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13. Alternatives to the Evangelical Crusade
- University of Ottawa Press
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CHAPTER 13 Alternatives to theEvangelical Crusade Although each of the two parties of evangelical crusaders became a powerful majority in English-Protestant and French-Catholic Canada respectively, nevertheless significant numbers of Canadians refused to hop aboard their noisy bandwagons that trumpeted the benefits of temperance, the Anglo-Protestant civilization, or the Franco-Catholic nation. These dissenters proposed alternative visions of life and of Canadian society, visions that were based on different interpretations of the Christian faith, on different religious views, or on different ethnic, cultural, and political considerations. The most militant opposition to Canada's evangelically-driven quest for uniformity came from Louis Kiel's Metis people in the Northwest. Why some opposed the evangelicalcrusades Theopposition toboth Protestant and Catholicevangelicalismwas driven by a variety of social, intellectual, ideological, and religious reasons, a number ofwhich were the product ofmodernity,a world view thatgrew from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Modernity emphasized the rational and the individual, values that stood in contrast to both the emotional-mystical and the communal emphases ofevangelicalism.The evangelicals' focus on faith, the Bible, conversion,and good worksstruck fear into the hearts ofthose Canadians who gaveprecedence to freedom, human reason, and scientific inquiry.The evangelicals' quest forcommon and uniform standards in matters of prohibition, morality, and church authority overboth the state and people's consciences led these dissenting Canadians, both Christian and other, to fear the loss of their cherished personal, political, or cultural rights. 256 Canada's Religions Social reasons Many were driven to resist the evangelical arguments because of their social conditioning. The industrial revolution that began in eighteenthcentury England was sweeping the Western world by the second halfof the nineteenth century. Theinvention ofthe steam engine had led to the invention of locomotives, steam-driven machinery in factories, steamships , and a chain-reaction of technological development that revolutionized industry,manufacturing,transportation, and travel.Theseradical technical changes caused major upheavals in economies, standards of living, employment, social classes, and the development of large cities surrounding the growing factories thatdrew labourersfrom far and wide. Coupled with the population explosion that characterized GreatBritain after 1800, hundreds of thousands of Irish, English, and Scotsemigrated during the nineteenth century. While numbers left their rural homes for industrial centres such asBirmingham,Liverpool,and Manchester, many others landed in North America. The rapidly industrializing European Northwest had soon worked its magicon the United Statesand Canada. Industrialized and urbanized societies with growing numbers of migrant workers made for personal, cultural, and social values that differed significantly from those of traditional, rural, agrarian, and stable societies. Traditional ethnic, cultural, and religious communities broke down because of the dispersion and mixing of people, broken families, and the new geographical, economic, political, social, and religious surroundings. Frequently, young men emigrated alone with the intention of setting aside a small nest egg to pay for the journeyof their wives, children, or loved ones at a later date. This meant that industrial centres were inhabited by large numbers of young men who were separated from their families and therefore prone to become restive in the hurly-burly plants and neighbourhoods they inhabited. Some of their neighbours were a growing number of young women who had also come to the growing cities and industrial centres in order to find work. Many of these migrant workers and young people were destitute; indeed their poverty had been a major consideration that drove them out of their homelands in the hope of finding their fortune. However, more often than not they found themselves toiling in less-than-humane working conditions that included miserly wages, very long hours, unhealthy and unsafe circumstances, and the constant threat of losing their jobsat any time. Manyfelt that in leaving their rural homes for the industrial cities, they had jumped from the frying pan into the fire. The [54.225.35.224] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 14:44 GMT) Alternatives to the EvangelicalCrusade 257 situation of the immigrants was compounded by the fact that they had also lost their social support network of family, village, neighbour, and church. Indeed, all ofthese social institutions had yet to develop a solid footing in the new and growing workers' neighbourhoods ofthe citiesof industrialized Canada. For the new workers, rooming houses stood in lieu offriendlyneighbours, and reinforced the isolation, loneliness, and despair oftoo manyyoung men and women. The parishes and churches of Canada's industrializing cities were soon overwhelmed by the flood ofnew workers, many ofwhom sought to overcome their misery by drinking to excess or consorting with women...