Anglicans in Canada: Controversies and Identity in Historical Perspective

Preface

Preface In the following pages I discuss six controversies that I think are central to the history of theAnglican Church in Canada.I have given one chapter to each controversy, and each chapter includes not only an historical essay but also a few essential historical documents so that readers can grasp the historical flavor of Anglican life and thought in Canada.Another historian might perhaps have chosen other documents,and I,too,would have loved to include many others. In selecting these, I have been guided by the following criteria: 1. I have generally included only documents written in Canada, or at least having a specifically Canadian connection. 2. I have preferred shorter documents so that they could be reproduced whole. 3. I have generally included only documents that illustrate the public character of Anglican Christianity in Canada, not the private lives of ordinary Anglicans, interesting and important though such documents are. 4. I have generally included only documents that were recognized as important in their own day and had direct impact on the process of the historical controversies that produced them. 5. Most of these documents are rather hard to find, except in major research libraries. 6. I have tried to represent a diversity of historical periods, themes, literary genres, theological perspectives, and geographical regions. In most cases I have silently updated the spelling and capitalization of the documents and corrected obvious typographical errors. For the introductions, I have tried to assume that the reader will have little previous knowledge of Canadian history or Anglican history. I have freely used anachronistic terms, such as the “Anglican Church” where earlier generations would have said the “Church” or the “Episcopal Church” or the “established Church,” or the “Church of En00 .FM.i-xvi_Haye 1/20/04, 9:34 AM 11 xii preface gland”; “Anglicans” instead of “churchmen”; “priest” instead of “clergyman”; “First Nations” (sometimes) instead of “Indians”; and so on. For the territory today known as “Canada” for the period before 1867, I have usually used “British North America” (BNA),although that term is not the precise equivalent.The word Church is capitalized when it means the Anglican Church or the Christian Church as a whole, lowercase when it means a local congregation or a church building.Sometimes I use “churches” to refer generically to Christian communions or denominations. The phrase episcopal church is capitalized when it refers to that branch of Anglicanism formed in the United States around 1787 but lowercase when it refers to any church organized around bishops. I have given dates for most Canadians named, in part to assist reference to entries in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, the volumes of which are organized according to the year of death of their subjects. I hope that this book will provisionally fill the need for a short survey history of the Anglican Church of Canada until something better comes along, something that looks at social history, worship, music, art and architecture, finance, models of pastoral care, the diversity of ministry, and so on. The last survey history, and probably the only one a reader would want to consult now, is Archbishop Philip Carrington’s The Anglican Church in Canada, but that was published as long ago as 1963.Although it is readable and full of personality and has the merit of being structured as a chronological narrative, its statements of fact are not always reliable, and it focuses, in the old manner, on bishops and a few great clergy. Moreover, it downplays the conflicts that ordinary Anglicans experienced, the very realities that this book presents as being key to Anglican identity. The book has taken shape in a classroom situation. For about a quarter of a century I have taught courses to theological students on Anglicanism. Most commonly, I have taught these courses in conjunction with friends from Trinity College, Toronto—over the years, Cyril Powles, Thomas McIntire, Robert Black, and David Neelands. For the courses, we have always chosen readings from primary sources so students might hear the authentic voice of the past rather than their teachers’ interpretation of the past. I hope that a much wider audience will find the voice of the past as engaging as students usually do. It is a pleasure to record my gratitude to Wycliffe College, which gave me sabbatical leave to produce this volume; to the four persons mentioned above and others too numerous to name who have encouraged me, taught me, and brought important resources to my...