Religion and Culture in Nineteenth-Century English Canada

Review Religion and Culture in Nineteenth-Century English Canada THE REGENERATORS: SOCIAL CRITICISM IN LATE VICTORIAN ENGLISH CANADA. Ramsay Cook. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985. A PROFUSION OFSPIRES: RELIGION IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY ONTARIO . John Webster Grant. Toronto: University ofToronto Press, 1988. A DISCIPLINED INTELLIGENCE: CRITICAL INQUIRY AND CANADIAN THOUGHT IN THE VICTORIAN ERA. A.B. McKillop. Montreal: McGillQueen 's University Press, 1979. AN EVANGELICAL MIND: NATHANAELBURWASHANDTHEMETHODIST TRADITION, 1839-1918. Marguerite Van Die. Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1989. TWO WORWS: THE PROTESTANT CULTURE OF NINETEENTHCENTURYONTARIO . William Westfall. Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1989. When Matthew Arnold visited Toronto in 1884, he no doubt shared his concerns about the decline of religious authority with Canada's own man of letters, Goldwin Smith. For these two men, the religious and moral consensus that had firmly supported Victorian society was being shaken and grave consequences loomed large. Several recent works provide a welcome revival ofthis issue, so pressing for Victorians like Arnold and Smith, of the role of religion in nineteenth-century Canadian society. This essay will review those studies, organizing a discussion of them around three sets ofquestions. First, what was the nature ofnineteenth-century English-Canadian, and specifically 192 Ontarion, religion and culture? Second, what challenges did traditional religion face in this time, and how did the AngloCanadian clerisy respond to these challenges ? And third, did this response contribute to a decline in the felt relevancy of religion in the life of Victorian, and then Edwardian, English Canadians? In this essay, religion will be consciously treated as an aspect ofculture, the primary concern being religion's relationship to the social order. Metaphysical questions concerning the existence of God, and the like, will be considered from the perspective of how they relate to cultural expression and organization within society as a whole. This is not to deny the importance of the ideational structures themselves; indeed, the working assumption of this paper is that the latter are crucial to an understanding of any culture. Thus, the paper privileges a discussion of the ideational structures ofthe methods for creating and getting at knowledge - running through both Victorian religion in English Canada, and the five histories describing it. And a final introductory note: "Ontario," "English Canada" and "Anglo Canada" are used interchangeably throughout the essay. This is done, somewhat apologetically, for the very pragmatic purpose of ease and fluidity of discussion. The all too frequent conflation ofEnglish Canada with Ontario is an issue too extensive, and perhaps too dangerous, to take up here. Nature of Ontario Religion An examination of the nature of nineteenth-century Ontario religion is primarily a study ofthe creation ofa Protestant hegemony, or dominant consensus , in this Victorian society. Indeed, in Two Worlds: The Protestant Culture of Nineteenth-Century Ontario, William Westfall plots the development of a unified 'Protestant culture' in Upper Canada-Ontario between 1820and 1870. Westfall argues that this Protestant,culture was able "to penetrate the entire social system, to shape the very consciousness of society" (14). He shows that, by 1881, less Revue detudes canadiennes Vol. 25. No. I IP1i111e111ps ! 990Spri11g) than one percent of Ontario's people claimed no religious affiliation, while the top four Protestant denominations (Anglican, Methodist, Presbyterian, and Baptist) represented close to 98 percent of the non-Catholic population (I0-11). Westfall argues that the hegemony ofProtestantism rested on the centrality of the 'sacred' within it. The sacred infused meaning and order into virtually every aspect of Ontario's Victorian culture: education, the family, the nation were all defined in the dualistic terms of material and moral, human and divine, secular and sacred. By connecting these to the unassailable authority of the divine, the sacred gave authority to this religious culture, which in turn provided the social unity and stability necessary for any society (8-9, 14). To Westfall, this dominant Protestant culture was a synthesis oftwo previously distinct religious cultures, the Methodist "culture ofexperience" and the Anglican "culture oforder." The Anglican culture oforder, Westfall argues, held that order was a primary attribute of God, and that one knew God rationally . Society reflected that order, legitimizing a vision of social and economic hierarchy within which the church played a natural role...