Religion in Canada

temal and external autonomy, reinforced by the demands of the other provinces, has wrought a veritable revolution in the practice and theory ofCanadian federalism . Morin is to be commended for having provided us with a lucid, if highly biased, account of one significant dimension of this devolution of power in the Canadian federal system. Memoirs do constitute a valuable contribution to the historian's data. All the authors here considered function as important witnesses to various aspects of modem Quebec. Their contributions comprise, in divergent ways, candid, informative , and lucid personal accounts of events and personalities that contributed in large and small ways to making the Quebec and the Canada we know today. The fact that the authors have made no deliberate attempt to hide their respective biases will also help future Canadians realize and appreciate the full range of ideological perspectives, often hostile and contradictory, that competed in the open marketplace of our diverse political cultures. It is now up to historians to take up where these memoirs leave off. MICHAEL D. BEHIELS University of Ottawa Religion in Canada LEGUSE CATHOUQUE DANS L'ONTARIO FRAN9AIS DU DIX-NEUVIEME SIECLE. Cahiers dhistoire de l'Universite d'Ottawa, 13. Ottawa: Editions de lVniversite d'Ottawa, 1984. FRAGMENTED GODS: THE POVERTYAND POTENTIAL OFREUGIONIN CANADA. Reginald W. Bibby. Toronto: Irwin Publishing, 1987. THE DYNAMICS OF HUITERITE SOCIETY: AN ANALYTICAL APPROACH . Karl A. Peter. Edmonton: University ofAlberta Press, 1987. 162 REUGION POPULAIRE, RELIGION DE CLERCS? Collection "Culture populaire, "2. Ed. Benoft Lacroix et Jean Simard. Quebec: Institut quebecois de recherche sur la culture, 1984. REUGION POPULAIRE AU QUEBEC: TYPOLOGIE DES SOURCES; BIBUOGRAPHIE SELECTWE (1900-1980). Benoft Lacroix et Madeleine Grammond avec la collaboration de Lucille Cote. Collection "Instruments de travail," JO. Quebec: Institut quebecois de recherche sur la culture, 1985. BOTH MY HOUSES: FROM POUT/CS TO PRIESTHOOD. Sean O'Sullivan with Rod McQueen. Toronto: Key Porter, 1986. Recently I heard. the story of some significant and profound religious experiences . At the end ofthe account, my friend commented that three others had been told the same story, but that no others were likely to know of it. The experiences were so personal that few would appreciate their value. Religion penetrates to the hidden core ofpeople's lives. To speak about it, or write it down, often transforms its character and dilutes its influence. The documents and traces it leaves behind thus veil rather than reveal the role it plays. This is to be remembered when we undertake a study of religion in Canada, for conclusions will always be tentative and suggestive, never definitive and absolute . Herein lies a major problem. What bits of evidence can be used to develop and elaborate that study? A number of recent works suggest some of the options available. It is tempting to start with the institutional structures ofreligion, with church or synagogue, with commissioned studies or official correspondence. This is the approach taken by Robert Choquette in L'Eglise catholique dans l'Ontariofran<;ais du dix-neuvieme siecle. He mines the archives of the ·various dioceses to discover the letters and official circulars that have been retained. Revue detudes canadiennes Vol. 22, No. 4 (Hiver 1987-88 Winter) The result is interesting. He traces the transition from a pioneer mission, nurtured and fostered by the more mature church of Quebec, into a fiercely independent , but divided, catholicism in which the Irish of Kingston, Toronto, and London fail to assert their authority over the more francophone diocese of Ottawa. He reproduces the reports of missionaries among the Indians and the lumber camps. And he documents the early ambivalence about separate schools, which hardened into conviction as government authorities systematically removed French-language instruction from the publicly funded schools, even though in part this reaction was fed by an equivocation on the word "public." At one time "public school" referred to the common school as distinct from the separate, confessional school; at another, it meant the publicly funded school (which could be either common or separate) as distinct from the private, independent one. On occasion the correspondence between bishops reveals personal concerns and the human reality that lies behind institutional attitudes. But even then the results are deceptive. For one is moved to put pen to paper by some institutional concern, and that primary interest controls what is said and what is left unsaid. When one is promoting a candidate for a vacant see, for example, one chooses words carefully to accentuate and improve on good qualities and to downplay or ignore difficulties. One's opponents will then invert the process, organizing public protests and petitions which describe the candidate in black and unattractive terms. In a similar way, one does not write about the profound experiences of shared discovery and enrichment that are generated at a retreat or at a meeting of bishops. What remains for future generations are the disagreements that need to be vented, the campaigns that are in progress , the discipline that must be exercised. Thus, while