A Culture of Faith: Evangelical Congregations in Canada by Sam Reimer, Michael Wilkinson (review)

A Culture of Faith explicates the causes for Canadian evangelical congregations’ relative institutional vitality compared to their mainline Protestant and Catholic counterparts. The data set consists of over 650 interviews with denominational leaders, lead pastors, and youth and children pastors across Canada and covers five denominations from the Pentecostal, Reformed, Mennonite, Holiness, and Baptist traditions. The findings are further corroborated using other Canadian and American surveys. Adopting a sociology of culture approach, Reimer and Wilkinson utilise the congregation as the unit of analysis and argue that evangelical subculture is what makes the congregations thrive, the key elements being its: distinction from the broader society, relational embeddedness, promotion of personal religious experiences, prioritisation of youth and children, and organisational factors. The book chapters explore many facets of evangelical congregations ranging from culture, demographics, priorities, programmes, leadership, and finances. In their conclusion, the authors maintain that it is still unknown whether evangelical congregations will follow the nationwide trend of declining institutional religiosity.

There is much to like about the book. It provides the first bird’s-eye view on Canadian evangelical congregations nationwide. Also, it dispels many long-standing misconceptions about evangelicals such as their priorities (e.g. they do not prioritise political mobilisation) and evangelicals being insular and uncooperative (e.g. they are more cooperative than most think). Furthermore, it strikes a good balance for both academic and practitioner audiences. Overall, it makes a credible case that is empirically grounded.

My major criticism lies with the book’s inadequate handling of ethnicity, the sample size being small. Categories like ‘Asian’ (e.g. Chinese, Indian) or ‘White’ (e.g. Italian, Dutch) are undefined. Generational considerations, critical to studies of ethnicity, are unaccounted for. Furthermore, literature gaps concerning ethnic congregations are evident. For example, it is well established that Chinese congregations have long served as social hubs for new immigrants to preserve ethnic culture for future generations (e.g. F. Yang 1999), a key factor that fuels immigrant church growth. Defining race and ethnicity and accounting for generations will help explain confounding findings, such as table 4.3’s low ranking of ‘preserving ethnic culture or language’ (p. 102). To be fair, the authors acknowledge their small ethnic sample size and that to be a limitation in their study.

Given Reimer and Wilkinson are both sociologists, I wonder if the book’s engagement with sociological theory is minimised for the practitioner audience despite the authors stating the book is written for an academic audience (p. 208). For example, no definition of isomorphism is provided nor of its core tenets of normative, coercive and mimetic pressures; and the explanatory power of isomorphism (from neo-institutional theory) is not capitalised upon despite its explicit reference to describe how evangelical congregations become similar.

A Culture of Faith has many positives and presents a convincing argument for the institutional vitality of Canadian evangelical congregations. With the above caveats on its treatment of ethnicity and engagement with sociological theory, I highly recommend it to those who are interested in evangelical congregations and the broader religious trends in Canada.