Marguerite Bourgeoys and the Congregation of Notre Dame, 1665-1700

Marguerite Bourgeoys and the Congregation of Notre Dame, 1665-1700
Author: Patricia Simpson
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2005-12-12
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0773573194

Simpson shows that the order faced great resistance from the male church hierarchy despite the fact that the pioneer society depended on the work of the Congregation. The order was particularly important in assuming the guardianship of many filles du roi - young women sent to New France under royal auspices to be married to the men of the colony. Simpson also examines the many difficulties the Congregation faced, which included natural disasters and the dangers faced in trying to reach women and children in settlements throughout New France, as far away as Acadia.

Marguerite Bourgeoys et la Congrégation de Notre Dame, 1665-1670

Marguerite Bourgeoys et la Congrégation de Notre Dame, 1665-1670
Author: Patricia Simpson
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Total Pages: 447
Release: 2007-10-19
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0773584684

Marguerite Bourgeoys (1620-1700) was canonized in 1982. Patricia Simpson goes beyond myth and hagiography to explore Bourgeoys's dream of establishing a radically new religious community of women, recounting her thirty-year struggle to obtain official recognition for the Congrégation of Notre-Dame. Simpson shows that the order faced great resistance from the male Church hierarchy despite the fact that the pioneer society depended on the work of the Congrégation. The order was particularly important in assuming the guardianship of many filles du roi - young women sent to New France under royal auspices to be married to the men of the colony. Simpson also examines the many difficulties the Congrégation faced, which included natural disasters and the dangers involved in trying to reach women and children in settlements throughout New France, as far away as Acadia.

Into Silence and Servitude

Into Silence and Servitude
Author: Brian Titley
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Total Pages:
Release: 2017-08-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0773551727

For many American Catholics in the twentieth-century the face of the Church was a woman's face. After the Second World War, as increasing numbers of baby boomers flooded Catholic classrooms, the Church actively recruited tens of thousands of young women as teaching sisters. In Into Silence and Servitude Brian Titley delves into the experiences of young women who entered Catholic religious sisterhoods at this time. The Church favoured nuns as teachers because their wageless labour made education more affordable in what was the world's largest private school system. Focusing on the Church's recruitment methods Titley examines the idea of a religious vocation, the school settings in which nuns were recruited, and the tactics of persuasion directed at both suitable girls and their parents. The author describes how young women entered religious life and how they negotiated the sequence of convent "formation stages," each with unique challenges respecting decorum, autonomy, personal relations, work, and study. Although expulsions and withdrawals punctuated each formation stage, the number of nuns nationwide continued to grow until it reached a pinnacle in 1965, the same year that Catholic schools achieved their highest enrolment. Based on extensive archival research, memoirs, oral history, and rare Church publications, Into Silence and Servitude presents a compelling narrative that opens a window on little-known aspects of America’s convent system.

Contesting the Moral High Ground

Contesting the Moral High Ground
Author: Paul T. Phillips
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Total Pages: 246
Release: 2013
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 077354111X

How four of Britain's best-known thinkers influenced the public consciousness on issues from God to the environment.

Boundless Dominion

Boundless Dominion
Author: Denis McKim
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Total Pages: 385
Release: 2017-11-30
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0773552413

In the twenty-first century, the word Presbyterian is virtually synonymous with “austere” and “parochial.” These associations are by no means historically unfounded, as early Canadian Presbyterians insisted on Sabbath observance and had a penchant for inter- and intra-denominational disagreement. However, many other ideas circulated within this religious community’s collective psyche. Boundless Dominion delves into the elaborate worldview that galvanized nineteenth-century Canadian Presbyterianism. Denis McKim uncovers a vibrant print culture and Presbyterian support for such initiatives as Indigenous evangelism, temperance advocacy, and anti-slavery activism and finds that many of the denomination’s characteristics contrast sharply with its dour and quarrelsome reputation. Tracing the themes of providence, politics, nature, and history in Presbyterian communities across five provinces, from Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick to Lower and Upper Canada, this book reveals that at the heart of this denomination lay a desire to facilitate God’s dominion and to promote Protestant piety across northern North America and beyond. Through an innovative approach to the study of religious ideas, Boundless Dominion highlights the permeability of borders and the myriad ways in which nineteenth-century Canada – including its Presbyterian community – shaped and was shaped by interactions with the wider world.

