Canada’s Religions: An Historical Introduction (review)

In today's secular age, knowledge of the foundations of religion, let alone religious history, can no longer be assumed. Indeed the religious beliefs and worship practices of all faiths need to be outlined for today's students, many of whom have neither been exposed to traditional religious teachings nor attended a worship service or church. Basics, including the Protestant and Catholic reformations, the reasons for missionary outreach, the meaning of sacraments and rituals, the character and meaning of sacred texts, and what happens in worship services need to be explained before the history of religion in Canada can be told. This book is remarkably successful at outlining these basics. The outstanding quality of this survey, however, is Choquette's attention to religious diversity. Unlike previous surveys, this book is not about the Christian church or Christianity but religions in Canada. Moreover, he achieves a good blend of the social historians' emphasis on people's religious beliefs and practices with the more traditional church historian's emphasis on institutions, elites, teachings, and doctrine.

Readers are immediately alerted to Choquette's emphasis on religious pluralism, as the book opens with a discussion of Amerindian religion, not Christianity. After Choquette has outlined the major features of Native spirituality, he directs his attention to Christianity. His discussion of the Christian roots of Canadian society begins with a survey of religion in Europe at the dawn of the effort to evangelize the New World. In Choquette's analysis of the efforts of Christian missionaries to convert Amerindians, he outlines the impact of contact on both Native spiritual life and Christianity. Missionary effort is not a one-way street, for contact can change the missionary and the evangelizing religion as well as those that are subject to conversion attempts. Choquette does not fall into the trap of arguing that during contact or missionary outreach Christianity was all-powerful and therefore totally destructive. He is aware of the limits of the missionary enterprise and recognizes that contact profoundly influenced Christianity and its missionaries. Later in the text he discusses examples of Native spiritual renaissance among missionized Natives.

Wherever possible, Choquette discusses popular piety and in doing so he reflects recent scholarship that concentrates on religious practice and how people prayed or worshipped. Historians of Quebec have produced some of the most innovative work on popular piety, and Choquette's sections on Catholicism in French-Canadian society reflect this dynamic scholarship. For example, in the chapter on the development of the Catholic church in New France, Choquette provides an insightful description of the pilgrimages and shrines that characterized popular piety in the colony.

In analyzing the nineteenth century, Choquette discusses the overwhelming importance of the evangelicalism within both Protestantism and Catholic ultramontanism. As a result of this comparative perspective, some of the standard interpretations of Canadian religious history are challenged. Canadian historiography has been dominated by the idea of Catholic–Protestant rivalry, what Arthur Lower called the 'primary antithesis' in Canadian life. This division within Christianity was responsible for a great deal of the political debate and social conflict in Canada. But in Choquette's analysis it becomes clear that both Protestantism and Catholicism were experienced in similar ways. Both were swept up by the evangelical crusade of the nineteenth century, battled with the forces of modernism, and gave voice to the prophetic in their calls for social justice. When one moves away from an exclusively Christian perspective, some of the differences between Catholicism and Protestantism fade and some of the underlying similarities between these two central branches of Christianity become clear. Choquette does not dismiss the presence of Protestant–Catholic rivalry. Instead Protestant–Catholic relations are viewed as an interplay of similarities and differences rather than unrelenting conflict.

Not surprisingly, Choquette is alive to the many religious alternatives that challenged the churches and the dominant evangelical faith of the nineteenth century. This diversity was based on official religious tolerance that was established under British rule after the...