What were the most read articles and most visited webpages of the year? Find out here.
Thank you to all our faithful readers! We’re always glad to hear from you about the things we publish here online and also in print.
One way we hear from you is by counting online traffic. The webpages our readers visit most helps us know what’s important to you.
In previous annual reflections we’ve focused only on blogs (online-only articles), but this year we’ve expanded our top ten to include most materials on our website, including online versions of print articles and podcasts.
Without further ado, here are the posts read by the most people during 2020.
10. The state of religion in Canada is an audio podcast in which researchers Rick Hiemstra of The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada and Sam Reimer of Crandall University unpack the sometimes surprising results of a 2019 survey of religiosity in Canada. Our podcasts are available online in several locations, so our count here doesn’t exactly line up with our most listened-to episode of the year, but the appearance of a podcast in our top ten shows how large our audience of audio listeners has become. Another top podcast was Lorna Dueck: A storyteller retires.
9. Ministering to seniors with home Bible study. A blog by Nathanael Reed, a retired Ontario teacher, encouraged us to consider how our younger and healthier members can “be an encouragement to their parents’ and grandparents’ generation.”
8. Christian in the collapse. This impassioned column by B.C. pastor Phil Wagler calls us to lament and repent, receive the gospel, love Jesus more than our politics, stop reducing church to a room, live small in a big way, and speak up. It was the top entry from our Reconciling series, produced in cooperation with the Peace & Reconciliation Network. Another blog in this series that almost made the top ten is Does systemic racism exist in the Canadian church? by Sherman Lau. Read them all at FaithToday.ca/Reconciling.
7. Behind the curtain of assisted dying. In a printed essay that we also posted to our website, David Guretzki, resident theologian of The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, reflected personally and biblically on what he learned from a hospital encounter. You can also browse all his regular one-page columns at FaithToday.ca/CrossConnections and all the columns by EFC president Bruce Clemenger at FaithToday.ca/TheGatheringPlace.
6. Q&A about QAnon. Veteran columnist James A. Beverley drew on a mountain of research to explain a troubling and popular conspiracy theory in a single magazine page. One of his other top columns that almost made the top ten is Qur'an history upheaval. Browse all his columns at FaithToday.ca/ReligionWatch.
5. The pandemic challenge. This article originally published in 2009 was suddenly popular again for an obvious reason. Other pandemic blogs that almost made the top ten included Dear church, about living on $2,000 a month or less and Rethinking local church ministry during Covid.
4. Crisis in creation care. This essay by climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe, a Canadian Evangelical who teaches in Texas, was only online for two months in 2020 since it was published in November, but the number of readers who went to our subscriber flipbook edition to read this article online put it into the top ten.
3. Will Christianity disappear from Canada? and The actual gospel of Canadians. We grouped these two top articles together because they’re both by veteran columnist John G. Stackhouse, Jr., who loves to help us tackle the hardest issues of the day with wit, wisdom and strong opinions. Browse all his columns at FaithToday.ca/ChristandCulture.
2. While we pray for miracles, God gives us grace. What should Christians think when prayers for healing seem unanswered? Dave Jeffery of Abbotsford, B.C., who has lived for six years with ALS, a terminal neurological disorder, tackled this difficult question with honesty, insight and personal vulnerability. Don’t miss his new essay on dying well that he just wrote for us.
1. Not Christian anymore. This Jan/Feb 2020 article by researcher Rick Hiemstra unveiled publicly for the first time the results of the major survey of Canadian religiosity discussed in the podcast that ranked in the tenth spot above. This survey, which suggested half of Canadians are either agnostic, atheist or unreligious and only a tenth attend religious services weekly, was the story of the year for our readers.
Likely all our articles related to the year-long pandemic, if totalled together, would make that the top story, so interpret this countdown with a grain of salt.
What would you like to see on our website or in our print magazine in 2021? Please let us know anytime at editor@faithtoday.ca. Thanks for reading.
P.S. You can also check out our top posts from 2018 below. We missed 2019, but we’ll revisit that year sometime soon.