Choquette provides a useful picture of the way the institutional Journal of Canadian Studies church developed during the nineteenth century in Ontario, one has a sense of being offered a caricature of the religious life of the French-catholic Ontarians, even of the bishops and missionaries. The hidden spiritual longings, discoveries , and religious sustenance that enriched people's lives, giving them the confidence to tackle the difficult demands of every day, are missing. The bishops emerge as church politicians, which they were, but we do not see their other side - the spiritual life that inspired, and at times discouraged, their clergy and people . As a result, by the end, one feels that religion has slipped through one's fingers. In a peculiar way, one has the same reaction when one puts down Reginald Bibby's Fragmented Gods: The Poverty and Potential of Religion in Canada. Nonetheless, it is a fascinating book, for it assembles statistics from both census figures and questionnaires to illustrate what people in contemporary Canada say they believe and practice. The result is both interesting and somewhat unexpected. At the time churches were ostensibly growing in the 1950s and 1960s, they were in fact declining because their numbers represented a smaller proportion of the population. Despite all the rhetoric about the increasing disillusionment of people with the "liberal" churches and their turning toward more evangelical traditions, statistical evidence suggests there was relatively little such switching; people were just not active in the churches to which they professed allegiance. At the same time, the proportion of conservative evangelicals remained fairly constant , the various sects poaching offeach other rather than converting the unconverted . (Indeed, Bibby's percentage figures for the number of conservative Protestants in Canada may well be high, since he includes all the Baptists, even though, at times, the Baptist Convention of Ontario and Quebec used the same literature for Sunday Schools as the United Church of Canada, while the Baptists of Nova Scotia belong to one of 163 the establishment denominations, vying with the Anglicans and United Church for status.) Bibby theorizes that Canadians approach religion as a consumer product: they adopt whatever seems to be of immediate value, whether an infant's baptism , belief in Jesus, the importance of church attendance, or a moral crusade. In response, the churches have turned into national and multinational corporations , purveying products to an increasingly selective clientele. As a result, one finds little difference on most political and social issues between those who score as committed and those who score as uncommitted, or between one denomination and another. The sociological approach through questionnaire and statistics is valuable for providing a sketch of what is happening in a country. As well, the figures produced in such a study can introduce a realistic perspective to the plans and rhetoric of religious leaders. One of the contributing studies to Bibby's analysis was, in fact, undertaken at the behest of the Anglican Diocese of Toronto, and has since become a focal point for future planning. Yet, as one reads through the pages of Fragmented Gods, it begins to resemble an old gospel song: the refrain has become too familiar through repetition , and its banality can no longer be ignored. For one senses that Bibby has not captured the truth in his consumer model; that large numbers, suitably selected to discount insincere answers and deliberate attempts to mislead, do not represent the religious reality of Canadian life. 164 Consider the following question: Which of the following statements comes closest to expressing what you believe about God: I know God exists and I have no doubts about it. While I have doubts, I feel that I do , believe in God. I find. myself believing in God some of the time, but not at other times. I don't believe in a personal God, but I do believe in a higher power of some kind. I don't know whether there is a God and I don't believe there is any way to find out. I don't believe in God. Other. (65) In phrasing this question Bibby asks his respondents to probe into the depths of their personal lives and to paste a label on them, a label that conforms to a certain set of concepts and opinions. To be sure, the labels are part of conventional language: they are the currency of preachers and the expected assumptions of society. But what do they really mean? Is belief a set of opinions formulated in a statement? Or is it something much more subtle, the kind of thing that happens at many different levels and inmany different ways? Is an inarticulate mother who conveys to her child a sense of the mystery of life less a believer than the glib preacher who has learned the cant phrases of his Bible College? And what about that word "God"? Anyone who has struggled through the dark night of the soul knows from profound experience that God and the absence of God are not polar opposites, that belief and doubt are part ofthe same experience. A religious agnostic may be quite ready to affirm that he does not know whether there is a God since there is no way of knowing; nonetheless he lives his life in the presence of transcendent power. Thus, a devout