Is Jesus Your Personal Saviour?: In Search of Canadian Evangelicalism in the 1990s 9780773566026

Table of contents :
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 From the "New Light–New Birth" to the Toronto Blessing: Four Canadian Evangelical Trajectories
2 Canadian Protestant Theological Education in Canada: From Evangelical to Liberal to Evangelical?
3 A Nation of Believers?
4 Who Are These Canadians Some Would Call Evangelicals?
5 And Finally Some Actual Canadian Evangelicals Were Found
Epilogue
Notes
Index
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
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Citation preview

Is Jesus Your Personal Saviour? In Search of Canadian Evangelicalism in the 19905

George Rawlyk maintained that Canadian evangelicalism has always been more accommodating than its American counterpart. In Is Jesus Your Personal Saviour? he set out to determine the quintessential nature of evangelicalism in Canada in the 1990s and to distinguish it from the more extreme evangelicalism in the southern United States. Much of Rawlyk's data is taken from an Angus Reid poll on religious beliefs, attitudes, and practices in Canada - the largest public opinion survey of its kind ever conducted - and from scores of interviews with randomly selected evangelicals. The empirical data reveal some surprising findings, among them that sixteen per cent of all adult Canadians are evangelicals. Rawlyk also drew on his earlier historical work to establish a real connection between early Canadian evangelicalism and evangelicalism today. What emerges in this groundbreaking and often controversial book is a complex, richly textured picture of a vibrant form of populist Christianity as experienced and practised by rank-and-file evangelicals. Is Jesus Your Personal Saviour? will inspire serious debate about the complex nature of Canadian evangelicalism in the 1990s. The late G.A. RAWLYK was professor of history, Queen's University.

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Is Jesus Your Personal Saviour? In Search of Canadian Evangelicalism in the 1990s G.A. Rawlyk

McGill-Queen's University Press Montreal & Kingston • London • Buffalo

D McGill-Queen's University Press 1996 ISBN 07735-1411-2 (cloth) ISBN 07735-1412-0 (paper) Legal deposit third quarter 1996 Bibliotheque nationale du Quebec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Rawlyk, George A., 1935-1995 Is Jesus your personal saviour?: in search of Canadian Evangelicalism in the 1990s Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 07735-1411-2 (bound) ISBN 07735-1412-0 (pbk) 1.Evangelicalism - Canada. I. Title. BR1642.C3R39 1996 27o.8'2 c96-900079-0

This book was typeset by Typo Litho Composition Inc. in 10/12 Baskerville.

For my mother, Mary Rawlyk, and my grandson, Cameron McLean Grenville

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Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction

ix 3

1 From the "New Light-New Birth" to the Toronto Blessing: Four Canadian Evangelical Trajectories 9 2

Canadian Protestant Theological Education in Canada: From Evangelical to Liberal to Evangelical? 31 3 A Nation of Believers? 49 4 Who Are These Canadians Some Would Call Evangelicals? 117 5 And Finally Some Actual Canadian Evangelicals Were Found 146 Epilogue Notes

222 227

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Acknowledgments

Without the very generous financial support of the Pew Charitable Trusts, the research undergirding this book, its writing, and its publication would not have been possible. Angus Reid, the president of the Angus Reid Group, also provided considerable financial and professional assistance at a crucial stage in the research phase. My greatest debt, however, is owed to Andrew Grenville, a senior vice-president of the Angus Reid Group, who was my patient teacher, my knowledgeable guide, and my unwavering support as I moved tentatively into the amazingly complex world of public opinion research. Andrew Grenville's influence, direct and indirect, has profoundly shaped the contours of Is Jesus Your Personal Saviour? I must also fully acknowledge the remarkable interviewing skills of David Sparling, now employed by the Angus Reid Group, who drew so much out of the thirty-five evangelicals he interviewed, often at considerable depth and length. These men and women have added a rich human texture to this book and I am deeply indebted to them for their honesty, openness, and willingness to share their Christian faith doubts, certainties, and all - within the framework of my scholarly work. Each knew that what they said about their religious trajectories could possibly be used in this book. I have tried to protect the identities of those who wished to be protected and I have also attempted to be both accurate and sensitive to the actual way in which all their "stories" have been told. Much of this book was written at the College of Charleston in 199495 where I was a scholar-in-residence in the Department of History. Professor Randy Sparks was especially helpful to me and for this I am very grateful. I am very grateful to the two anonymous readers of this study whose critiques helped me to highlight the basic thesis and to clarify a number of my key arguments.

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Acknowledgments

Maureen Garvie was a marvellous editor; her many suggestions have made this a much better book. And Ross Hough of the Cartographic Division, Department of Geography, Queen's University, was of great assistance in preparing the four charts. Is Jesus Your Personal Saviour? is dedicated to my mother, Mary Kautesk Rawlyk, whose constant love has permeated my life for over sixty years, and to my first grandson, Cameron McLean Grenville, whose life has thoroughly rejuvenated mine. The faults and weaknesses of what follows, of course, are my own responsibility.

Is Jesus Your Personal Saviour'?

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Introduction

Much of this book was written in Charleston, South Carolina, during the winter of 1994-95. What better place for a Canadian to write a book in the winter months than in South Carolina! And what better environment in which to write a book about evangelicalism in general, and Canadian evangelicals and Canadian evangelicalism in particular, in the 1990s than the heartland of the American Bible Belt? Here evangelicalism and its conservative variant, fundamentalism, have virtually become the Established State Church. Conservative Christians, as the evangelicals and fundamentalists now proudly refer to themselves, are to be found on the leading edge of the so-called Republican revolution. Their emphasis on "Christian values" and "returning America to its Christian roots" continues to strike a responsive chord in many Americans desperately searching for simple answers to highly complex problems relating to fundamental societal change. Since communism, especially in the old U.S.S.R., is no longer the ever-present, ominous, evil threat to the Rising American Empire, another culprit has to be found - one that nicely combines the secular and sacred realms. And during the past few years the evangelical/fundamentalist alliance has discovered the new antiChrist: liberalism and the evils associated with pernicious American secular humanism and the "counter culture." What a suitable and congenial religious environment - or at least this is what I naively thought in the fall of 1994 when I made arrangements to go to Charleston. Soon after I arrived in South Carolina, however, I was afraid that I had made a terrible mistake. I was repelled by much of what I read about religion in the local papers, what I saw on television, and what I heard when I visited local churches. Instead of assisting me in my writing, the Southern evangelical-fundamentalist environment discouraged, depressed, and profoundly alienated me. But it did even more than this. Immersed in it, I became almost paranoid about my

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book project - fearing that in some way I might encourage the transformation of Canadian evangelicalism into some Northern version of Southern evangelicalism and fundamentalism. I found this American strain of Christianity to be both frightening and disconcerting, the polar opposite to what I thought Christianity was all about. Two incidents stuck like burs in my memory, one a sermon I heard in a local Southern Baptist church, and the other a sermon by a Texas evangelist I viewed on one of the two 24-hour evangelical TV stations I had access to out of only twelve cable channels. In the first sermon, given just before Christmas, a young, enthusiastic Southern Baptist pastor was talking about "loving the sinner and hating the sin." I knew what was coming, but it still hit me like a hammer. I cannot forget his words: The liberals, those secular humanists, tell us that there is nothing wrong with homosexuality. But the Bible says the very opposite - it is a reprehensible sin against God. The liberals, those secular humanists, tell us there is nothing wrong with abortion - they call it freedom of choice. But the Bible tells us something very different. It is murder - cold-blooded murder, nothing else - killing those defenceless young children. [Here a number of Amens were shouted back at him from an agitated and supportive congregation.] But the liberals, those secular humanists, tell us that prayer doesn't belong in America's schoolrooms. Let me tell you that they are wrong. If you can't pray in our schools, how can you expect God to bless America? The liberals have always attacked Christianity and Christ. The liberals tell us the Bible is just a book of myths and stories. Let me tell you they are wrong. The Bible's the infallible, inerrant Word of God. And if we accept any little thing the liberals say, we accept everything. We must hate what they say and stand for - yes, hate it- but we still must try to love them.

Very little was said, however, about how one was to love the sinner and still not be sympathetic to the sin. The sermon's message was very clear. Liberalism - in its various guises, including politics - came directly from the Devil. "And remember, friends, there is a Devil as real as God," I was reminded. Conservatism, on the other hand, whether in religion, politics, or culture, came directly from God the Almighty. In this Manichean struggle, where did we in the congregation locate ourselves? Where was I lining up? The pastor's eyes scanned his congregation; I felt embarrassed - but I also felt helpless and angry. As I left the church and shook the minister's hand, I was tempted to say, "You know, I really disagree with everything you said." Instead I swallowed my criticism, and perhaps my integrity, merely mumbling "Good morning." As I walked home I was furious with myself. Soon afterwards I became even more furious with the entire Southern evangel-

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ical world. I turned on the television, switched to one of the evangelical channels, and there was an unforgettable face staring at me. The Texas evangelist preacher seemed to come from a different world. Unlike the South Carolina Baptist pastor, the TV evangelist was neither warm nor personable. Rather, his face was stern and judgmental, and vituperation effortlessly rolled from his lips. He never smiled - there was a permanent self-righteous scowl imprinted on his fleshy face. His God was the fire-breathing Jehovah, and the Texan was exploding with Old Testament wrath and judgment. I was intrigued by his performance - and it was a performance, not a worship service - and I watched it twice, the original and the rerun. (Some might say that I was a glutton for punishment, others that the evangelist had been specially sent to annoy me.) After a few rambling introductory comments, the preacher announced his sermon topic, "The Ten Commandments." "Unless America returns to the Ten Commandments," he shouted, "yes, unless America quickly and decisively returns to the Ten Commandments, we will be destroyed as a nation - and the sooner, the better, as I far as I am concerned." I waited for his exegesis, expecting the worst - and I wasn't disappointed. But even before he began to wrestle with the First Commandment, he suddenly thrust his left arm towards the audience and yelled (it was a yell and not a shout), "You cannot serve two masters - you cannot serve God and mammon - you cannot serve the righteous Almighty God while at the same time you are bending your knee to the President of the United States. You must make your choice today," he thundered through quivering lips. "You must choose between the God of Creation, the God of Moses, of Abraham, the Father of Jesus Christ — the Son of God — and that bed-hopping, dope-smoking, abortion-supporting, draft-dodging Liberal in the White House. The choice is clear-cut - to serve God and Jesus" (he pronounced Jesus "Jaezuss") "- or the anti-Christ in Washington. What side are you on? Who are you going to serve?" At this point he suddenly stopped, wiping his perspiring face with a huge handkerchief, and the congregation jumped to their feet as if one person, as if they had been carefully choreographed, shouting and clapping their hands. They had obviously made their choice, their faces and their feverish actions reflecting a profound hatred of the President, their anti-Christ. As the congregation slowly settled back into their seats, the evangelist, slapping his Bible against his ample right hip, shouted for all to hear, "Don't you ever forget it - you cannot serve two masters, God and the Devil. You have to make your choice - today." At this point, on both occasions, I made my choice: I turned off the TV. I was extremely uncomfortable in this strange world where God and the conservatives

