The United Church of Canada: A History ed. by Don Schweitzer (review)

Until his death in 2006, research on the United Church of Canada had one starting point: a conversation with John Webster Grant. There is now a new place to begin. This anthology constitutes a comprehensive history and critique of the denomination from its nineteenth-century roots through the 1925 union to about 2006.

But objectivity is an issue.

There are two types of social observers: those who peer in from the outside and those who stand inside, looking around. The contributors to this volume are inside the house. Most of the writers seem to be the children of active United Church people. Some are “PKs” – preacher’s kids. The editor and several contributors are United Church ministers themselves, and two were nominated for moderator in 2012. This might impeach the value of the book as objective history, but it does not. This is critical history. There are several reasons why this is the biography of an institution, not an autobiography.

First, the contributing scholars use their familiarity with the ethos of the United Church in order better to describe and critique it. Functioning like cultural anthropologists back from a field trip, they maintain professional objectivity throughout. But because of their participant-observer perspective, the narratives are vivid with close, accurate, and sensitive description.

Second, two of the best chapters are by the two 2012 moderator nominees: John H. Young, of Queens, writing on “The Golden Age” (1946–60), and Ross Bartlett, reviewing the most recent period, 1990–2003. The United Church has a history of generating scholars like Northrop Frye and Grant, who know and appreciate the church but not uncritically. That history continues in this volume.

Third, this is not a denominational celebration like Burning Bush and a Few Acres of Snow, the 1994 appreciation of Canadian Presbyterianism by Canadian Presbyterians. The subject institution and the times are different. United Church culture emphasizes an action-reflection model of evaluation and criticism. United Church leaders are often their own church’s most perceptive critics. Historians of the United Church do not find it difficult to refrain from partisan cheering. In fact, leadership in the United Church requires objective self-assessment, and advocating change is now part of the leadership job description. Bartlett and Schweitzer both refer to United Church efforts to find a new vision for its identity and activity. In fact, Schweitzer writes, “leaders and members of the United Church need to study its past and learn from its history. This anthology was written to help in this process.”

It may help indeed, because there are many positive things to say about the book. It is logically organized, with the first eight chapters taking a chronological approach, almost decade by decade. These are followed by thematic chapters on the key themes and issues of the institution’s history such as worship, ministry, Aboriginal peoples, Jews, Israel and Palestine, and theology. Together they provide an archive of information that the reader can hold in one hand: names, dates, events, places, publications, public statements, faith statements, theological themes, and the ongoing saga of the relationship between the leadership and membership as they try to respond to the changing society in which the United Church has always understood itself to have a ministry.

One of the strengths of the book is that the specific chapters in the narrative are woven into the larger story that emerges out of the pre-1925 context and extends into the future. Some anthologies are patches in search of a quilt. Schweitzer and his team have stitched this quilt together.

Inevitably one could suggest another patch or two that might be added. The editor and writing team are colleagues in a Toronto-Saskatoon axis, and they neglect ministry in French. This is an important cavity, given the number of francophone congregations in 1925; the bilingual crest, website, and letterhead; the church’s historical and contemporary understanding of its citizenship in Canada; and the bilingual General Council held...