelical Protestants and most of the world’s Muslims.
And it’s cause for concern. Social and political consequences are erupting from the resurgence of literal belief in the creation stories of the Bible and the Qur’an, says a specialist on evolutionary theory among the world’s 1.2 billion Muslims.
Nidhal Guessoum, a Middle Eastern physics and astronomy professor, is among those who say critical thinking, freedom of thought and even human rights come under threat when hundreds of millions of people literally believe that God created the universe in “six days” and Adam from nothing.
It is not only the majority of residents in Muslim countries such as Pakistan, Indonesia and Turkey who adamantly reject the teaching that humans and other species evolved over millions of years from less complex creatures.
So do tens of millions of evangelical Christians in North America. Christian creationist beliefs in a so-called “young earth” have been promoted, for instance, at Metro Vancouver’s largest Protestant congregation; more than 4,000 people show up each weekend at Burnaby’s Willingdon Church.
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