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.

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.

History textbooks typically list 1945–1990 as the Cold War years, but it is clear that tensions from that period are still influencing world politics today. While much attention is given to political and social responses to those first nuclear threats, none has been given to the reactions of Christian churches. North American Churches and the Cold War offers the first systematic reflection on the diverse responses of Canadian and American churches to potential nuclear disaster. A mix of scholars and church leaders, the contributors analyze the anxieties, dilemmas, and hopes that Christian churches felt as World War II gave way to the nuclear age. As they faced either nuclear annihilation or peaceful reconciliation, Christians were forced to take stands on such issues as war, communism, and their relationship to Christians in Eastern Europe. As we continue to navigate the nuclear era, this book provides insight into Chris-tian responses to future adversities and conflicts. CONTRIBUTORS William Alexander Blaikie James Christie Nicholas Denysenko Gary Dorrien Mark Thomas Edwards Peter Eisenstadt Jill K. Gill Michael Graziano Barbara Green Raymond Haberski Jr. Jeremy Hatfield Gordon L. Heath D. Oliver Herbel Norman Hjelm Daniel G. Hummel Dianne Kirby Leonid Kishkovsky Nadieszda Kizenko John Lindner David Little Joseph Loya Paul Mojzes Andrei V. Psarev Bruce Rigdon Walter Sawatsky Axel R. Schäfer Todd Scribner Gayle Thrift Steven M. Tipton Frederick Trost Lucian Turcescu Charles West James E. Will Lois Wilson

Canadians were once church-goers. During the post-war boom of the 1950s, Canadian churches were vibrant institutions, with attendance rates even higher than in the United States, but the following decade witnessed emptying pews. What happened? In Leaving Christianity Brian Clarke and Stuart Macdonald quantitatively map the nature and extent of Canadians’ disengagement with organized religion and assess the implications for Canadian society and its religious institutions. Drawing on a wide array of national and denominational statistics, they illustrate how the exodus that began with disaffected baby boomers and their parents has become so widespread that religiously unaffiliated Canadians are now the new majority. While the old mainstream Protestant churches have been the hardest hit, the Roman Catholic Church has also experienced a significant decline in numbers, especially in Quebec. Canada’s civil society has historically depended on church members for support, and a massive drift away from churches has profound implications for its future. Leaving Christianity documents the true extent of the decline, the timing of it, and the reasons for this major cultural shift.

British Columbia is at the forefront of a secularizing movement in the English-speaking world. Nearly half its residents claim no religious affiliation, and the province has the highest rate of unbelief or religious indifference in Canada. Infidels and the Damn Churches explores the historical roots of this phenomenon from the 1880s to the First World War. Lynne Marks reveals that class and racial tensions fuelled irreligion in a world populated by embattled ministers, militant atheists, turn-of-the-century New Agers, rough-living miners, Asian immigrants, and church-going settler women. White, working-class men often arrived in the province alone and identified the church with their exploitative employers. At the same time, BC’s anti-Asian and anti-Indigenous racism meant that their “whiteness” alone could define them as respectable, without the need for church affiliation. Consequently, although Christianity retained major social power elsewhere, many people in BC found the freedom to forgo church attendance or espouse atheist views. This nuanced study of mobility, gender, masculinity, and family in settler BC offers new insights into BC’s distinctive culture and into the beginnings of what has become an increasingly dominant secular worldview across Canada.

Pentecostalism is one of the fastest-growing religious movements in the world. In Canada, it is the most rapidly growing Christian group among Indigenous people, with approximately one in ten Pentecostals in the country being Indigenous. Pentecostalism has become a religious force in many Indigenous communities, where congregations are most often led by Indigenous ministers – an achievement that took many decades. The Holy Spirit and the Eagle Feather traces the development of Indigenous Pentecostalism in Canada. Exploring the history of twentieth-century missionization, with particular attention to the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada’s Northland Mission, founded in 1943, Aaron Ross shows how the denomination’s Euro-Canadian leaders, who believed themselves to be supporters of Indigenous-led churches, struggled to relinquish control of mission management and finances. Drawing on interviews with contemporary figures in the movement, he describes how Indigenous Pentecostals would come to challenge the mission’s eurocentrism over decades, eventually entering positions of leadership in the church. This process required them to confront the painful vestiges of colonialism and to grapple with the different philosophies and theologies of Pentecostalism and Indigenous traditional spiritualities. In doing so they indigenized the movement and forged a new identity, as Indigenous and Pentecostal. Indigenous Pentecostals now occupy key roles in the church and serve as political, cultural, and economic leaders in their communities. The Holy Spirit and the Eagle Feather tells the story of how they overcame the church’s colonial impulses to become religious leaders, as well as agents for decolonization and reconciliation.

Ottawa Book Award 2015 — Shortlisted Between 1918 and 1921 a great storm blew through Canada and raised the expectations of a new world in which all things would be possible.| The years after World War I were among the most tumultuous in Canadian history: a period of unremitting change, drama, and conflict. They were, in the words of Stephen Leacock, “a time such as there never was before.” The war had been a great crusade, promising a world made new. But it had cost Canada sixty thousand dead and many more wounded, and it had widened the many fault lines in a young, diverse country. In a nation struggling to define itself and its place in the world, labour, farmers, businessmen, churches, social reformers, and minorities had extravagant hopes, irrational fears, and contradictory demands. What had this sacrifice achieved? Whose hopes would be realized and whose dreams would end in disillusionment? Which changes would prove permanent and which would be transitory? A Time Such As There Never Was Before describes how this exciting period laid the foundation of the Canada we know today.