Canadian Christians increasingly find their pro-life values in conflict with their nation’s rapid acceptance of medical assistance in dying (MAID). Many say churches could be a refuge in Canada’s pro-MAID culture, reminding people of human dignity and providing community supports that can help them resist the lure of MAID.
But chances are, most Canadian Christians haven’t heard their pastors discuss MAID—and clergy, despite their pro-life convictions, are likely still learning about the laws that legalize the ending of life.
The few evangelical pastors who have addressed the issue directly have seen an almost immediate impact in their congregations. But most haven’t kept up with the legal landscape for MAID or have waited to speak out.
“I think one of the strongest reasons why MAID has a lot of traction generally in our society is that nobody wants to talk about death,” said Jeff Gullacher, a pastor in Alberta who began addressing the issue in his church earlier this year. “Everyone just wants to kind of sweep it under the rug and keep it as sterile and as short as possible.”
MAID was legalized in Canada in 2016. Amendments that passed in 2021 removed the criterion that a person’s death be “reasonably foreseeable” and allowed for the eventual legalization of MAID for individuals whose only medical condition is a mental illness.
The current law allows people who have “grievous and irremediable” illnesses, diseases, or disabilities and are experiencing what they consider to be unbearable physical or psychological suffering to be eligible for MAID—even if their death is not, in the law’s words, “reasonably foreseeable.” By the end of the month, Quebec will authorize patients to approve their own MAID requests in advance.
Heidi Janz, a specialist in disability ethics, has spent years lobbying against MAID laws because of the way they devalue people with disabilities. She is waiting for evangelical Canadians to join the fight.
“The silence has been deafening,” said Janz, who has multiple disabilities and uses a voice synthesizer to deliver public statements, including testimony before parliamentary committees.
Earlier this year, she spoke at a Christian conference in Ottawa, Canada’s capital, urging Christians to do more to support people with disabilities so they do not die by MAID.
Janz was hoping churches would call her afterward, inviting her to speak to their congregations. They haven’t. And she rarely sees churches publicly opposing MAID or being concerned about how it endangers already-vulnerable people.
“We’re just collectively shrugging our shoulders,” she told CT. “I think we’re going to have a lot to answer for.”
The use of MAID, sometimes called euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide in other jurisdictions, has surged in Canada, where 44,958 people have died through the provision. The number increases each year. In 2022, the most recent year for which complete data is available, 13,241 people died by MAID in Canada, accounting for 4 percent of the country’s deaths that year. Final numbers for 2023 will be released later this month, but projections put last year’s total around 17,000.
Canada is widely regarded as having some of the most permissive MAID laws in the world. For example, in American jurisdictions that have legalized the practice, patients cannot be prescribed lethal drugs to end their lives unless they have a terminal illness and a prognosis of six months or less. They also must take the drugs themselves.
Canada, however, has never required a time-based prognosis to determine someone’s eligibility for MAID. The drugs used in MAID are most often administered intravenously—in 2022, fewer than seven Canadians who died by MAID took the drugs themselves. In 2027, Canada plans to extend eligibility to people whose sole medical condition is a mental illness.
As MAID becomes more common, pastors are often at a loss to know how to address it with their congregations—whether during sermons or with individuals who are considering it or are grieving the loss of someone to MAID.
“The numbers are just now getting to the point where pastors are noticing that people in their flock are choosing this, and they’re really unsure how to deal with it,” said Larry Worthen, the executive director of the Christian Medical and Dental Association (CMDA) of Canada. But he’s received more invitations to speak to pastors across the country recently.
Many denominations do not have clear guidance about how clergy should respond when their congregants are considering or opting for MAID, said Gloria Woodland, director of the chaplaincy program at ACTS Seminaries of Trinity Western University in Langley, British Columbia.
Woodland teaches an eight-week seminary course about MAID that is being offered to churches throughout Canada. She also speaks to pastors. She begins by reviewing the law and how it’s changed since it was first enacted.
She said pastors may not know, for example, that people who are approved for MAID in cases where their deaths are seen as reasonably foreseeable no longer have to wait ten days between when their requests are approved and when MAID is administered. This means it is legally possible for someone to die by MAID on the same day they are approved for it.
“What I’m finding is the majority have not gone any deeper than what they’re hearing on the news,” she said.
When pastor Deric Bartlett decided to preach two sermons about MAID last year, he readied himself for criticism. Between 800 and 1,000 people typically attend his Baptist church—City Centre Church in Mississauga, Ontario—and not all visitors are friendly to the church’s teachings, he said.
Instead, he received more positive feedback than usual, including from one attendee who said the teaching had convinced them not to pursue MAID.