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Introduction

were on one side, and the Devil and the liberals on the other. I had little sympathy for the view that modern American evangelicals represented a great deal of "oppositional potential," and were merely manifestations of "postmodern political resistance."1 But where was I to locate Canadian evangelicals? And would this negative Southern experience significantly and adversely affect my understanding and descriptive analysis of Canadian evangelicalism in the iggos? Even though I realized that there were other less Manichean and more irenic Southern evangelicals, I found myself wanting to create more and more distance between myself and all evangelicals. And, moreover, I wondered whether one of my most perceptive critics was indeed right in his contention that my work on Canadian evangelicals was bound not only to strengthen Canadian fundamentalism but also to undermine even further the sagging fortunes of Canadian Democratic Socialism - a movement to which I remain very much committed.2 Was the South Carolina religious reality going to become the Canadian evangelical destiny perhaps in a decade? The question seemed pertinent for, within the Canadian-American context, Canadians generally lag a decade or so behind Americans in being affected by major societal and cultural trends. I knew that I was disoriented and in a state of intellectual turmoil, but instead of immobilizing me, this mood, exacerbated by a deeply ingrained, Slavic tendency toward morbid introspection, began to energize me. I very much wanted to come to grips with the essence of Canadian evangelicalism in the 1990s because I thought that it might prove to be more irenic, more accommodating, in short, more Canadian than its Southern u.s. counterpart, or at least the extreme form with which I had too much direct contact. To counter the dualistic world of Southern evangelicalism that seemed to engulf me, I turned to the hundreds of pages of interviews with ordinary Canadian evangelicals that had been collected for me during the summer of 1993 with the general assistance of the Angus Reid Group. I had a hunch that the Christian beliefs and practices of rank-and-file Canadian evangelicals might provide a powerful antidote to the brand of Southern evangelicalism that had so alienated me. As I read these in-depth interviews, my increasingly negative views of evangelicalism began to be challenged by what I consider to be a Canadian evangelical populist spirituality, which is buttressed by both a Canadian exceptionalism and Christian compassion. There seemed to be much more stress placed on Christian love and forgiveness than on judgment or "cultural wars." Yet as I read and inwardly digested these interviews, and also all the relevant survey data collected through the Angus Reid Group, I began to wonder whether there really was a Canadian evangelical exceptionalism vis a vis the U.S., or whether this was

Introduction

7

something I had created to deal with my growing doubts about evangelicalism in general. All I know, in response to these questions, is that when I immersed myself in these interviews, I found myself in a very different world of religiosity. Perhaps this was yet another manifestation of what Freud once called "the narcissism of small differences."3 However, I feel that there was far more involved. Ordinary Canadian evangelicals created a different religious world for me to understand and describe. This task was made easier by the environment in which I found myself, with its positive and negative aspects, and by my previous work, which provided a framework for the study of contemporary evangelicalism. For I continue to see a real connection between the Canadian evangelicalism of the 1775 to 1815 period, which I had described in The Canada Fire, and the evangelicalism I am dealing with in the 1990s. There has always been a powerful populist/spiritual/irenic quality to Canadian evangelicalism. Moreover, throughout the twentieth century this accommodating quality has muted sectarian tensions in Canada far more significantly than evangelicalism in the U.S. What began to click into fragile place as I started to write was the realization that this book was really a cri de coeur. I did not want Canadian evangelicalism to become like the Manichean evangelicalism I was experiencing in the United States. I was not living in a heaven on earth in my isolated corner of South Carolina, but rather in something that seemed to me more like a hell. Moreover, in experiencing the extreme form of Southern evangelicalism with which I had almost daily contact, I was confronting a religion that I considered to be the antithesis to Christianity. Some might see in my response a peculiar case of Canadian nationalist hubris, or perhaps Canadian Christian hubris. What I know is that suddenly I was able to write about Canadian evangelicals in the 1990s, the real purpose, it should be emphasized, of this book. And I was encouraged, I realized, not by my negative reaction to the powerful forces of secularization and modernity that appear to have undermined institutional Christianity in Canada but by my largely negative response to the most vibrant and dynamic variety of evangelicalism now to be found in the Anglo-American world. The core of this book consists of three chapters based on the largest public-opinion survey about religious beliefs and practices ever done in Canada. The first of these chapters, based on a sample of 6,014, deals with the religious views and practices of Canadians in 1993. (Other surveys conducted in 1994 involving some 1,500 respondents confirmed these findings.4) The second chapter is concerned with a sample of 365 evangelicals - approximately 40 per cent of some 900 evangelicals identified among the 6,014 Canadians. The third chapter

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Introduction

is based upon in-depth interviews of a randomly selected group of thirty-seven evangelicals. Over the years, in a number of books and articles, I have been preoccupied with trying to understand Canadian evangelicalism "from the bottom up." How and why have "ordinary" Canadian Christians in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries believed what they have believed and worshipped as they have worshipped? This book is undergirded by the conviction that ordinary believers in the 1990s are just as important as their ministers. Their religious stories, too, are just as important, as are their voices. Such an approach leaves a lot of loose ends, of course, and the many exceptions to general rules sometimes complicate matters. But this is reality. Too often history, especially religious history, is written with the rough edges carefully sanded off for the sake of organizational and theoretical consistency. I have tried in this book to avoid this real temptation. I have permitted ordinary Canadian evangelicals to tell their own stories in their own words, despite the problems involved. And in order to locate the survey and interview data from the 1990s within some kind of meaningful historical context, a context that is both richly textured and sensitively nuanced, I begin with two very different introductory chapters. In one I have used a somewhat crude biographical approach to trace, superficially, the evolving face of Canadian evangelicalism from the 1770s to the 1990s. I have looked at four different Canadians at four distinct points in time, not in any way as representative evangelicals, but as prisms through which to view the changing and unchanging nature of Canadian evangelicalism. In the second introductory chapter I have tried to take advantage of my ongoing work in Canadian Protestant theological education in order to discern what I have called "the rise, fall, and rise of Canadian evangelicalism" during the past 150 years. In my view there is a very important symbiotic relationship between Protestant theological education and Protestant religious culture, broadly defined, and this conviction permeates the chapter. Not everyone will like what follows. Nevertheless I sincerely hope that this book and others like it published in recent years (in particular, the important works of Professor Reginald Bibby) will spark serious academic and popular debate about the complex nature of Canadian evangelicalism in the 1990s. It should be pointed out, however, that I fully realize that Canadian evangelicals in the 1990s make up only a minority of Canadian Christians. I certainly do not want to exaggerate the strength of Canadian evangelicalism in the 1990s. I am obviously not writing about all Canadian Christians - but about only 16 per cent of the total adult Canadian population. There are others far better qualified to write about other Christian groups in Canada, and I sincerely hope that they will, the sooner the better.

CHAPTER ONE

From the "New Light-New Birth " to the Toronto Blessing: Four Canadian Evangelical Trajectories

In the first half of the eighteenth century Anglo-American and continental Protestantism was significantly affected by a series of revivals or religious awakenings that helped to define the emerging evangelical impulse. During the formative stages in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, conversionism and revivalism largely defined the inner core of evangelicalism. This conversionism or "regeneration" - being "born again" - was frequently described as a transforming experience, involving all sensory perceptions and permanently branding Christ's salvation "upon the redeemed of the Lord." For John Wesley, the great English Methodist, conversion was feeling "through faith in Christ my heart strangely warmed." He declared on 24 May 1738, "I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation ... He had taken away my sins, even more and saved me from the jaws of sin and death."1 Other eighteenth-century evangelicals would describe their conversions as being "ravished with a divine ecstasy ... as if I were wrapped up in God,"2 or as being powerfully overwhelmed by "a lively sense of the excellency of Christ."3 But along with a heavy stress on conversionism most evangelicals also emphasized the importance of biblicism (a reliance on the Bible as ultimate religious authority), activism (a concern about sharing the faith with non-believers), and crucicentrism (a focus on Christ's redeeming work on the Cross).4 From its late eighteenth-century beginnings, Canadian evangelicalism, a powerful populist movement, was shaped by this quadrilateral ideology as well as by what Ronald Knox once called its "peculiar enthusiasm."5 Evangelicalism has always been a complex kaleidoscope, constantly changing its shape and its colours but never its essence. By the late nineteenth century, for a growing number of Canadian evangelicals conversionism, as a manifestation of ecstatic self-expression, was no longer the central defining moment or the litmus-test experi-

10

"New Light-New Birth" to Toronto Blessing

ence at the centre of the kaleidoscope. Rather, it was merely one of four key doctrines establishing what one authority has argued are a "set of 'minimalist' criteria for evangelical membership."6 And as the twentieth century unfolded, for many Evangelicals the New Birth was merely one of the fundamentally significant evangelical doctrines, displaced at the centre by a growing preoccupation with an inerrant and inspired Bible. Moreover, it may be argued that for a remarkable number of Canadian evangelicals in the late twentieth century the charismatic movement had become the leading edge of both evangelical belief and experience. If the New Birth defined the essence of evangelicalism during the first century of the history of the movement, and an obsession with an inerrant Bible the early part of the twentieth, the charismatic movement, including Pentecostalism, may be at the centre of the evangelical kaleidoscope in the early twenty-first century. There were two major groups of Canadian evangelicals in the late eighteenth century. The first was made up of what I have recently referred to as "radical evangelicals," most of whom were Baptists and Methodists, who "sought an emotional faith that could not be controlled or manipulated by their well-educated 'social betters.'"7 The Baptists and Methodists had major theological differences, including radically different views of the nature of baptism. There were also the "formalists," usually Presbyterians and Anglicans, who stressed "an orderly faith" based on "consistent doctrine, decorum in worship, and biblical interpretation through a well-educated ministry."8 Because of the remarkable success of a number of charismatic preachers such as Henry Alline, Freeborn Garrettson, and Hezekiah Wooster, what is now Canada experienced a series of widespread religious revivals during the three decades following the end of the American Revolution.9 When the War of 1812 broke out, the population of Maritime Canada (present-day New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island) had grown to approximately 120,000, that of presentday Ontario to 80,000, and that of Quebec to around 300,000. In the Maritimes, despite large numbers of Roman Catholics and Anglicans, the radical evangelical groups - the Baptists and Methodists - set the religious tone of the region, as was also the case in Ontario, or Upper Canada as it was then called. In fact it may be argued that radical evangelicalism was the Protestant norm in pre-1812 English-speaking British North America, which included the 10 per cent of the Quebec population that was Anglo-Protestant. Close to half of all Canadian Protestants in 1812 were either self-confessed radical evangelicals or else adherents of radical evangelical congregations.10 Moreover, there were also hundreds of "formal evangelicals," Presbyterians and Anglicans who placed a little more emphasis on evangelicalism of the head