and sincere believer may check Bibby's fifth option - which would score as uncommitted - because he has learned that faith is beyond all knowledge and that God is beyond all human discovery. So it goes. Bibby's questionnaires play on the surface. They invite quick and unreflective answers, often moulded by the familiar locutions of one's immediate setting. They structure options according to the preconceptions and traditions of statistical sociology, according to the superficial phrases and terms of a world that has forgotten or grown dull to the deep things ofreligion, which find expression only with difficulty. This is not an insignificant flaw. One suspects that Bibby's discoveries about the nature Revue detudes canadiennes of Canadian religion were preordained by the questionnaire method and the phrases used. There is a symbiotic relation between market surveys and the consumer society. Thus, it is not at all surprising that an "objective" study, which uses the techniques of the former, will conclude that religion is a part of the latter. Can such an approach really lead us closer to the truth about religion in Canada? At the end of Bibby's study are we any nearer to those roots of personal experience and life by means of which people nurture and sustain their everyday lives? Do we know what really happens when some suburbanite attends his semi-annual church service on Christmas eve and Easter morning? Is the religious life that there finds expression any more or any less profound than that of the regular attender who is also a church elder? There is no answer to the particularities of that question, because truth is hidden in people's hearts and lives, and efforts to express that truth are all too often ignored or misunderstood. There is, nevertheless, much value to be gained from sociological studies like that ofBibby. For all ofthe arbitrary imprecision of the questionnaire method, it does provide us with a sketch of what is going on in Canadian society. But we should beware lest we take the image for reality, assuming that religion is captured in certain preformulated options, certain conventional practices, certain moral attitudes . Religion changes and is transformed as times change. The regular prayer and Bible reading of the nineteenth century may not be the routines of religion that nurture people's souls as they venture into the twenty-first. In fact, what is actually going on right now may be missed because it is so silent, so pervasive , and so familiar - or not provided for by the kinds of questions asked in the survey. The Dynamics of Hutterite Society is also a sociological study. But Karl Peter uses his knowledge of Hutterite traditions, his experience of Hutterite community, and his interviews with inJoumal of Canadian Studies dividual men and women to supplement statistics garnered from previous studies and the Hutterite organizations themselves . Of primary interest is the way these communities have remained relatively unchanged over the century, even though numbers have increased more rapidly than in the general population . Peter suggests (and evidence seems to bear him out) that social stability has been achieved by an ascetic life style within a prosperous economy. As a result, wealthy settlements were able to initiate daughter communities of an appropriate size to relieve the internal stress of overpopulation. Now that economic conditions have changed, and technology has reduced the demand on labour, Peter and his colleagues have noticed that the stable social structures are being placed under strain. What is impressive about the various studies that Peter assembles in this book is the way he recognizes, and gives credit to, the religious practices and beliefs that have enabled these communes to resist change and dissolution. In each community , the executive council of six elders includes not only the managers of the business operations, but also two preachers and the German school teacher (whose responsibility it is to transmit received values to the next generation). In the weekly service, the preachers read traditional homilies which reinforce in familiar ways the beliefs and convictions of the community. Adolescent individualism is tolerated, but social ties and the discovery that ultimate worth is found in the shared life of the commune serve to reintegrate young men and women into the social fabric. Peter suggests that evangeliccll individualism is combining with an accumulation of personal possessions to test the viability of that equilibrium. But he acknowledges the role unexamined faith and routine practice continue to play in nurturing religious commitment and preserving these islands of communism and communalism within our capitalistic and individualistic society. Peter is relatively successful in ap165 preciating religion's part in this development . As an academic, he is naturally unimpressed by the intellectual sterility that simply repeats religious homilies from the distant past; as a member of modem North American society, with its stress on individual fulfillment, he perhaps overemphasizes the frustrations of community living. But he is well aware that it is precisely the all-pervasive religious perspective, permeating into the most elementary aspects of Hutterite life to become routine, conventional, and