Other pastors reported similar experiences. Last February, Trinity Baptist Church in Sherwood Park, a suburb east of Edmonton, Alberta, hosted a seminar by Margaret Cottle, a palliative care physician and pro-life advocate.
The seminar was originally intended for the congregation and anyone they wanted to invite, said the church’s lead pastor, Jeff Gullacher. But when leaders of the church’s denomination, Canadian Baptists of Western Canada, heard about it, they offered to help the church livestream the event and make it available to people outside the congregation.
Gullacher received positive feedback across the denomination, he said. He has also heard of people who no longer support MAID after hearing the presentation.
Gullacher has not preached a sermon directly on MAID, he said, but the church has offered a series of classes on topics related to death and dying, including wills, estate planning, and decluttering. They’re also planning to use the curriculum Dying with Christ – Living with Hope, which was developed by CMDA Canada to help churches discuss MAID in small groups.
But while pastors say they’ve received positive feedback on corporate teaching about MAID, knowing how to respond to people considering MAID or grieving a death caused by MAID can be more challenging.
Cottle, who speaks to churches regularly, has no doubt that MAID contradicts Scripture’s teaching. “There isn’t any nuance about whether or not we should be doing medical killing,” she told CT. “The nuance comes in, How do you live as a faithful Christian in a society that thinks that medical killing is a good idea?”
In her courses, Woodland has Christian chaplains and pastors consider how they would respond if one of their congregants chooses MAID or whether they would agree to be present if someone asks them to be there when MAID drugs are administered.
Regardless of what they decide about those situations, Woodland said they need to be available to families who are grieving after a MAID death. She encourages pastors and chaplains to seriously consider what it means to value the inherent, God-given dignity of people in the face of MAID.
“If you believe in the sanctity of life, then you believe in the sanctity of life regardless of the situation,” Woodland said. “As a pastoral worker, our role would be to hold the hope for that individual, to hold the hope for them while they can’t hold hope themselves.”
Evangelical leaders say faithful Christian witness in a society that celebrates MAID means being prepared to take care of people in vulnerable situations—and admitting where the church needs to improve.
According to Health Canada, the number one cause of suffering cited by people who died by MAID in 2022 was “the loss of ability to engage in meaningful activities.” Eighty-six percent of people who died by MAID cited this as one of their underlying causes of suffering. Over one-third (35%) of people who died by MAID reported feeling that they were a burden to their friends, caregivers, or family; another 17 percent cited loneliness.
Churches and other Christian organizations are well equipped to offer answers and hope in the face of these existential concerns, said Julia Beazley, director of public policy for the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, an organization that has publicly opposed MAID for years. Many pastors and churches have reached out to the group for information.
“We believe the proper response to the suffering of our neighbors is to respond with care and compassion, to journey alongside those who are struggling or who are nearing death with tangible support, relational support,” she said. “As Christians and as a society, we should do what we can to alleviate the suffering, not eliminate the one who suffers.”
But Beazley acknowledged churches still have a long way to go, particularly in responding to the needs of people with disabilities and in countering the ableist assumptions in MAID law, which says life with disability is not worth living. Many churches are grieving the fact that for people with disabilities, it’s often easier to find support to end their lives than the support they need to live their lives.
“We need to be teaching loudly and clearly that every person’s life has meaning, value, and dignity,” Beazley said.
At St. Hilda’s Anglican Church in Oakville, Ontario, Paul Charbonneau and his congregation are trying to practice valuing human life from conception to death. Members have sat with people who are dying at home, giving relief to their caregivers. They pray about MAID during worship services, and the church has hosted several seminars about the topic.
The church is part of the Anglican Network in Canada (ANiC), which is itself part of the Anglican Church in North America. Along with being the rector of St. Hilda’s and a chaplain at a local hospital, Charbonneau is the executive archdeacon of ANiC. The denomination has told clergy that they cannot be present while MAID is being administered—even to pray for the dying person or their family.
Charbonneau agrees with this approach and also practices it in his capacity as a hospital chaplain. “I don’t want to be seen as complicit in any way,” he said.
What he does want to do is encourage Christians to speak out against MAID and to show people in vulnerable situations that lasting hope is found only through a relationship with Jesus.
He doesn’t see Canada’s acceptance of MAID waning any time soon. “You can’t put the genie back in the bottle once this thing is let out,” he said. The speed at which MAID deaths have increased and laws have changed has left many pastors feeling ill-equipped about how to respond, he said.
But the more he watches acceptance of MAID grow in Canada and elsewhere, he said, “The more I’m convinced that Jesus is the only way that we’re going to be saved, and it’s the only way our culture can be saved.”
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