Four Canadian Evangelical Trajectories

11

than evangelicalism of the heart,11 successfully combining revivalistic Christianity with more formal manifestations of evangelicalism. Never again would radical and formal evangelical strength reach such a remarkable level in Canada. In fact, the evidence suggests that during the period spanning the end of the American Revolution and the War of 1812, evangelicalism was a far more powerful force in what is now Canada than in contiguous regions of the United States - more radical, more anarchistic, and more populist than its American counterpart. Unlike the new American evangelicalism, described so perceptively by Nathan Hatch, the Canadian variant did not have to carry the heavy non-spiritual baggage of "civic humanism, republicanism, the covenant ideal, and possessive individualism."12 The worst fears of some Canadians about the evils of American republicanism and extreme religious enthusiasm seemed to be confirmed by the outbreak of the War of 1812. This negative view of Americans and the American republic helped to strengthen considerably a pro-British bias in what is now Canada - a bias further consolidated by the influx of hundreds of thousands of British immigrants after the war. Anti-Americanism triggered by the War of 1812, especially in Central Canada, and the demographic transformation of British North America in the post-War of 1812 period meant, among other things, that radical evangelicalism would no longer be the evangelical norm and the predominant strain in Canadian Protestantism. Rather, it would be quickly pushed to the periphery of Protestantism by a burgeoning formal evangelical movement that owed a great deal to a growing middle class preoccupied with British order, British respectability, and a growing suspicion of democratic evangelical and American-style enthusiasm. Despite the weakening of radical evangelicalism, the nineteenth century in Canada has been called, with some justification, the "Evangelical Century."13 But it was a moderate, accommodating evangelicalism, as Goldwin French perceptively observed in 1968, shaped by a "creed," a loosely constructed, yet pervasive body of Christian beliefs and assumptions, rather than by a common, collective, traumatic religious conversion experience.14 In the pre-War of 1812 period in particular, but also during the third and fourth decades of the nineteenth century, even though there "was an evangelical element in the Anglican and Presbyterian churches," French has observed, there were still "real differences between them and the genuine evangelical churches - the Methodists and the Baptists."15 By the latter part of the nineteenth century, however, these so-called genuine evangelical churches, whether in Atlantic Canada, Central Canada, or the West, had become more like the accommodating evangelical Anglicans and

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"New Light-New Birth" to Toronto Blessing

Presbyterians. This new evangelical alliance leadership put more stress on the religion of the head and less on the religion of the heart, and easily "succumbed ... to the materialist delights" of late Victorian Canada.16 This did not mean, of course, that evangelical pietism was dead, or that there were no longer any radical evangelicals in the land, but there was a growing gap between elite and rank-and-file religiosity. And increasingly, as Canadian society changed in the so-called progressive milieu of the late nineteenth century, the old religious language about the New Birth and revivalism no longer articulated the changing experience and practice of a growing number of Canadian evangelicals. In an attempt to find new wineskins for the old evangelical wine, the traditional conversionist piety was altered, some would say fundamentally, by key members of the denominational elites and replaced by a new piety that no longer placed much emphasis on the New Birth of the individual but rather saw its special mission in the "spread of scriptural holiness by reforming the nation."17 Middle-class values had begun to transform the old evangelicalism. Moreover, for a growing number of Canadian Protestant leaders and some of their followers, evangelicalism, even in its largely neutered form, had become an embarrassment. Having lost faith in themselves and abandoned the faith of their fathers and mothers, many sought salvation in the gospel of "inhibited scientific inquiry,"18 and others in what has been called "the insidious antithesis to essential Christianity"19 - the gospel of narcissistic, therapeutic self-realization underpinning North American consumerism. Even though many Canadian Protestant leaders drifted from their evangelical moorings towards liberalism and beyond, the evidence suggests that most rank-and-file believers remained committed to a Christian orthodox position buttressed by a continuing popular legacy of evangelicalism. But they felt increasingly on the defensive. Buffeted by the forces of modernity in its many forms and suffering from intense criticism, a growing number of evangelicals - men and women who would now be called fundamentalists - tried to find support for their besieged theological position in a newly refurbished belief known as premillennialism, which stressed the imminent return of Christ. They also began to place even more emphasis on two features of the "quadrilateral" - an inerrant and inspired Bible, which was their answer to biblical criticism, and a crucicentrism that made Christ into a God rather than a God/man - in a response to what was perceived to be the insidious evils of comparative religion and Protestant liberalism. They could not totally abandon their eighteenth-century evangelical heritage, with its preoccupation with the New Birth and witnessing to the "true faith," but these two key components of the kaleidoscope were gently shaken

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to the periphery. And as this was being done, more and more ordinary evangelicals began to emulate many of their former leaders by abandoning their evangelicalism. Some would give up on Christianity altogether, while others were content to be denominational Christians, orthodox in certain respects, but not overly committed or enthusiastic. Accommodation had produced an acceptable spiritual blandness. It should always be kept in mind that, as has been recently and persuasively argued by the historian Mark Noll, for the pre-World War II period despite a national history without the ideology of special divine blessing, Canada has an even better objective argument for being considered a "Christian nation" than does the United States. The list of comparisons with the United States is striking: Canada did not tolerate slavery, it has not thrown its weight around in foreign adventures, it has not done quite so poorly with its Native Americans, it has not puffed itself up with messianic pride, it has tolerated less social violence, until very recently its rates of church attendance were considerably higher, its believers have promoted missionary outreach at home and abroad at least as vigorously, its churches have had much more (Quebec) or considerably more (Ontario, Maritimes) impact on local public life, it has cared more humanely for the poor and weak members of its society, and its educational structures make some provision for teaching religion. In other words, if believers want to find a more convincing history of "Christian America," they should look to Canada.20 The forces of so-called modernity have shaped the contours of society in somewhat different ways in Canada than in the United States. The forces of modernity in Canada, especially during the last half-century, have "worked through the communal, top-down structures of traditional Canadian religion," and this religion has been buttressed by values that have been "more conservative, group oriented, and traditional than the United States."21 In contrast, in the United States these forces have worked "alongside the more fragmented, populist structures of American churches." In fact, The vast freedoms of the United States may have thinned out the content of Christianity, but those freedoms also resulted in more room for the faith in a modernizing world. Canada, a society more cohesive and deferential to authority, has experienced rapid losses in church adherence as its political, economic, cultural, and educational leaders turned from traditional faith. The United States, a sprawling, diffuse society in which leadership remains largely a function of democratic appeal, has absorbed secularizing changes with fewer obvious changes in patterns of church attendance or adherence.22

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"New Light-New Birth" to Toronto Blessing

As might be expected, therefore, as the twentieth century blurs into the twenty-first, "there is a form of secularization in the States that advances within the churches," and there is "another form in Canada that advances by taking people away from the churches."23 In 1946, 60 per cent of all Canadian Protestants had attended church "in the last seven days." In 1995, less than half that percentage had. In the United States, on the other hand, in 1946 only approximately 40 per cent of American Protestants had "attended church in the past seven days" - about the same percentage as in 1995.24 Some would call the exodus of so many Canadians from their churches a clear manifestation of declension and secularization. Others, however, might view it as a purification process whereby Canadian evangelicals have once again established some kind of control over Canadian Protestantism, for on most Sundays in Canada, at least 50 per cent of all Protestant worshippers are evangelicals.25 And the fastest-growing segment of the evangelical population, it should be stressed, is the charismatic/Pentecostal one. To flesh out some of the basic arguments about the changing nature of the Canadian evangelical kaleidoscope during the past two centuries, impressionistic snapshots are presented of four not particularly unique evangelicals - from late in the eighteenth century, the late 1850s, the 1920s, and the early 1990s. These stories provide some specific examples of the generalizations being made about religious forces impinging on Canadian development during the past two centuries. Moreover, this very unscientific, biographical approach helps link the often distant historical past to a more empirical analysis of contemporary Canadian evangelical practice and belief. LATE E I G H T E E N T H C E N T U R Y

Sometime late in 1789 or in early 1790, Nancy Lawrence experienced a life-changing New Birth while residing at Granville, near present-day Annapolis Royal. Nancy had been born in 1764 in Lincoln, Massachusetts, where her father, the Reverend William Lawrence (1723-1780), a distinguished Harvard graduate, had been a leading Old Light, or non-evangelical, congregational minister, much opposed to any manifestation of religious enthusiasm.26 Probably in 1788, Nancy came to Granville from New England to visit her Loyalist brother, William, and her sister-in-law, who had recently moved to the area. While in Granville, Nancy came under the influence of Harris Harding, a disciple of Henry Alline, the remarkable charismatic preacher. She regarded the dynamic Harding as an inspired instrument of the Almighty. She could only enthusiastically endorse the letter her friend Helen Grant wrote to Harding in March 1790:

Four Canadian Evangelical Trajectories

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Glory Glory to God for what he has done for the fallen race of Adam, Glory to God for what he has done, and is still doing, for Annapolis Sinners. Glory to God that ever I had a Name and portion among the Despised followers of Jesus. I think it is the highest honour that he could be conferr'd on me to make me worthy of the Name of a New Light, Glory to God that ever my feet trod [the] Nova Scotia Shore that ever I heard the Sound of the Gospel - O my Dear Brother the Lord is on his way he is once more passing thro Annapolis Calling poor Sinners home. Three I trust in the last week was brought out rejoicing there is a Number of Souls born to Jesus in this place since you left us.27

Immediately after her unforgettable New Birth (she would throughout her life, until her death in 1807, remember the precise time and place where it occurred), Nancy became an ardent New Light. Encouraged by Harding, she felt a deep inner need to share immediately her new-found ecstatic faith with her friends and her family. And it certainly was a New Light faith, centering on the New Birth, based on a mystical, spiritual union with the Almighty, and significantly shaped by Alline's theology as interpreted by Harding. Nancy had been overwhelmed by "the riches of free grace" to such an extent that, without her mother's consent (her father had died a decade earlier), she abandoned her spinster status in December 1790 for marriage to a widower, a much older man with three young children. Her husband, James DeWolf, a merchant from Horton, near Henry Alline's home, had, according to Nancy, "a double claim to my affections, for he loves Jesus, we have a spiritual union that earth nor Hell can never dissolve which will outlive time and exist to all Eternity."28 After briefly describing her "deceit" to her mother and requesting her "forgiveness" in a letter written on 5 January 1791, Nancy turned her attention to what mattered most to her - the salvation of her family and friends. Her obviously distraught mother, very much a traditional Old Light Congregationalist, must have been angered and amazed to have been instructed by her daughter to tell all their Lincoln neighbours that "they must be born again or I shall be eternally separated from them." She informed her mother, carefully paraphrasing the essence of the Allinite gospel, "Tell them tis not for any merit or worthiness in me that Lord hath chosen me, no tis free Grace, free Grace and it is free for them as me." She went on, "Give my love to Bulkly Adams and wife, tell him he must forsake all for Christ or He is lost for ever, remember me to all my friends tell them that the friendship of the world is enmity with God, that my soul loves and longs for their redemption."29 By her conversion and her marriage Nancy DeWolf had obviously declared her independence of her mother and her Old Light family.