at times petty, that continues to provide the implicit yet positive resources for human satisfaction and fulfillment. It is Peter's basic sympathy for Hutterite culture which helps us appreciate a little better the contribution religion makes to Canadian life. Sociology and history, however, are not the only ways of studying religion. One ofthe more exciting ventures in recent years has been that inspired by Benoit Lacroix of the ' Universite de Laval. Over fifteen years, from 1968 to 1982, he co-ordinated an on-going research programme on popular religion in Quebec. An impressive series of eleven scholarly conferences, some preserved in published form, have discussed such topics as maritime folklore, pilgrimages, imagery, and miracles. To this achievement we can add a variety of graduate dissertations and individual research projects, culminating in a selective bibliography, prepared by Benoit Lacroix and Madeleine Grammond: Religion Populaire au Quebec: Typologie des sources; Bibliographie selective (1900-1980). The first part of this volume discusses the problems posed when one wants to get behind the official formulations of the church and pious pronouncements of the clergy to the faith that motivates and sustains ordinary people . Since relatively few unveil their secret thoughts in diaries and letters, the discipline must adopt indirect means. Bits of evidence, such as remembered folk songs, illustrated prayer cards, or accounts of popular temperance movements , become signs of those things that 166 remain hidden. Hard data lets slip the object being investigated. The sensitive and creative use of semiotics recognizes in fragments garnered from the attic some of the emotions, aspirations, and expectations that motivated past lives. This theoretical typology of sources acquires substance when we turn to the proceedings of the programme's final conference. Religion populaire, religion de clercs? reproduces not only the twenty odd papers presented, but also some of the key interventions from the floor. The result displays in a fascinating way how the personal faith of religious people has found expression in quebecois life: stained glass windows in a church, the reprintings of a popular devotional book, ex votos at the shrine of Ste. Anne de Beaupre, the daily routine of nuns in a religious order, the inversion of traditional religion in the lumber camps, the design of tombstones and cemeteries, clauses inserted in wills, and rituals of the Order of Jacques Cartier, a secret society created to preserve catholic and canadiennes traditions, .... The list is incomplete . But each study in its own way illustrates and reveals the simple and subtle faith that moved through the hidden depths of people's lives. Indeed, the diversity represented in such a conference and the tentative and incomplete nature of the papers carry their own meaning. They remind reader and researcher that popular religion will always be more than any one study, or any set of studies, can capture. The same person who works as a lumber jack in the winter may order a tombstone for a wife or parent, go to the solicitor to write his will, erect a crucifix on the comer of his property, and place the black cross of temperance beside a picture of the Sacred Heart on his dining-room wall. Were he asked to describe his faith, he might well prove tongue-tied. Yet some deep convictions , some accumulation of experiences , feelings, and perceptions have found expression in these various ways and have accompanied him in one way or another from baptism to funeral. Through such rich diversity, both of Revue detudes canadiennes themes investigated and of people doing research, this project measures its own quality. Some analyses are perceptive and illuminating; and these set a standard that others do not, and cannot, meet. The liberated ideologies ofa Quebec released from its clerical past on occasion look back with revulsion and incomprehension on the simple piety of those who were content to appropriate the faith of their cure, or to conform their lives without question to the rituals and conventions of a convent. Nonetheless, the plurality of this volume allows the reader to correct prejudices and to sense some of the reality and vitality behind the story. Just as stereoscopic vision creates an awareness of depth, this rich, diverse, and multi-valenced study of popular religion in Quebec provides, in perhaps the only way possible, a sense of the religious life that sustained and motivated our ancestors. Against the background of this semiotic approach to faith we tum to our final example, Sean O'Sullivan's Both My Houses: From Politics to Priesthood. This autobiography of a young politician who left the House of Commons just before he qualified for a pension in order to study for the priesthood, and who then, only a few years into a dynamic and creative ministry, contracted leukemia, is a delight. Not only does it read well, stylistically assisted by Rod McQueen, but it is amazingly revealing. The dirty tricks of a political past are recounted with neither self-justification nor selfreproach , almost as if the young Diefenbaker partisan were someone else. The events that led to a priestly vocation are described with no overlay of unctious piety, but as a matter-of-fact