Faithful Encounters

Faithful Encounters
Author: Emrah Şahin
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Total Pages:
Release: 2018-10-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 0773555501

By the early twentieth century, there were close to two hundred American missionaries working in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. They came in droves as early as 1830, organizing hundreds of schools, hospitals, printing presses, and seminaries. Until now, the missionaries' sources and perspectives have dominated discussions of this moment in history, but the experiences of the Ottoman authorities are just as, if not more, revealing of an increasingly tense relationship between Christianity and Islam. An enthralling narrative of how locals made sense of American religious activity in the Ottoman Empire, Faithful Encounters examines the relationships between the authorities who managed the empire from the capital city of Istanbul, provincial agents who carried out the capital's orders, and the missionaries who engaged with them. Exploring a wide range of untapped sources – from imperial ministries, security forces, and local petitions to international reports and missionary collections – Emrah Sahin traces the interactions of the Ottoman authorities, focusing on the viewpoints and manoeuvres they adopted to monitor and conquer the missionary presence at a time of turbulent public and political upheaval. Offering a comparative context from which to reconsider recent cultural relations in the region, Faithful Encounters is not only a history of Christian and Muslim relations. It is a lesson about a failing mission in a failing empire, with stunning relevance to the looming religious and ethnic crises of today.

Saving Germany

Saving Germany
Author: James Enns
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2017-03-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0773549145

Historians have mainly concentrated on the significance of the Marshall Plan, the creation of NATO, and exports of pop culture to describe the role of North Americans in the development of West Germany after the devastation of the Second World War. In Saving Germany, James Enns brings an entirely new focus to West Germany’s recovery by demonstrating how North American missionaries played a formative role in cultivating the humanitarian and spiritual conscience of postwar Germany. Enns begins by categorizing the kinds of Protestant missionary agencies active in West Germany, which ranged from mainline churches overseeing ecumenical humanitarian and church reconstruction projects to independent evangelical mission agencies working alongside local church groups. He then identifies notable themes that contextualize the spectrum of missionary responses, including the degree to which missionaries intentionally functioned as agents of Western democracy. In addition to discussions of well-known figures such as US evangelist Billy Graham, Enns highlights the important contributions of the Janz Quartet from the Canadian prairies and Robert Kreider of the Mennonite Central Committee. Tracking thirty years of transnational Christian missionary work, Saving Germany demonstrates the significant role of North American missionary agencies in the reconstruction of Germany.

Beyond the Noise of Solemn Assemblies

Beyond the Noise of Solemn Assemblies
Author: Richard Allen
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Total Pages:
Release: 2019-01-15
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0773555544

Since the 1970s Richard Allen's scholarship on the social gospel has broken new ground in the field of Canadian social and religious history by recovering key aspects of the tradition and its contribution to reform movements and politics. Beyond the Noise of Solemn Assemblies collects and extends many of his classic works to present a comprehensive overview of a major thread in the fabric of the country. Observing the mutual foundations of political and religious traditions in myth and arguing that the sacred and the secular belong together in discussions of public affairs, Allen contests the view that religion is personal and isolated from the public square. He discusses a range of topics: the transition from providential to progressive thought in nineteenth-century Canada; the new spirituality of social solidarity articulated by Winnipeg college students in the 1890s; the role of the social gospel in pioneering urban reform; farmers and workers finding in radical Christianity legitimation for political revolt; Christian intellectuals in the 1930s framing a revolutionary prospectus for Depression-era Canada; the significance of Norman Bethune's religious upbringing for his life and work; strategically focused post-war ecumenical coalitions like Project North and the Latin American Working Group; and the prospects for democratic socialism at the end of the Cold War. Opening with a chapter relating the author's upbringing in a ministerial household dedicated to the Protestant ethic as the spirit of socialism, Beyond the Noise of Solemn Assemblies represents a significant contribution to understanding the social Christian movement in Canada.

Scandal in the Parish

Scandal in the Parish
Author: Karen E. Carter
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Total Pages:
Release: 2019-05-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0773557679

In 1770, the priest Nicolas Vernier was accused of neglecting church services, inappropriate behaviour in the confessional, financial improprieties, and affairs with the village schoolmistresses. In a contentious church court case, parishioners described all of their priest's wrongdoings, and in turn, he detailed many of theirs. Ultimately, Vernier finished his career as a cathedral canon in another diocese. Scandal in the Parish recounts Vernier's story and many similar eighteenth-century cases. In fascinating detail that reveals essential facets of rural religion during the Catholic Reformation period, Karen Carter considers French lay people's relationship with their parish curé, who governed and influenced so much of their religious practice. Although the priest's role as purveyor of God's grace through the sacraments was secure as long as he performed his duties appropriately, priests who were unable to navigate the pressures and high expectations put on them by their superiors and parishioners risked broken relationships, public disturbances of the peace, and even prosecution. These scandals, Carter demonstrates, tell us much about rural parish life, the processes of negotiation and accommodation between curés and their parishioners, and ongoing religious reforms and enforcement throughout the eighteenth century. An engaging venture into the world of the parish that highlights the centrality of the priest-parishioner relationship, Scandal in the Parish reveals the attitudes and practices of ordinary people who were active agents in their religious and spiritual lives.

The Guardianship of Best Interests

The Guardianship of Best Interests
Author: Renée Nicole Lafferty
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Total Pages: 402
Release: 2013
Genre: History
ISBN: 0773540555

A history of charitable children's homes and emergent state-centred child welfare policy in Nova Scotia