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"New Light-New Birth" to Toronto Blessing

Though happily married, at least for the first few years of her marriage, she found herself estranged from her New England family - a family that was unable to condone either her religious enthusiasm or her secret marriage to an older man. There is a sense of despair and acute concern in her letter written on 2 May 1793 to her mother: "Tis a year and half since I received a line from the family, and have only heard from you but once" since early 1790. "I want exceedingly to hear from each one of the family," she confessed; "sometimes my heart forebodes a thousand evils, and imagination points distress and horror around that dwelling where first I received the ellemental life." Eighteen months later, on 9 October 1794, Nancy wrote again to her mother: "Tis now almost three years since I received a line from any of the family, I conclude you have entirely cast me of [f], but God is my refuge, my refuge, my fortress, high tower and exceeding great reward. He will not leave me nor forsake me." Nancy still had not heard from her family on 17 April 1795, but continued, in her letters to her mother, to reiterate Allinite statements such as "O that you may have an interest in that Lamb which was slain from before the foundation of the world."30 Sometime between April 1796 and November 1798 the DeWolf family moved from Horton, the Allinite New Light heartland, to Liverpool, Nova Scotia. During this period Nancy evidently lost much of her religious enthusiasm, having severed relationships with her New Light friends and Harris Harding. Her mind, she graphically observed, "was carried away, captive into Babylon," and her "harp was hung upon the lovely willows." She stopped mentioning "experimental religion" in her letters to her mother and instead complained bitterly about her poor health and her husband's frequent absences from Liverpool. "There is nothing but a sciety [anxiety] and trouble in this life," she moaned, "and tho we are prospered in our outward circumstances beyond our expectations yet it appears to me all is Vanity and Vexation of Spirit."31 All was "Vanity and Vexation of Spirit" for Nancy DeWolf until Liverpool's "Great Reformation." Until the early months of 1807, she was evidently far more interested in Liverpool's economic prospects and her husband's many trips than she was in radical evangelical Christianity. Then she experienced a remarkable spiritual revitalization: she rediscovered the excitement of her earlier New Light faith. In early February 1807 Nancy and hundreds of her Liverpool neighbours were caught up in what the Reverend John Payzant, Alline's brother-in-law, described as "a wonderful moving [among the people] of the power of God." For almost two months Nancy DeWolf attended special revival meetings at least four or five times a week. By the first week of April she had rediscovered the magic of her earlier faith during what she called "a day of Pentecost." She wrote to her sister:

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it is thought their is five Hundred brought to the knowledge of the truth. I could write a volume but I am affraid I shall frighten you, for I was so far from enjoying religion when I was with you. My mind was carried away captive into Babylon and how could I sing one of Zion's songs in a strange land? My harp was hung upon the willows, but O my sister I can bless God their is a Glorious reallity in experimental Religion. I can say this night with the energy of truth that I am a living witness for the cause of Christ, that we must be born again or never enter the kingdom of Heaven, that we must be slain by the law and made or live by grace. O that it might spread from shore to shore that the knowledge of the Lord might cover the earth as the waters do the seas.32

For a two-week period, Nancy observed, no one worked in Liverpool, since everyone was caught up in the revival. The enthusiasm, energy, and confidence of the young converts struck a particularly responsive chord in Nancy as she remembered those days and months some two decades earlier when she, too, had been absolutely certain about the "Glorious reallity" of "experimental Religion." When she heard the young Liverpool converts witness to their faith, she heard her own voice echo from what seemed a distant past. She knew the words, she knew the phrases, and she understood the complex nature of the concern, for these were all once uniquely hers. What reverberated through her mind, ricocheting into the darkest corners of her guilt, were the familiar - painfully familiar - reminders of a past when she was convinced that she had suddenly and marvellously, by the ravishing power of the Holy Spirit, been "reinstated in the Image of God." In March and April 1807 the present was collapsed into the past as Nancy DeWolf confronted the bitter depths of her back-sliding. "God has redeemed my soul," she was now certain, "He has taken me out of the Horrible Pit and mirey clay and put a new song into my mouth, even praise to God." Some of the new converts urged her, "Come my dear friend, share a part there is room enough in my father's kingdom."33 Other recorded statements show that Nancy DeWolf s experience was not unique. At the turn of the eighteenth century many other Protestant residents of what is now Canada experienced first the ecstasy of conversion and then the often prolonged despair associated with spiritual declension or backsliding. Many, like Nancy, would use the periodic revivals that pulsated throughout British North America to be "revived," not "reconverted." What they succeeded in doing was restoring the radical evangelical purity of their original conversion experience. This experience was, without question, their central evangelical belief. And there would be more than enough New Birth energy in the original regeneration experience to propel them into the future - but for how long, God only knew. It would never be easy to live on the mountain peak of evangelical ecstasy.

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"New Light-New Birth" to Toronto Blessing LATE

1850s

Silas Tertius Rand (1810-1889), a native of Nova Scotia, is best known as a Micmac ethnologist and philologist.34 His religious journey reveals a great deal about the beginnings of the weakening of the New Light New Birth hegemony over Maritime radical evangelicalism in particular and Canadian Evangelicalism in general. Rand was born in 1810 in Cornwallis, another Allinite centre, of Yankee Planter and Baptist stock. Following in his father's footsteps, he became a chimney builder. He was also, as a teenager, influenced by the radical evangelical preaching of a disciple of the Black Loyalist Baptist New Light David George - the Reverend Richard Preston - and that of a number of Baptist New Lights, men like James Munroe, George Richardson, Hezekial Hull, and John Hull. In 1823, having just turned thirteen, Rand attended a revival meeting led by Preston. He could never forget Preston's singing the hymn "Don'tYou Hear the Trumpet Sounding ... Are You Ready for to go?" Forty-six years after this memorable event he could still hear "That solemn hymn, with its simple touching music, its constant reiteration of the coming Judgment, and its ever recurring call to be ready, went rolling and vibrating over the length and breadth of the land, reaching every family and every heart. It seemed like a voice from the eternal throne."35 Despite his fear that the end of the world might be imminent, Rand, unlike one of his brothers and his foster-sister, did not experience conversion. Instead he dreamed an unforgettable dream, very much shaped by his New Light-Allinite environment as well as by John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress.36 According to his post-revival dream, Rand and some of his friends were considering a long journey, or "Pilgrimage," towards "Salvation." Crossing a small stream they met "the Tempter, disguised as an Imp" who "insinuat[ed]" that "Salvation" would "mean the end of all play and frolic and lead to a life of melancholy and gloom." Satan's message compelled all of the group except for Rand and a "friend" to turn back. After a few steps, however, Rand's "erstwhile companion" abandoned him. Nevertheless, Rand pushed ahead and after "turning off the main road, entered into a private path which marked the beginning of the way he was to follow" to a barn, where he "fended off an attack from Satan who appeared armed with a pitchfork." But just at the moment when Rand finally felt he was free of the "Evil one," "Satan stole up behind him as he crossed a stream on a narrow plank and pierced his skull with a nail!" But "miraculously" the nail "was at once removed by a divine hand," and "Satan then left him for a season." "Entering a low, antique building full of 'hells and devils,' " Rand wandered about, finally

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discovering "a narrow door and noticing] that there was a parallel path alongside it which seemed to coalesce with it." But the paths, on closer examination, "got further apart." Eventually Rand confronted "a keeper" guarding the entrance "to the narrow way." Rand's "weeping and praying," however, "had little effect and after a short while" his eagerness to enter "subsided, only to be revived again as his longing to enter returned." Almost simultaneously, he heard "a cold and chilling voice" telling him that there would be no entry unless he made a "vigorous effort to put away all sin." Rand was explicitly told, "You had better go and clean out your stables." He knew that "stables" referred to his "Worldly" lifestyle. After a brief interlude, he fell to his knees, and the "keeper" finally opened the door. Salvation was his - at least in his dream. Suddenly was Rand awakened by his employer; the dream-vision disappeared, and he realized that he could be saved if he so desired but the decision would have to be in the real world rather than in the realm of vivid dreams and visions. It was not until the fall of 1832, however, that he experienced his conversion - and it was something of an anti-climax. His most recent biographer, Dorothy May Lovesey, has argued that the conversion "involved no ecstatic vision, no sense of being caught up to a seventh heaven, no extravagant emotional display." Conversion, for Rand, seemed "more a matter of the desire and the will rather than the emotions."37 It is noteworthy that enjoining the local Baptist church, all that Rand could witness to was that he hoped that his "walk was consistent with the profession of religion" and that he would be able to "trust the Lord to keep him from being deceived, and to 'convert him' if he was not already converted."38 This was indeed a strange kind of conversion! Rand desperately wanted a New Light conversion, but he would have to be satisfied with formal one - a "conversion maybe." He would not, however, be satisfied for long. Rand was ordained a Baptist minister on 8 October 1834. Eight years later, in 1842, while serving at the Liverpool Baptist Church, he experienced what he would call his "real conversion." It was very much like the Methodist "Second Blessing" or Sanctification. Rand described what has been recently referred to as "an ecstatic, mystical experience, a beatific vision, unlike anything he had known previously"39 in the following manner: I had been a professor of religion for about ten years, during about nine of which I had been endeavouring to preach - but until that time, I had never known by experience what the full assurance of hope was. I passed through a

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"New Light-New Birth" to Toronto Blessing

scene alone ... in the old meeting house, and another afterwards in my study, the same day, that I can no more forget than Abraham could forget the time when "a deep sleep and a horror of great darkness fell upon him," as he "went down," and "behold a burning lamp and a smoking furnace passed between the pieces" or that Jacob could forget the night when he "saw God face to face, and had power with him and prevailed." Had I been caught up to the third heaven, either in the body or out of it, I could not have been more certain that I was there ... that my sins were all forgiven, and that I should be in heaven for all eternity. The transition from darkness to light was sudden and "my joy was unspeakable and full of glory" accompanied with the certainty that I was not, and could not be deceived ... Had the Shekinah - the bright cold of glory, filled the room, I could not have been any more conscious than I was in the divine presence. Had I seen Jehovah face to face and heard his voice, I could not have been any more conscious than we were conversing together.

Rand felt himself "too much excited, too near heaven, to be fit for anything but prayer."40 The members of his congregation were embarrassed by Rand's socalled real conversion. For many of them, and for other Nova Scotia Baptists in 1842, Rand was "over-excited ... bordering on insanity."41 His intense New Light/Sanctification experience, a remarkable blend of Allinite and radical Methodist influences, was a source of acute embarrassment, especially for the Baptist leadership elite. Rand's Liverpool pastoral experience disillusioned him, propelling him towards Micmac missionary work and eventually, for a time, into the welcoming arms of the Maritime Plymouth Brethren.42 Rand's religious journey is noteworthy for a number of reasons. First, the available evidence suggests that in the 1830s evangelical conversionism was quite different than it had been a half century earlier. The New Light impulse was obviously on the defensive. Second, Rand, like so many British North Americans at mid-century, whether Methodist, Baptist, or Anglican, felt a need for something more than a weak dose of conversionism. The "Second Blessing," "Sanctification," "Victorious Christian Living," and "Renewal" became, for a growing number of evangelicals, the central, defining religious experience - the core of their evangelicalism. It was "conversionism plus" - plus a special stress placed on Christian activism, shaped by a powerful postmillennialism and a belief in sacred and secular progress. For every Rand experiencing his "real conversion," there would be tens of thousands of British Americans experiencing theirs. Conversion, for them and for Rand, was only the first baby step on the way to a "Heaven on Earth" - on the way to their own "Mount of Transfiguration."43