discovery of what was really important about life. And the moments of profound despair, of agony, and of ultimate acceptance of a life never free from the shadow of death are described with a simplicity that is all the more powerful in its effect. Here is a book that tells us a great deal about the religion that seldom finds expression. A quick glimpse of parents, praying on their knees each night before Journal of Canadian Studies going to bed; the ability to tell the truth even though it be self-incriminating; the sense that faith and the relation to one's Maker are as much a part of life as political conventions and chemotherapy - all these are signs of a reality that transcends normal data. Not only does O'Sullivan display his own faith, he offers glimpses of religious commitment in the lives of other people as well: a friend, Sam Restiva; a religious recruiter, Father Joseph F. Lupo; a political ally like Paul Hellyer; and an opponent like John Turner. O'Sullivan's sense of depth, so painfully acquired, enables him to recognize, at least in retrospect, the faith and integrity of others, as well as to suggest the resources he himself has called upon. Of the six books here considered, it is perhaps O'Sullivan's autobiography that best captures the role religion plays in actual Canadian life, for it does not isolate faith into a part of life, to be set beside economic interests, political fortunes , and social organization. It shows how men and women of faith integrate all their activities, of whatever kind, and how the depths of profound experience and insight, shared only on occasion, yet play their part in moulding religious institutions , social structures, and even the political and economic order. Perhaps simply because it is autobiography, it is more successful. Research turns the researcher into an observer who must establish his credentials in a pluralistic scholarly community. As yet the academic world has not taken to heart the plea that Wilfred Cantwell Smith made thirty years ago in The Meaning and End ofReligion. A genuinely objective study of religion must, for Smith, take into account the encounter with transcendence that both transforms and inspires the faith of the believer. The semiotic approach taken by the Laval project moves well along this pathway; it is successful, in part, because the researchers are heirs of the communal faith they are investigating . Peter's sympathetic study of the Hutterites acknowledges the personal relation, but leaves it undescribed. But 167 Choquette's church archives and Bibby's questionnaires touch only the surface, the foam that hides the depths. The study of New Books 4. Culture and the Arts Boddy, Trevor. Modem Architecture in Alberta. Regina: Canadian Plains Research Center, 1987. 155p. Cloth $24.00. Crossman, Kelly. Architecture in Transition : From Art to Practice, 18851906 . Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1987. 196p. Cloth $35.00. McBumey, Margaret, and Mary Byers. Tavern in the Town: Early Inns and Taverns of Ontario. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987. 259p. Cloth $29.95. Shadbolt, Doris. The Art ofEmily Ca". Vancouver: Douglas & Mcintyre, 1987. 223p. Taddeo, Donat J., and Raymond C. Taras. Le debat linguistique au Quebec. Montreal: Les presses de l'Universite de Montreal, 1987. 246p. 5. Economics, Business Borodayevsky, Andrei D. Canada USA: Problems and Contra-Dictions in North American Economic Integration . Toronto: Progress Books, 1987. 26lp. Cloth $8.95. Brown, Malcolm C. Caring for Profit: The Economics of the Service Sector in Canada. Vancouver: Fraser Institute, 1987. 196p. Paper $19.95. Daub, Mervin. In a World Where All's Unsure: Canadian Economic Forecasting . Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1987. 236p. Cloth $32.50. Lowe, Graham S. Women in the Administrative Revolution: The Feminization of Clerical Work. Toronto: 168 religion in Canada will probably always offer virgin fields to the investigator. JOHN W. BURBIDGE Trent University University of Toronto Press, 1987. 234p. Cloth $32.50; paper $16.95. 6. Education Newson, Janice, and Howard Buchbinder . The University Means Business. Toronto: Garamond, 1988. 103p. Paper $10.95. Wotherspoon, Terry. The Political Economy of Canadian Schooling. Agincourt: Methuen, 1987. 327p. Paper $19.95. 9. History Armstrong, Joe C.W. Champlain. Toronto: Macmillan, 1987. 336p. Cloth $29.95. Baldwin, Ged. Frontier Justice: The Reminiscences ofGed Baldwin. Edmonton : University of Alberta Press, 1987. 175p. Baskerville, Peter. The Bank of Upper Canada. Toronto: Oxford, 1987. 400p. Paper $18.95. Charbonneau, Hubert, et al. Naissance d'une population: Lesfrarlfais etablis au Canada au XVIIe siecle. Montreal: Les presses de l'Universite de Montreal, 1987. 23lp. Drummond, Ian M. Progress Without Planning: The Economic History of Ontario from Confederation to the Second World War. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987. 509p. Cloth $45.00; paper $19.95. Elliott, Bruce. Irish Migrants in the Canadas: A New Approach. Montreal : McGill-Queen's University Press, 1988. 37lp. Cloth $35.00. Elliott, David R., and Iris Miller. Bible Bill: A Biography of William Aberhart. Edmonton: Reidmore Books, 1987. 373p. Revue detudes canadiennes Vol. 22, No. 4 (Hiver 1987-88 Winter) ...