DELTA, BC—Canada’s churches seem largely unaware of the potentially serious consequences for their ministries of an aging population and consistently low birth rates.

But University of Prince Edward Island historian Ian Dowbiggin believes that is about to change. “Almost nobody in North America has paid attention to this issue, much less in the churches...until very, very recently,” he says.

“All of a sudden, we’ve got books coming out by social scientists [and] articles written in mainstream magazines and newspapers. So my suspicion is that as this begins to snowball, there will be church leaders who will be speaking out on this. It’s only a matter of time.”

Deficit of faith

So far, it seems the only Christian leader to address the problem is Pope Benedict XVI. In April, he blamed declining birth rates on “a disturbing deficit of faith, hope and indeed, love.”

Dowbiggin himself has written a book to be published next year on Canada’s so-called “birth dearth” and its place in a wider global population crisis whose dimensions, he says, “we can barely glimpse today but which are bound to be catastrophic.”

Statistics Canada has reported that the median age of Canadians is already at a record high of 38.8 years. This will continue to rise over the next half century as more and more baby boomers—those born in the 20 years following the Second World War—turn 65.

It has also projected that in only nine years, Canada for the first time will have more seniors aged 65 and older than children aged 15 and under.

The impact of low fertility rates is already being felt. A new study done for the Greater Victoria school district, for example, forecasts an 18 per cent drop in enrolment through 2020. The district now has around 19,000 students, down from a peak of 32,000 in 1970.

Immigration? Think again

Dowbiggin says Canadians who pin their hopes on immigration to offset this shortfall should think again.

“India and China...are taking active steps to keep their best and brightest from immigrating,” he says. “And so the idea that by having an open immigration policy you’re going to be able to attract all those brilliant, entrepreneurial, innovative minds...is going to become less and less feasible as time goes on.”

There is no doubt, says Lorne Hunter, director of research for Church Planting Canada in Delta, B.C., that this demographic shift will impact the Church as well. But whether the result will be good or bad—or both—remains informed speculation.

Conversion worries

“You hear stats of conversion, that if you don’t get the kids when they’re young, you’re not going to get them, or it takes an awful lot longer to get them to make some kind of commitment [to Christ],” he says.

“So if there’s less of a younger generation, then chances are the conversion growth is going to go down as well.”

Nor is it certain, Hunter adds, that the many baby-boomers who abandoned the Church in their youth will come back to it when they enter old age.

But U.S. demographer Philip Longman foresees a different scenario that could augur well for the Church.

“Childlessness and small families are increasingly the norm today among progressive secularists,” he wrote in USA Today.

“As a consequence, an increasing share of all children born into the world are descended from a share of the population whose conservative values have led them to raise large families.”

Dowbiggin believes the best way for churches to face these new social realities is to “become more orthodox in their teaching.”

“Churches should preach pro-life, pro-family messages on issues like abortion, euthanasia, genetic research and so on,” he says. “Because the more you try and adapt to [the modern-day culture], the more you create the kind of conditions in your own church which led to the birth dearth in the first place.”