Four Canadian Evangelical Trajectories 1

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920s

Thomas Todhunter Shields (1873-1955) was, without question, one of the two or three most influential Protestant leaders in Canada during the first half of the twentieth century. Moreover, according to the leading American liberal Protestant periodical the Christian Century, in May 1929 Shields was "unquestionably the dominant personality"44 among all North American fundamentalists. T.T. Shields was either loved or hated, respected or detested; there appeared to be no middleground reaction among those who knew the gifted Baptist preacher and polemicist. One of his early disciples, Dr. Morley Hall, captured Shields's polarizing tendency in a story he once told about two women in the Jarvis Street Baptist Church in Toronto, who were struck by the effect of a shaft of morning sunshine on their minister's countenance in the pulpit. "One was impressed by the angelic look on her pastor's face," Hall recounted; the other was just as certain "that she saw traces of the demonic."45 The young man who may have been sitting beside these two women at the Jarvis Street Baptist Church on that Sunday morning in September 1925 also shared their collective, deep ambivalence towards his new pastor.46 Timothy had recently turned twenty-three; he was not married and had recently graduated from McMaster University - the Baptist university located in Toronto. An honours graduate in history, he had spent a year at the Ontario College of Education (OCE) before obtaining his first teaching position in 1923 at a high school on the western edge of Toronto. Too young to serve in the First World War, Timothy had been sent to McMaster in 1918 by his Baptist parents, who owned a large farm near Ottawa. He had come to McMaster as a Christian, having, as he once expressed it, "accepted Jesus as my personal Saviour" just before Easter in 1914 when he was twelve. As had been the practice for decades at his rural church in eastern Ontario, special evangelistic sermons had been preached during both Sunday services during the month preceding Easter. Timothy had attended these services ever since he could remember. His two older sisters had been converted a few years earlier and had been baptized on Easter Sunday - out of doors, in the nearby pond. On that Sunday before Easter in 1914, Timothy felt that his time had come. The sermon was not a particularly emotional one, nor was it memorable. The old Baptist minister should have retired years ago, but he was a kind man, and obviously serious and holy. He based his sermon on John 3: 16: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son so that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have eternal life." Timothy felt a need to believe and he was

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"New Light-New Birth" to Toronto Blessing

ready to make the public commitment of baptism on Easter Sunday in full view of the church members and the community. After the service while he was shaking his minister's hand, Timothy simply said, "I have accepted Jesus as my personal Saviour and I want to be baptized." Timothy told his parents and his sisters about his decision. They were pleased, but not overly surprised. They were never very demonstrative, but when two deacons visited late that afternoon, the adults seemed awkward and ill at ease. The deacons apparently only asked Timothy two brief questions: "Have you accepted Jesus as your personal Saviour?" and "Are you committed to living a Christian life?" Timothy's answer was "yes" to both - nothing more and nothing less. And nothing more was expected of him. When the deacons left the farmhouse, Timothy pondered anew their first question. It was obvious to him that he was content to believe that Christ was now his Saviour. How this would work out in real life he was uncertain. All he knew was that the time had come for him to make a religious commitment - a commitment, however vague, that seemed as inevitable as deciding to attend church on any Sunday. It was just part of growing up. He had experienced no emotional ecstasy at conversion; he had neither heard the voice of God, nor seen his face, nor smelled his holy presence. Timothy had decided to try to live like a Christian - like his parents. He would attend church regularly, probably pray a few times a week, and maybe read the Bible every night. But he would not be a wild enthusiast like some of the young Hornerites on the next concession who said that they had been baptized by the Holy Spirit and were determined to persuade all their friends to share the charismatic blessings unleashed by their ex-Methodist prophet, the controversial Ralph Horner. Like his parents and many of their Baptist friends in the Ottawa Valley, Timothy, as he matured, became increasingly concerned about religious and denominational respectability.47 He was eager to avoid emotional excess in religion at all costs, considering enthusiasm both embarrassing and sectarian. And the decision to go to McMaster in 1918 to obtain a B.A. and eventually teach was another giant step in Timothy's search for respectability and an escape from the farm. Timothy was not an outstanding student at McMaster, nor was he, at least in his freshman year, particularly interested in matters religious. On Sunday evening he sometimes wandered down to Jarvis Street to hear Reverend T.T. Shields preach; the gallery seemed to be packed with McMaster students. He found Shields to be a forceful preacher, not at all emotional in a religious sense - in fact Shields often bitterly attacked religious enthusiasm from the pulpit. As a Saturday Night reporter perceptively observed, the "gentleman of benign countenance

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and mellifluous voice was transformed into the turbulent pastor who hated his enemies and loathed his theological opponents until he became wrathy and violent and longed for the Lord to destroy them." Then Shields would attack "gamblers, card players, burlesque comedians, the u.s. of A. and women." He described "beer parlors" as "trapdoors to hell"; "bobbed hair," as far as Shields was concerned, was anti-Christian. "The Lord," Shields thundered, spitting the words with contempt, "never intended women to go to the barber." And as for male athletics and games of any kind, Shields denounced them: "The Lord hath no pleasure in the legs of a man."48 Timothy found Shields's sermons to be pure entertainment - and, of course, they were safe entertainment. They often titillated, but they certainly did not add a new dimension or a new depth to Timothy's Christian faith. He took his required religious studies courses at McMaster, and attended chapel regularly (since it, too, was required). But even the finely crafted sermons of the saindy principal, Dr. Abraham Lincoln McCrimmon, which carefully blended the old Baptist evangelism and the new scholarship, failed to strike a responsive chord.49 They merely secured Timothy's attachment to what he realized later was a stunted spirituality. However, Timothy, unlike some of his fellow Baptist students at McMaster, did not abandon Christianity altogether. Nor did he, as some of his friends put it, "mature in the faith." When he graduated in the spring of 1922 he was, he would point out later, a twenty-year-old man with the religious age of a teenager. Things began to change for Timothy during his OCE year when he began to attend Jarvis Street more regularly - especially the morning service. At these services he saw a radically different Shields in the pulpit, who preached "simple gospel sermons with no reference to modernists or other monstrosities."50 Instead, he stressed the sovereignty of God, the substitutionary atonement of Christ, and the love of God for the sinner. Shields's sermons were really carefully constructed lawyers' briefs for the Almighty, and in the courtroom of Jarvis Street the Devil had no chance. Shields's low-keyed conversion in his father's church in 1891 had been much like Timothy's - Shields had simply said that he believed the gospel his father preached. Shields did not feel salvation; he did not experience salvation; he merely believed in his salvation. And on this belief he would carefully construct his Calvinistic Christocentric and fundamentalist theology.51 Timothy appreciated the simple, Calvinistic gospel sermons preached by Shields. They helped immeasurably in defining and in adding substance to his own religious views. By the spring of 1924 Timothy had decided, despite Shields's vociferous attacks on McMaster and the Baptist

24

"New Light-New Birth" to Toronto Blessing

Convention of Ontario and Quebec, that he wanted to be a member of the Jarvis Street Baptist Church. He now regarded Shields as his religious mentor - as a prophet-like authority figure who provided him with simple, straightforward, and convincing answers to complex questions. Despite Shields's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde"52 personality, and his almost Manichean temperament, Timothy gave his minister the benefit of the doubt. His sincerity and his remarkable confidence in the justice and righteousness of his fundamentalist cause washed away many of the reservations Timothy had, especially about his misogyny and his closedminded Nativist bigotry. By the following year, however, Timothy's reservations were stronger - and more salient. Even though Shields always and proudly regarded the Bible as the infallible Word of God, he seldom permitted the Christ of the New Testament to excise from his powerful message what the great British preacher Martyn Lloyd-Jones once referred to as "this cancer ... of a wrong spirit and wrong methods."53 There was less and less about God's love in Shields's preaching, and more and more about Jehovah's judgment. The Holy Spirit was seldom, if ever, mentioned, as the Trinity became the Duality of God and Jesus.54 The humanity of Jesus virtually disappeared as the carpenter from Nazareth became the God/man on earth. And what was beginning to disturb Timothy as much as anything was what he regarded as Shields's bibliotry. He was angry and disturbed when he heard Shields declare from the pulpit that the Bible, like Christ, had been sent to earth in a pristinely pure, divine form. The Word was made flesh not only in Christ but also in the inspired, inerrant Word of God. As far as Shields was concerned, the Bible was God on earth - far more important than the Holy Spirit. According to Shields, the Holy Spirit, as it was manipulated by Holiness advocates and the Pentecostals, betrayed the essence of true Christianity. On that September morning in 1925 Timothy wondered whether he should remain at Jarvis Street. He was, almost despite himself, becoming increasingly uncomfortable, even during the morning sermons. And he was still concerned about respectability, his own respectability in particular. He refused to attend the evening services, repelled by the fundamentalist animus that permeated the preaching. He felt torn between the two Shields. One had meant so much to him; the other was driving him away from his Baptist and Christian faith. He believed in the verities of orthodox Christianity; he could mouth all the evangelical shibboleths; he could sing with gusto all the old Baptist and Protestant hymns. But he still did not feel his faith; he did not experience the Christ within him, directing him, inspiring him, forgiving him, and remaking him.

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On the first day of December 1925, while teaching a class in British history, Timothy made a momentous decision. He would once and for all leave the Jarvis Street Baptist Church. He promised himself that after an interlude of a few months he would find another church home. He did - one near where he taught, a newly created United church that provided him with some semblance of Christian fellowship and an accommodating religious spirit. But he could never forget those sermons that T.T. Shields seemed to have preached directly at him, nor could he forget Shields's obsession with the Bible as the virtual third member of the Trinity. But Timothy had forgotten his Ottawa Valley conversion - that is, if it had ever occurred. E A R L Y 1990s She had wanted to attend Queen's University since her third year at high school near Hamilton. Her English teacher that fall term in 1986 had recently graduated from the Kingston university and talked continually about her four marvellous years there. Ms Martin was more than a role model: she was Linda's55 friend, a person Linda could confide in about almost everything. She was also the sponsor for the high school's Inter School Christian Fellowship group. The ISCF was interdenominational and moderately evangelistic in its approach; by the late fall, Linda had begun to attend some of its meetings. Linda was a nominal Anglican: she went to church on Easter and Christmas, and sometimes on some other special occasions, accompanied by her mother. Her mother was not very religious either, and her father was anti-religious and anti-every church that ever existed. In the fall of 1987 a couple of the members of the ISCF group, both of them in Grade Thirteen, invited Linda to attend an ISCF weekend at Pioneer Camp near Huntsville, north of Toronto. Ms Martin drove the small group of students to the camp. At the retreat weekend there were Bible studies, inspirational talks, and lots of time to wander the shores of Clearwater Lake, play volleyball, or just read. Linda was overwhelmed by the intense collective fellowship that seemed to descend and engulf her. She found herself vulnerable and surprisingly open to all the new spiritual stimuli being directed at her. Girls in her dorm talked about being "born again," "finding Jesus," and "discovering real peace of mind, real happiness." Jesus seemed to be so demonstrably real to them, and they were eager to share their Saviour with Linda. At first Linda hesitated; she pulled back, remembering her father's warnings about being brainwashed by those "fundamentalist fanatics." "Be careful, Linda," he had warned her before she left for Pioneer, "be

26

"New Light-New Birth" to Toronto Blessing

careful." She had assured him, "You can trust me, Dad." But at camp, Linda could not trust herself. She found herself wanting to be like Ms Martin - in every way. What did becoming a Christian really mean? She was haunted by this question. On Saturday night after the campfire, Linda asked Ms Martin to go for a walk. They made their way to the lake shore and sat down on a large flat rock. Linda had tears in her eyes as she asked her teacher-friend, "How do I become a Christian?" "It is so deceptively simple," Ms Martin replied. "All you need to do is to ask Jesus Christ to enter your heart. He will come, if you want him to, if you are willing to surrender yourself to him, if you ask him to forgive your sins." "Is that all?" Linda asked. "The beginning," was the reply, "and the beginning becomes, with Christ's guidance and help, the end - your salvation, your being one with God through Christ's sacrifice on the cross." Ms Martin reached over and held Linda's hand and said, "You can become a Christian - a new creature - right now. All you need to do is to ask Jesus into your heart." With tears streaming down her face, Linda buried her head in her arms and said, "Lord Jesus Christ, I believe that you are my Saviour; I want you as my Saviour - please forgive my sins. Please become a part of me." She was sobbing now, sobs of joy and relief. "It was as if," she would later write, "something amazing, something divine, something beyond explanation had been thrust into my most inner being ... I felt very, very different; I know I was different, and I was certain that Christ was now in me and around me. I was really a new creature in Christ." When she returned to her home and school, her friends and her family noticed that she was indeed different. Her face, one of her friends told her, seemed to radiate, "an inner peace," and she was preoccupied with witnessing about her New Birth, an experience she wanted everyone to share. Her father was angry; her mother was worried, but Ms Martin was overjoyed. Linda now had a disciplined prayer life; she read her Bible daily and she began to read evangelical devotional books provided by Ms Martin. Linda also began to attend her Anglican church regularly, despite the fact that she was certain, as she put it, "the true gospel of Christ was not being preached there." Her New Birth experience provided the impetus for Linda to regard her academic, work as an act of Christian witness. She read in the Bible - and this became her inspiration - "Whatever you do, do it heartily as unto the Lord and not unto men." Her preparation for Queen's University became a religious act, almost an act of worship. She prayed that she would be accepted at Queen's; she applied only to Queen's, feeling

