Beyond the Noise of Solemn Assemblies: The Protestant Ethic and the Quest for Social Justice in Canada by Richard Allen (review)

Beyond the Noise of Solemn Assemblies is a collection of sixteen wide-ranging essays by one of the foremost scholars of religion, ideas, and public life in modern Canada. In the book's heavily biographical preface, the deeply religious, politically progressive Richard Allen notes that, as a New Democratic Party member of the legislative assembly for the Ontario riding of Hamilton West between 1982 and 1995, he combatted the rise of the New Right and attested to the "presence of a Christian left in Canada" (xxi).

Diverse though they are, many of the essays reveal the abiding importance of the Christian left–an entity to which Allen contributed during his political career–in Canadian history. They are plainly informed by a synthesis (a particularly apt noun, given Allen's transparent fondness for Hegelian philosophy) of Christian devotion and social democracy that was ingrained in his mind at an early age. Allen absorbed many of the views of his father, a left-wing United Church minister; later, they shaped his worldview.

Allen discusses the emergence of the Christian left as a force in Canada in chapter 6. He does so through an exploration of factors that contributed to the Social Gospel, a complex religious movement whose impact on English-Canadian culture Allen has probably done more to illuminate than any other historian. He concedes that this predominantly Protestant phenomenon can be understood, broadly, as encompassing "any and all efforts of Christians to express their faith in the social context." More precisely, however, he defines it as a "movement of Christian social thought and action" that addressed societal problems–including deplorable housing, inadequate sewage, alcohol abuse, and domestic violence–fuelled by the intensification, beginning in the late nineteenth century, of interlocking patterns of urbanization and industrialization (83).

Allen critiques early scholars of the Social Gospel who attributed its advent to an insufficiently sophisticated "stimulus-response" model wherein Protestant clerics, enamoured of liberal theology, aimed to react compassionately and constructively to acute societal challenges. While he does not reject this interpretation altogether, Allen observes that, rather than being simply reactive, the Social Gospel was the product of a particular social milieu (88). Central to this milieu, he explains, was the lingering influence of a transnational evangelical revival that began before the Social Gospel. Associated with such renowned itinerant preachers as Dwight L. Moody, the revival alerted countless Protestants (many of whom were Canadian) to the possibility of spiritual redemption and encouraged them to focus on God's immanence in everyday life, among other things. From this surge in religious enthusiasm flowed several factors that facilitated the Social Gospel's ascent in Canada. They included the creation of religiously based organizations–Toronto's Fred Victor Mission, for example–geared towards combating urban problems such as homelessness (88–100). In assessing these developments, Allen demonstrates that one cannot fully understand the Social Gospel without appreciating the circumstances from which it burst forth.

Allen further substantiates the notion that a Christian left has been integral to Canada's evolution in chapter 11, which investigates the part played by the Social Gospel in the "agrarian revolt" of the early twentieth century. He argues that this movement–which denounced what its supporters saw as unfair policies regarding tariffs and freight rates (among other issues) and which led to the formation of influential political parties at both the provincial and federal levels–largely rested on "religious considerations" linked to the Social Gospel. In developing this idea, Allen states that individual leaders of the revolt, including Louise McKinney and Henry Wise Wood, as well as organizations that supported its initiatives, notably the Manitoba and Saskatchewan Grain Growers' Associations, espoused views that aligned with Social Gospel principles. Consider the following assertion by the secretary of the Manitoba Grain Growers Association in 1914: "We are practically seeking to inaugurate...