Christian Churches and Their Peoples, 1840–1965: A Social History of Religion in Canada by Nancy Christie and Michael Gauvreau (review)

The well-known authors of Canadian religious history, Nancy Christie and Michael Gauvreau, team up in this volume to assert that the Canadian people from 1840 to 1965 experienced their religion both inside and outside institutional churches. From this central theme they develop the argument that the study of popular religion for the historian is as important as the study of institutional religions. They see popular religion not as the radical religious fringe but as “the beliefs and practices of laypeople” (p. 1) who simply follow the forms of religion that are different from those recommended by clergy. The authors go on to contend that although institutional religion fluctuated during this extended period, popular religion “remained relatively constant between 1840 and the 1970s” and grew in number (p. 4).

The authors develop their themes chronologically beginning with the period from 1840 to 1870 when the institutional churches left their otherworldly view of religion behind to move “to more open and anonymous institutions . . . to evangelize Canadian society” (p. 60). Adjusting to expectations of religious people, these religious institutions initially gained congregants by voluntary attendance, but the subsequent period (1880–1910) turned out to be “one of the most conflictual periods in Canadian religious history” (p. 61). Tensions rose between rural people and urbanists, individuals within sectarian congregations, and males and women’s rights advocates. For many religionists, social service became central to Christian life and replaced the concern for the fatherhood of God.

But the most pellucid of their arguments was the authors’ discussion of the Christian missions to the Canadian Northwest. Casting doubt on the historical view of missionaries as “heroic figures” and likewise the revised view of the missionary as an “anti-hero wreaking utter destruction upon non-Christian societies,” the authors choose a third, more complex interpretation of mission work as a “cultural encounter between missionaries and non-Christian peoples” (p. 107). This fresh view contends that “the aboriginal societies were able to select and reinvent the Christian message in order to fashion an indigenized but no less authentic expression of Christianity” (p. 107). In a second assertion about Canadian missions, the authors point out that the different viewpoints among the missionaries, merchants, and government officials in the Northwest were many and that they were far from an oppressive monolith aligned against Indigenous people.

Social Christianity emerged among Canadian religions between 1910 and 1940, the authors continue, and demanded that Christian conversions be shared with the community through engagement in social reform. Both men and women’s organizations became part of “a constellation of reform agencies, social policy research, and legislative lobbyists” (p. 142) that helped steer the social policies of the modern Canadian state. The book contends that, during this period, Christian lay leadership drove Canadian social reform.

In the 1960s Pierre Berton in The Comfortable Pew is given credit for challenging the Canadian churches to leave their comfort to become critics of the middle class and the social forces that dominate Canadian life. Berton hoped to reinvigorate social concern so that Christians would become “the central animating force for the creation of a truly humanistic culture” (p. 180) that would give leadership to Canadian social reform.

A decline began in 1965 for institutional churches, whereas in contrast popular religion grew among Evangelical denominations and Pentecostal groups. The Protestant churches espoused the “freedom of religious choice” that thus decreased church affiliation and could no longer pursue the project of creating a Christian society. Noninstitutional religion continued to attract many believers who followed “a system of private practices and personal values” (p. 199) that remained constant during this period, in contrast to the churches that were in fluctuation. The goal of marriage shifted from procreation and...