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strongly that God wanted her to go there. And she was accepted. Her 90.6 per cent grade average in seven courses helped her realize her academic dream. Soon after she arrived at Queen's in the fall of 1988, Linda gravitated towards the Queen's Christian Fellowship (QCF) where, (she had been told, over and over again) Ms Martin's Christian faith had been strengthened. Within her first week at Queen's Linda had been told about "safe" evangelical churches where she could worship with spiritual profit with others like herself. There were not too many "safe" churches near by. All the United Churches near campus were to be avoided; they were "worse than the plague," she was warned. St Andrew's Presbyterian was a possibility, and so were First Baptist, Bethel, and St James Anglican. The latter, in particular, was the church receiving a special imprimatur from the QCF leadership elite. Linda began to attend St James. At first she was quite happy and satisfied. It was almost like a giant QCF service, with a dose of Anglican respectability thrown in. By the beginning of winter term in 1989, however, she had grown disenchanted with both St James and the QCF. The QCF on-campus meetings were something of a disappointment. She had expected so much, probably too much, but instead of a dynamic spirituality she saw a rather listless group of students going through the motions. It was not even a "holy huddle," as her father once disparagingly described it - it was only a huddle. Linda was looking for black-and-white answers to difficult questions rather than the dismayingly grey ones being provided her; she was also searching for spiritual ecstasy rather than the seemingly dead intellectual evangelicalism that, for her, seemed to prevail at St James and the QCF. She heard from a friend in residence that a small group of students, influenced during its formative stage by Campus Crusade (a more conservative and evangelistic organization than QCF), was meeting regularly for prayer and fellowship. She hesitated at first about going, but after much prayer she resolved that it was God's will for her. At the first meeting, held in a small student house near the northern edge of the campus, she realized that she had discovered her new religious home. After introductions were made, the handful of students slipped off their chairs and fell on their knees. A first-year graduate student in history began to pray, and Linda had never heard such praying. It was as though he was speaking directly to his Saviour. And then he began to sob and to shout, and his friends shuffled towards him and hugged him. The girl to his immediate right began to pray, and soon her prayer was drenched by tears. She was soon joined by others, including Linda, who prayed and then began to sing:

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"New Light-New Birth" to Toronto Blessing

Jesus, Jesus, Jesus Saviour, Saviour, Saviour We love you, we love you, we love you We adore you, we adore you, we adore you Jesus, Jesus, Jesus Jesus, Jesus, Jesus

Then they all reached out their hands towards the ceiling and began to twist them slowly one way and then the other. Their eyes were closed; most were crying as they sang: Jesus, Jesus, Jesus Jesus, Jesus, Jesus Saviour, Saviour, Saviour Lover, Lover, Lover Never let us go Never let us go Never let us go.

The sobbing repetition of the song of praise only intensified the extraordinary elation that gripped Linda. She was crying like the others, loudly but joyously. Her sobbing turned to a strange guttural growl as new sounds poured out of her mouth, sounds she had never heard before. She was ecstatic, certain that the Holy Spirit was speaking through her. Some would describe her experience as "speaking in tongues" or "glossolalia"; Linda simply described it as the "voice of the Holy Spirit." Others around her began to speak in tongues, and they reached further into the air as if they expected to touch the face of Jesus Christ. Then all of the speaking suddenly stopped; the sobbing ended, and there was an eerie silence that accompanied the emotional and psychological exhaustion. Very quietly at first, then a little louder, the group began to sing again: Open our eyes Lord, we want to see Jesus To reach out and touch Him and say that we love Him Lord, we want to see Jesus Open our ears Lord, we want to hear Jesus To reach out and touch Him and say that we love Him Lord, we want to hear Jesus Open our hearts Lord, we want to have Jesus Jesus in us and Jesus with us We need Him, we love Him, we need to see Jesus.

Four Canadian Evangelical Trajectories

29

Linda was convinced she had been "swallowed by the Holy Spirit" (she actually used this phrase), and that she would never forget the exhilarating and mystical experience of being one with the divine. She was becoming a charismatic Christian, leaving behind the QCF, and what seemed to her a spiritual deadness. As the last decade of the twentieth century unfolded she would be joined by thousands of other Canadian evangelicals, old and young alike. These men and women were no longer satisfied with a backward-looking evangelicalism that received its inspiration from a Whitefield, or a Wesley, or a Henry Alline. They wanted the charismatic extra - the "Holy Ghost jolt" - which they knew could revolutionize all of Christianity. For them, the charismatic movement was the future of evangelicalism. It was the late twentiethcentury version of the New-Light experience. A passionate concern, if not obsession, with the "coming of the Holy Spirit" was becoming for many the heart of Canadian evangelicalism. In March 1995 Linda reported after a long period of silence that she had been profoundly affected by the "Toronto Blessing," a charismatic renewal movement begun in early 1994 in an abandoned factory building near the Pearson Airport. Linda's church in Toronto had experienced the "Blessing," and so had Linda - she was absolutely certain of this fact. According to her brief, yet evocative description,56 As we walked up to the altar we were singing a chorus, "Come Holy Spirit I Need Thee." I was not really prepared for how the Holy Spirit would come. The congregation had been asked to come to the altar to pray for people who are not following God's commands. I had a strong desire to pray for my family. The Spirit came upon me slowly. As I raised my hands high to heaven, my arms began to shake rhythmically. I lowered my arms to my waist still keeping my hands raised. My arms were shaking uncontrollably. I was not interested in making a show, so I tried to stop my arms from shaking. I even thought, "This won't go on too long because my arms will get tired." I could not stop my arms with my own will. If I stopped for a second and started to pray again, my arms would start to shake again. In my prayer I was crying and screaming out to the Lord. I would pray in tongues and end up almost shrieking. I could not think of the words to tell the Lord the anguish I felt for those unsaved loved ones, how much I wanted them to know him. A lady standing nearby put her arm on my shoulder and was praying softly as I was screaming. I saw in my mind a light and thought, "Jesus is hearing my prayers." The Pastor came over and prayed with me. The noise of the others praying around me barely penetrated my mind. In fact, I thought they were all doing the same thing that I was doing.

30

"New Light-New Birth" to Toronto Blessing

I released my body and fell to the floor. It had crossed my mind earlier that if I wasn't standing I might shake all over. That is exactly what briefly happened. I just cried to God, and shook with the powerful desire that I did not want my loved ones to spend eternity in hell. There were two ladies quietly praying with me, and I began to pray quietly and relax. I was sighing a little, quite exhausted. The ladies left me alone to rest in the presence of the Lord. I did not feel that I could move. After a time I sat up and sat peacefully until I was ready to stand. In retrospect, I should have rested longer, because I was still deep in prayer. What did this "experience" really mean to me? First, I would like to say that the manifestation of the Holy Spirit that came upon me was not mimicked or imitated in any way: I had not seen anyone react the way I did, and I would have never thought that it would have happened to me so strongly. I do not crave attention in my times of prayer - it is just a time between the Lord and me. The message we had that night at church was about our society turning its back on God. It really hit home with me, because I had recently had an opportunity to be in a situation that made it clear to me how not just society in general had turned their backs on God, but my own loved ones. It really hurt me to see the hopelessness of lives devoid of the Lord - people I knew who were not only not serving the Lord today, but would spend eternity paying for it. It really hurt me. I feel the manifestation of the Holy Spirit came on me with such force because I had seen the "other side." And I prayed, feeling the pain of the Lord. Linda said nothing else in her letter. What she wrote, she knew, was more than enough. Nancy Laurence DeWolf would have understood perfectly. So would Silas Rand, especially in the 1840s, and so would have hundreds of thousands of Canadian radical evangelicals, whether in the late eighteenth century, the 18gos, or the 1990s.

CHAPTER TWO

Canadian Protestant Theological Education in Canada: From Evangelical to Liberal to Evangelical?

During the past 150 years Canadian Protestant theological education, like that in the United States, has undergone significant and profound change. And in tracing this change from a largely evangelical hegemony to a liberal one and back to an increasingly evangelical emphasis, important connections may be made with the changing contours of Canadian Protestantism. Theological education can be, as Roger Finke and Rodney Stark argue in their disturbing my-thumb-in-your-eye kind of book, The Churching of America, 1776-1990, the handmaiden of spiritual and denominational decline.1 But Protestant theological education can also act as a reflection and agent of religious revitalization - as a crucially important ingredient of "a self limiting process that leads not to irreligion but to revival."2 In the complex world of Canadian theological education during the past 150 years, despite the so-called inexorable process of Protestant secularization and modernization, there has been a pronounced shift from evangelical control to liberalism back to an increasingly evangelical influence. This point needs to be emphasized. This shift has sensitively reflected fundamental changes taking place in the Canadian religious landscape. Here is another opportunity, therefore, to provide a historical backdrop to the evangelical story, and also to supply further proof that it is by no means inevitable that a belief system buttressed by modernity will destroy one that boldly celebrates the supernatural.3 When the Finke-Stark thesis is explicitly applied to Canadian Protestant theological education during the past century and a quarter, the murky outlines of a potentially intriguing picture begin to emerge.4 For much of the Victorian period the almost formal and certainly moderate evangelical bias of most of the Protestant elite was faithfully reflected not only in theological education but also in rank-and-file or popular religious beliefs and practice. By the end of the second decade

32

Canadian Protestant Theological Education

of the twentieth century, however, most Canadian Protestant leaders, and what Antonio Gramsci has referred to as their intellectual "deputies" in the seminaries, were determined "to win over the traditional strata" to support their new liberal and modern version of "social, economic, political" and, one might add, religious order.5 In the 1920s and 1930s virtually every academically recognized Canadian Protestant seminary or theological college was now in liberal hands, as were the administrative bureaucracies of the mainline Protestant denominations. The evolving Protestant bureaucratic academic hegemony was strengthened by what has been called "direct domination," a complex process that at its core was infused by an obsession with organizational structure and administrative connections.6 This liberal Canadian Protestant hegemony, however, perhaps because of its success in disembowelling much of mainline Protestant Christianity of many of its central orthodox beliefs, found itself, by the last decade of the twentieth century, pushing up against a largely hollow organizational structure and using increasingly meaningless administrative connections. The mainline administrative elite, especially in the United, Anglican, and Presbyterian denominations (which presently make up some 60 per cent of all self-identified Canadian Protestants) , has been confronted by the bitter logic and legacy of its own liberal theology. Relatively few liberals today worship regularly in the mainline churches, and most Protestants who do so are either evangelicals or fairly orthodox Christians who still possess a sense of loyalty to their denominations. And the fastest-growing churches in Canada (almost matching in their growth the exodus rate of those Protestants who are abandoning organized Christianity, but not necessarily Christianity) are the conservative and evangelical ones. On any Sunday apart from Easter Sunday and Christmas Sunday, there are more evangelicals at worship in Canada than liberals, broadly defined, or even those Maclean's magazine recently referred to as "ardent churchgoers" - men and women who hold orthodox Protestant beliefs but are not as likely as evangelicals "to say that the Bible is God's word or that it is important to encourage non-Christians to convert."7 The collapse of the liberal Protestant hegemony is to be seen not only in the precipitous decline of liberalism in the pews and the growing strength of evangelicalism since the 1980s (almost by default) but also in its remarkable declension in the realm of Canadian theological education. Some key features of the rise and fall of liberal hegemony (or, another way of putting it, the rise, fall, and rise of the evangelical tradition) may be captured by taking four fairly unfocused pictures of the state of Protestant theological education in Canada - in 1867, 1890, 1930, and the early 1990s.

