The Covenanters in Canada: Reformed Presbyterianism from 1820 to 2012 by Eldon Hay (review)

Many individual Covenanting Presbyterians immigrated to Canada over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but, as Eldon Hay shows in this fascinating study, attempts to establish the tradition in Canada largely failed. Hay begins his book by looking at the origins of Reformed Presbyterians in Ireland, Scotland, and the United States and chronicles the attempts to establish congregations in the Maritimes (New Brunswick and Nova Scotia) and then continues west with his explorations. The book becomes a minute study of individual personalities, largely clergy, and particular congregations. Among the features that distinguished Reformed Presbyterians or Covenanters from other Presbyterians was their rejection of the civil government. They would neither hold office nor vote. The tradition also maintained elements gradually abandoned by other Presbyterians, in particular the exclusive unaccompanied singing of metrical psalms.

What might have been a series of congregational histories, most of which indicate limited ecclesial success, becomes an interesting narrative of the difficulties that smaller traditions experienced in establishing themselves in British North America. As well as the anticipated challenges of finance, effective ministers willing to serve far from home, and competing mission boards, Hay outlines the pull that the dominant culture exercised on the Covenanters. The author also explores how another religious tradition, the Quakers, struggled to maintain their distinctiveness and usually with greater success. The Covenanters used strict discipline (effectively or ineffectively) against those who voted or otherwise parted from their values. Nevertheless, as we move from the Maritimes through Lower Canada and into Upper Canada, we become familiar with individual members, and clergy, giving up the struggle to establish this tradition and instead finding their way into other traditions, notably the Free Presbyterian tradition and, after 1875, the Presbyterian Church in Canada. Never having adequate concentrations of Covenanters in a particular area, individual congregations struggled to survive. They were able to do well when they had gifted leadership, lay and clergy, but these moments of strength seem like bright patches in an otherwise dark sky. Hay pays particularly close attention to the strategies of outreach and evangelization that particular Covenanting traditions followed. These tended to be inward looking, hoping that the faith could be passed on generation by generation to those on the inside. Only rarely do we see glimpses of these Covenanting Presbyterians looking outward and seeking to bring in those outside their ethnicity or tradition. Near the end of his study, Eldon Hay details the recent success of this kind of approach in the Ottawa Valley of Ontario, largely under the leadership of one minister, the Rev. Dr. Richard Ganz. One feature of this growth was the establishment of a theological hall for the development of an indigenous Canadian clergy, rather than relying on imported clergy from Ireland or the United States. What is notable is that these attempts to reach out seem to succeed to the extent to which Reformed Presbyterians abandoned some of their distinctive features and instead adopted a more generic evangelicalism. Even here, success was not universal. While the revival under Ganz provides a hopeful note, not all of these congregations have thrived, and we are still talking of a tradition with fewer than five hundred members in Canada in 2007.

Reformed Presbyterians were always a tiny group within the larger Canadian religious context. Without a critical mass, there does not seem to have been the opportunity for Covenanters to establish the crucial institutions needed to continue. Eldon Hay’s analysis throughout the book, as well as his careful attention to detail, is to be commended. Perhaps unintentionally, Hay has also provided a case study demonstrating that in Canada in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries small was not better. Competition favoured traditional denominations (or at least the more traditional Presbyterian denominations), and strictness was a handicap rather than an asset. This challenges many of the theories proposed currently by religious sociologists, such as Dean Kelley, who, in his...