Full-Orbed Christianity

Full-Orbed Christianity
Author: Nancy Christie
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Total Pages: 383
Release: 1996
Genre: Canada
ISBN: 0773513973

They also explore the instrumental role of Protestant clergymen in formulating social legislation and transforming the scope and responsibilities of the modern state.

Full-Orbed Christianity

Full-Orbed Christianity
Author: Nancy Christie
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Total Pages: 382
Release: 1996-03-25
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0773565949

Christie and Gauvreau look at the ways in which reformers expanded the churches' popular base through mass revivalism, established social work and sociology in Canadian universities and church colleges, and aggressively sought to take a leadership role in social reform by incorporating independent reform organizations into the church-sponsored Social Service Council of Canada. They also explore the instrumental role of Protestant clergymen in formulating social legislation and transforming the scope and responsibilities of the modern state. The enormous influence of the Protestant churches before World War II can no longer be ignored, nor can the view that the churches were accomplices in their own secularization be justified. A Full-Orbed Christianity calls on historians to rethink the role of Protestantism in Canadian life and to see it not as the garrison of anti-modernity but as the chief harbinger of cultural change before 1940.

Secularisation in the Christian World

Secularisation in the Christian World
Author: Michael Snape
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2016-04-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1317058291

The power of modernity to secularise has been a foundational idea of the western world. Both social science and church history understood that the Christian religion from 1750 was deeply vulnerable to industrial urbanisation and the Enlightenment. But as evidence mounts that countries of the European world experienced secularising forces in different ways at different periods, the timing and causes of de-Christianisation are now widely seen as far from straightforward. Secularisation in the Christian World brings together leading scholars in the social history of religion and the sociology of religion to explore what we know about the decline of organised Christianity in Britain, Europe, the United States, Canada and Australia. The chapters tackle different strands, themes, comparisons and territories to demonstrate the diversity of approach, thinking and evidence that has emerged in the last 30 years of scholarship into the religious past and present. The volume includes both new research and essays of theoretical reflection by the most eminent academics. It highlights historians and sociologists in both agreement and dispute. With contributors from eight countries, the volume also brings together many nations for the first consolidated international consideration of recent themes in de-Christianisation. With church historians and cultural historians, and religious sociologists and sociologists of the godless society, this book provides a state-of-the-art guide to secularisation studies.

Spirits of Protestantism

Spirits of Protestantism
Author: Pamela E. Klassen
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 348
Release: 2011-06-25
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN: 0520244281

“Klassen’s book is much more than a first-rate study of how two churches in Canada positioned themselves within the ostensibly parallel worlds of biomedicine and spiritual healing. It is, at its core, an insightful meditation on the relationship between liberal Protestantism and the project of modernity. A must read not only for students of Christianity, but all those interested in the legacies of secularism and enchantment." —Matthew Engelke, London School of Economics

Christian Churches and Their Peoples, 1840-1965

Christian Churches and Their Peoples, 1840-1965
Author: Nancy Christie
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2010-12-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1442660015

Religious institutions, values, and identities are fundamental to understanding the lived experiences of Canadians in the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century. Christian Churches and Their Peoples, an inter-denominational study, considers how Christian churches influenced the social and cultural development of Canadian society across regional and linguistic lines. By shifting their focus beyond the internal dynamics of institutions, Nancy Christie and Michael Gauvreau address broad social issues such as the ways in which religion is linked to changing mores, the key role of laypeople in shaping churches, and the ways in which First Nations peoples both appropriated and resisted missionary teachings. With an important analysis of popular religious ideas and practices, Christian Churches and Their Peoples demonstrates that the cultural authority and regulatory practices of religious institutions both affirmed and opposed the personal religious values of Canadians, ultimately facilitating their elaboration of personal, ethnic, gender, and national identities.

Methodist Church on the Prairies, 1896-1914

Methodist Church on the Prairies, 1896-1914
Author: George Emery
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2001-05-03
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0773569219

The Methodist Church met the challenge with a centralized polity and a cross-class, gender-variegated, evolving religious culture. It relied on wealthy laymen to raise special funds, while small gifts fed its regular funds. Young bachelors from Ontario and Britain filled the pastorate, although low pay, inexperience, and poor supervision caused many to quit. Membership growth was slow due to low population density and church-resistant elements in the Methodist population (bachelors, immigrant co-religionists, and transients), and missions to non-Anglo-Saxon immigrants in Winnipeg, Edmonton, and rural Alberta spread Methodist values but gained few members. In The Methodist Church on the Prairies, 1896-1914, the first scholarly study of church history in the prairie region, George Emery uses quantitative methods and social interpretation to show that the Methodist Church was a cross-class institution with a dynamic evangelical culture, not a middle-class institution whose culture was undergoing secularization. He demonstrates that the Methodist's achievement on the prairies was impressive and compared favourably with what Presbyterians and Anglicans achieved.