Evangelical to Liberal to Evangelical?

33

In 1867, the year of Confederation, present-day Canada came into being, "stretching from sea to sea." Canada's first census followed in 1871, recording that out of a total population of 3,689,257, 15.4 per cent or 567,091 were Methodists, 14.8 per cent or 544,998 Presbyterians, 13.4 per cent or 494,049 Anglicans, 6.7 per cent or 245,805 Baptists, and 40.4 per cent or 1,420,029 Roman Catholics.8 The four leading Protestant denominations thus made up slightly more than 50 per cent of the total Canadian population, and this Protestantism, as has already been mentioned, was dominated by its unique Canadian variant of evangelicalism: in 1871 virtually all Methodists, Presbyterians, and Baptists, and a surprising number of Anglicans, would have been pleased to describe themselves as evangelicals. According to Donald Master's authoritative and groundbreaking but largely neglected study Protestant Church Colleges in Canada, published in 1966, there were in 1867 fifteen denominational colleges in Canada, most of which were preparing men for the Christian ministry. Of the fifteen, eleven were clearly evangelical institutions: Acadia College in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, and the Canadian Literary Institute in Woodstock, Ontario, were Baptist; Albert College in Belleville, Ontario, Victoria College in Cobourg, Ontario, and Mount Allison in Sackville, New Brunswick, were Methodist; Queen's in Kingston, Knox in Toronto, Morrin in Quebec City, and Theological Hall in Halifax were Presbyterian. And two Anglican institutions were definitely evangelical in 1867: Huron in London, Ontario, and St. John's in Winnipeg. Four Anglican colleges, Bishop's in Lennoxville, Quebec, King's in Windsor, Nova Scotia, Trinity in Toronto, and Queen's in St. John's, Newfoundland, were definitely non-evangelical in both theological emphasis and style; in fact, it may be argued that these four institutions were anti-evangelical and proud of it. Clearly, if any one institutional reality underscored the evangelical hammerlock on Canadian Protestantism in 1867, it was the actual number of evangelical denominational colleges and students serviced by these often vibrant institutions.9 The evangelical hammerlock, despite Darwin, Higher Criticism, comparative religion, and an emerging industrial order, remained in place in 1890 - a little less secure, and perhaps owing more to the past than to present theological realities. Almost a quarter of a century after Confederation there were no new additions to the small constellation of non-evangelical colleges. On the other hand, despite the closing of Albert, Morrin, Theological Hall (Halifax), and the Canadian Literary Institute as colleges, eight new evangelical institutions of higher learning had emerged. McMaster in Toronto became the major Baptist college in Central Canada, Wycliffe in Toronto was constructed

34

Canadian Protestant Theological Education

to challenge the High Church preoccupation of Trinity, and Montreal Diocesan College performed a similar theological and academic function with respect to Bishop's. The Presbyterians built Manitoba College in Winnipeg, Presbyterian College in Montreal, and Presbyterian College in Halifax. Not to be outdone, the Methodists constructed Wesley College in Winnipeg and Wesley Theological College in Montreal.10 According to the Canadian census of 1891, of the total Canadian population of 4,833,239, 17.5 per cent were Methodists compared to 15.4 per cent in 1871; 15.6 per cent were Presbyterians compared to 14.8 per cent twenty years earlier; the Anglican percentage, 13.4 per cent, was the same in both years, while the Baptists had dropped to 6.2 per cent from 6.7 per cent. The Roman Catholics made up 41.2 per cent of the total population - an increase of less than 1 per cent since 1871.11 As the nineteenth century blurred into the twentieth the Methodist/Presbyterian/Anglican/Baptist demographic domination of Canadian Protestantism was obviously continuing; the evangelical majority as well was still powerful. By 1930, however, at least at the level of Protestant theological education, the evangelical hold on Canadian Protestantism had been broken by the significant forces unleashed by liberal Christianity and socalled modernity. According to Donald Masters, during the 1890 to 1930 period two conflicting views "of the Hebrew-Christian tradition were proclaimed" in Canadian theological education - the "old and conservative" and the "new and liberal."12 By 1930 the latter had emerged dominant and victorious. It is Masters's contention (some might criticize him for being simplistic and pro-evangelical in his analysis) that according to the "conservative view," God had revealed himself directly to man and had left the testimony to himself in his law and in the written word ... Divine revelation was the ultimate test of human thought and conduct. All doctrine and action must be judged against the norm revealed by God concerning himself and his Son ...13 [In contrast, "the liberal view"] was based upon a fundamentally different view of Scripture. The Bible, instead of being God's revelation of himself to man, became the product of man's gropings after God from animism through polytheism to monotheism ... In its extreme form it left the way open for the departure from old doctrines and even creeds as the search of man after God continued. The old norm became only a stage in a process of upward development which had no place for the concept of "absolute truth."14

In 1930, apart perhaps from the Anglican Wycliffe College in Toronto, every Canadian Protestant theological college had abandoned

Evangelical to Liberal to Evangelical?

35

much of what might be described as nineteenth-century evangelicalism. The vast majority were now liberal Christian institutions; a few were liberal evangelical - with the emphasis on liberal. In the former camp were the new seminaries of the United Church of Canada: Emmanuel in Toronto, Pine Hill in Halifax, Queen's in Kingston, the Cooperative Colleges in Montreal, Wesley College in Winnipeg, and United Theological College in Vancouver. Huron, Montreal Diocesan College, St. John's, and Winnipeg had abandoned the Anglican evangelical side; Knox College in Toronto and Presbyterian College in Montreal were uncertain of their theological moorings, as were the three Baptist institutions Acadia, McMaster, and Brandon. In fact, the evidence suggests that Brandon and Acadia had moved in the direction of liberalism to a far greater degree than the much-maligned McMaster.15 If Michael Gauvreau is correct in asserting that the evangelical clergyman-professor was the single most significant influence in determining the shape of Canada's "Evangelical Century",16 the period from the Second Great Awakening to World War I, then it may be argued that the liberal clergyman-professor played a key role in transforming Canadian Protestantism in the post-World War I period. There was, in other words, a symbiotic relationship between the changing theological word of the clergymen-professors and much of mainline Protestantism. It would be distorting historical reality to suggest, however, that in 1930 there were absolutely no human evangelical conduits for the traditional evangelical perspective in the liberal-oriented Canadian Protestant seminaries. Many of the institutions, which in the nineteenth century had been evangelical but by 1930 had become liberal, had at least one evangelical-clergyman professor on staff. There was, for example, the dour Calvinist-evangelical J.M. Shaw at Queen's (19291952)^ or the extraordinarily able Abraham Lincoln McCrimmon at McMaster, where he would die in harness in 1935.l8 There would be other men, of course, but fewer as Canada entered the post-World War II period and the liberal hammerlock was firmly and confidently applied to Protestant theological education. In 1931, 41.3 per cent of the Canadian population were now Roman Catholic, 15.8 per cent Anglican, 19.5 per cent United Church, only 8.4 per cent Presbyterian, and 4.3 per cent Baptist, while 3.8 per cent were Lutheran. The four largest Protestant denominations thus still made up close to 50 per cent of the entire Canadian population. Some sixty years later, however, the traditional "Big Four" have experienced significant haemorrhaging of members and adherents - and are now only about one-third of the total Canadian population: 8 per cent are Anglicans, 11.5 per cent United Church, 2.4 per cent Presbyterian,

36

Canadian Protestant Theological Education

and 2.5 per cent Baptist; 2.4 per cent are now Lutheran and 1.6 per cent Pentecostal. In 1993 15 per cent of Canadians "say they have no religion," and a little more than 2 per cent are "Jewish, Hindus, Muslims and Buddhists."19 The remarkable decline of the major mainline denominations, especially the United Church, Anglicans, and Presbyterians, has occurred at precisely the same time that millions of Canadians have totally abandoned Christianity and tens of thousands of others are moving into the burgeoning conservative evangelical, and fundamentalist churches. It has been recently noted that during the 1981 to 1991 period, "conservative congregational Christian groups, accounting for a much smaller percentage of the [Canadian] population, saw significant increases in numbers. Pentecostals increased by 29%, Mennonites by 19%, 'Evangelicals' by 76%, Adventists by 26% and Alliance 75%."20 In sharp contrast, United Church members dropped 18 per cent, Anglicans 10 per cent, and Presbyterians 22 per cent. Only Baptist numbers have remained fairly steady over the decade - largely because of the growth of more conservative Baptist churches and the decline of the liberal accommodating ones.21 In the immediate post-World War II period Canadian Protestants seemed to be on the verge of entering yet another Golden Age - perhaps not an evangelical one but one characterized by remarkable numerical growth and an almost-palpable sense of confidence. Hundreds of new churches were built - mainline and non-mainline - and it has been estimated that in the late 1940s six in ten Canadian Protestants worshipped each week. It was an era characterized by what Pierre Berton, the Canadian writer, disparagingly called "the Comfortable Pew."22 Within a few decades, however, the pews of Canadian mainline Protestantism were largely empty - that is, those not occupied by fairly orthodox believers - while those of the many so-called conservative churches were often filled to overflowing. The further decline of Canadian mainline liberal Protestantism, particularly during the past three decades, has been accompanied, as has already been pointed out, by the relative growth, almost by default, of Canadian evangelicalism. This evangelical growth may be graphically seen in the two following tables, covering the 1988 to 1994 period, concerning student enrolments in accredited Canadian theological seminaries.23 It is striking that in the Canadian context, unlike the American, a number of key denominational seminaries have been recaptured by the evangelicals, making the building of new evangelical institutions unnecessary. At the beginning of the last decade of the twentieth century there were only thirty-three fewer full-time equivalent students in evangelical institutions than in non-evangelical ones - 1,010 compared to 1,043.

Evangelical to Liberal to Evangelical?

