What you don’t see in the news reports is the deep commitment of people who offer love and compassion in an unimaginable variety of ways.
And this is true in communities of faith that gather all over this city. Until my 15 minutes of fame, I always thought we were completely invisible. I thought no one noticed. But now that rumours of Anglican extinction are being spread, everyone seems to be paying attention.
Institutional religion has run into hard times in our comfortable and privileged culture. We have been hurt by scandals, rocked by controversy and justly condemned for our often arrogant and exclusive attitude toward people whose views differ from ours.
But we in the church are not entirely the authors of our own decline.
The church’s once sacrosanct Sunday spot for sacred worship is now crowded with sports, charity runs, shopping malls and coffee shops. Even I am preparing to join the throng who absent themselves from church when I heed the seductive lure of the Times Colonist 10K run on a Sunday morning.
This is as believable as Ms Schori’s talk of “vitality of the TEC.” He simply ignores the numbers.