37

Table 1 Full-time equivalent students, non-evangelical Canadian Protestant theological seminaries

Institution EmmanuelVictoria

M. Div. All

M. Div. All

M. Div. All

1994

1991

1990

1989

1988

M. Div.

All

All

104

165

96

148

90

137

90

135

172

Huron

29

29

28

28

23

23

30

35

45

Joint Board

23

23

19

19

16

16

18

18

14

Knox

86

109

65

95

68

89

53

80

97

Lutheran

39

39

29

57

27

67

28

57

72

McGill

39

104

33

100

14

88

25

105

83

Queen's

46

50

41

58

32

49

41

62

65

Atlantic School of Theology

55

79

49

81

45

69

59

63

82

St. Andrew's (Associate)

27

39

28

43

25

46

23

43

84

St. Stephen's (Associate)

0

27

0

39

0

40

0

98

157

51

86

70

103

60

114

49

94

79

8

38

13

42

22

53

20

87

96

Vancouver School of Theology

71

104

58

84

57

90

73

91

93

Waterloo Lutheran Seminary

41

92

34

98

38

93

31

97

90

Concordia, Ont. (Associate)

28

38

32

40

25

36

26

39

30

Concordia, Alta. (Associate)

0

0

0

0

22

33

21

24

30

647

1,022

595

1,035

564

1,043

587

1,128

1,289

Trinity University of Winnipeg

Total

Furthermore, of the seven largest seminaries, each having full-time equivalent total enrolments in 1990 of 100 or more - Emmanuel, Ontario Theological Seminary, Regent College, Providence, Canadian Theological Seminary, Wycliffe, and Trinity - five are clearly evangelical and the two largest by far, Regent and Ontario Theological Seminary,

38

Canadian Protestant Theological Education

Table 2 Full-time equivalent students, evangelical Canadian Protestant theological seminaries

1988 Institution

1989

M. Div. All

1990

M. Div. All

1991

M. Div. All

M. Diu

1994

All

All

Acadia

66

88

64

101

64

86

58

88

151

Canadian Theological Seminary

39

114

40

122

43

120

30

101

137

Edmonton Baptist Seminary (Associate)

30

46

28

42

29

48

25

39

39

McMaster

41

62

42

55

39

57

36

53

69

109

249

121

255

149

240

178

260

357

Providence (Canada)

36

126

30

132

28

135

22

115

167

Regent

98

233

73

231

73

222

62

227

303

Wycliffe

58

98

56

116

49

102

39

119

117

450 1,002

1,340

Ontario Theological Seminary

Total

477 1,016

454 1,054

474 1,010

are conservative evangelical flagship institutions. And in 1994 there was a total of 1 ,340 full-time equivalent students in evangelical institutions, compared to 1,289 in non-evangelical ones. Moreover, only two nonevangelical seminaries, Emmanuel and St Stephen's, had total enrolments of 100 or more, 172 in the former and 157 in the latter. Six of the evangelical institutions had more than 100 students: Acadia with 151, Canadian Theological Seminary 137, Ontario Theological Seminary 357, Providence 167, Regent 303, and Wycliffe 117. Some observers have estimated that at least 25 per cent of the students enrolled in liberal mainline institutions like Knox, Queen's, and Emmanuel are self-proclaimed evangelicals.24 As the twenty-first century approaches, these figures and percentages appear to indicate that, at least at the accredited seminary level (excluding Bible schools and unaccredited seminaries, almost all of which are conservative evangelical in style and substance), Canadian evangelicalism in its various guises and manifestations is gradually returning to its former position of dominance - but with a fundamental difference. This dominance is one exerted by a largely leaderless, defensive, and introspective movement over a rapidly declining Canadian Protestantism. It is, for some, a Pyrrhic victory. The

Evangelical to Liberal to Evangelical?

39

spoils of battle are mere whiffs of what might have been and once was now largely meaningless theological shibboleths hurled about in an age characterized by a lack of loyalty and an almost Gnostic obsession with the self at the expense of the community, whether Christian or secular. There is, of course, another way to try to trace the shadowy outlines of the apparent transformation of Protestant theological education in Canada during the past century and a half. The move from an evangelical consensus in Victorian Canada to a liberal, accommodating stance in the interwar years and then to a revitalized evangelicalism in the last two or three decades may also be discerned by explicitly examining the histories of a select number of theological institutions. During the past three decades I have been particularly interested in the theological development of three Canadian institutions: Acadia and McMaster, both of which were and are Baptist in orientation, and Queen's Theological College, which was originally Presbyterian but in 1925 became a United Church seminary. These three institutions will therefore receive special attention. It is clear that from its early nineteenth-century origins Acadia College was an evangelical institution. As Professor Barry Moody has convincingly argued, "the ultimate success" of the Baptist College "would be measured not in the Cicero memorized or the theorems learned, but in the souls won for Christ."25 Acadia existed not only to train men for Christian ministry but also to convert the unconverted. "The revival of '40 and '41," for example, "was one of great power. Every student in the academy and college, with one exception, professed to be savingly converted to God."26 In 1848, another "wonderful year ... of all the students in college and academy not one remained without a hope in Christ."27 Nor would "the year 1855 soon be forgotten": according to A.C. Chute, who knew most of the participants, "It was a time of spiritual ingathering. Special services were begun about the 15th of March and continued several weeks. Sixty-nine were baptized ... Among these appear the names of D.F. Higgins, for many years a professor at the college ... T.H. Rand, Superintendent of Education for both Nova Scotia and New Brunswick and Professor and Chancellor at McMaster University, Toronto; R.V. Jones, Professor in Acadia College; and A. DeWolfe Barss, for some years treasurer of Acadia."28 In the early 186os Acadia again experienced a series of intense revivals, most of them student-inspired and student-led. One of the participants observed in February 1865: We had a meeting in Archibald's room especially for the unconverted [at Acadia]. A most astonishing and glorious work. Bless the Lord, Oh my soul! Prayer meetings are held almost every hour in different rooms and every one is think-

4O

Canadian Protestant Theological Education

ing of salvation. A marked feature was the victorious power of Divine grace in overcoming strong wills and reluctant hearts. It was a time for struggle, for some did not readily yield to Christ's constraining love. In some instances the wresting continued - for weeks, the great matter at issue being: the Lordship of heart and life, with whom shall it rest, with Christ or the world? Those who can recall the events will remember how eagerly we watched for the surrender to God of those for whom we made petition. With what deep yearning their decision was awaited, and with what exultation the surrender of one after another was hailed. With what joy we heard souls confess: "I yield; I see and acknowledge the claims of Christ upon me; He died to redeem me, and now to Him I give my heart and life."29

There would be other Acadia revivals during the last three decades of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth, but the revival fires sparked by "these religious awakenings"30 would eventually be extinguished on campus. The nineteenth-century New Light revivalism, which had been accompanied at Acadia "by evidence of uncommon spiritual power,"31 had by the 1920s been replaced at the core of the institution by an accommodating, liberal evangelicalism. It was a theology that owed a great deal to important intellectual developments occurring in key Baptist seminaries in the United States, especially at Newton in Massachusetts, Rochester in New York, and the University of Chicago. By the 1920s, the available evidence suggests, the so-called forces of Christian liberalism had had a far greater impact upon Maritime Baptists than upon their counterparts in Central Canada and the West. And this was particularly the case at Acadia. The liberal theological bias of Acadia was nicely captured in the infamous Kingston Baptist Parsonage case, heard in Kentville in the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia in 1935. From the beginning of the case, everyone in the Maritime provinces realized that the real issue did not involve the ownership of an obscure Baptist parsonage but was a battle between modernism and fundamentalism - especially at Acadia. On Saturday, 25 May 1935, Professor Simeon Spidle, dean of theology at Acadia, was called to the witness stand. A native of Nova Scotia, Spidle had graduated from Acadia with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1897 and then served two Nova Scotia Baptist pastorates. He went on to Newton Theological Seminary, where he received his Bachelor of Divinity in 1903; in 1911 he was awarded his doctorate from Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. In 1911 he was also appointed professor of philosophy, systematic theology, and church history at Acadia and then in 1922 became its dean of theology, a position he held until 1936 when he retired. Spidle was the general factotum in the Maritime Bap-

Evangelical to Liberal to Evangelical?

41

tist Convention during the 1920s and early 1930s.32 He was a key member of the Examining Council, and almost singlehandedly determined who would and who could not be ordained as ministers in the Convention. An ardent believer in die importance of an educated ministerial elite, he attempted, often without much success, to impose his high academic standards on the Convention. He accepted much of the critical biblical scholarship, but without abandoning totally his belief in regeneration and immortality. As a scholar he refused to see things solely in black and white, but frequendy saw huge grey patches. He did not perform particularly well in Kentville, perhaps because of his tendency to avoid answering certain questions directly and honestly.33 During his cross-examination Spidle was asked what he meant when he stated that the "Old and New Testament Scriptures were written by men divinely inspired - by whom?" "By the spirit of God," Spidle responded. "Is that not, in all fairness, the doctrine of verbal inspiration?" he was asked. "No, not by any means," Spidle replied: "I say verbal inspiration means this, that the very words and ideas were dictated to the minds of the writers; that the writers themselves had nothing to do with creating the ideas or the language." Spidle was then asked whether he believed there was an actual "dictation to Moses." "Cite the case," Spidle retorted. "What I have reference particularly to is the making of the ten commandments," he was told. "There's nothing said there about dictation," was Spidle's curt reply. After reiterating that a premillennial belief had never been a "prerequisite to membership" in any Maritime Baptist Convention church, Spidle was urged to clarify his view of inspiration. "Do you accept the scriptures from Genesis to Revelation as being verbally inspired and of God yourself?" "No, certainly not," Spidle answered. "What do you say?" "I hold to the historic theory of the inspiration of the Bible," Spidle replied. "How do you define that?" Acadia's dean of theology retorted: "Co-operation of the spirit of God and the mind of man arriving at the religious truth incorporated in the Bible." Before Spidle could get himself any deeper in difficulty, his lawyer, George Nowlan, the future Federal Conservative cabinet minister, jumped to his feet and argued that "the individual views of the witness are immaterial." He was sustained, and the cross-examiner shifted to a few seemingly irrelevant questions about Acadia before returning to theological issues by asking, "Do you preach and teach the virgin birth of Christ?" Once again, Spidle's lawyer objected to the line of questioning and it was agreed not to "press the question." But the lawyer who represented the fundamentalist Baptists did press Spidle on the question of whether he believed "that Christ was divine." "I certainly do," Spidle answered.

42

Canadian Protestant Theological Education

Q. Do you believe and teach He was the Deity? A. He was divine in the sense that there was in Him the divine quality of life. Q. Do you believe that the death of Christ upon the Cross was by way of atonement of sins? A. I surely do, but you must remember there are no fewer than twelve different theories. The substitution is one of them, which is that the sufferings of Christ were a punishment inflicted on Christ the innocent in place of the guilty; that the innocent was punished for the guilty and the guilty were allowed to go free. Q. Do you believe in the physical return of Jesus? A. That is a doctrine that is held by Baptists, that there will be a return to Christ to this earth. It was clear to everyone in the courtroom that Spidle had tried to avoid the question. He was asked again, "Do you preach and teach a physical return?" "I never use that in any of my preaching because I don't think it is an important matter to emphasize in teaching; our business is to carry on the work and when the time arrives He will come," Spidle replied. Asked on a number of occasions to define modernism and fundamentalism, he stubbornly refused. He was then asked if he knew the well-known University of Chicago liberal theologian Dr Shirley Jackson Case. He did. Did he consider Case a modernist or a fundamentalist? "I am not labelling any man," Spidle shot back. He was asked why Case had been given an honourary DCL degree by Acadia in 1928. It was, suggested Spidle, because of Case's close association with Horton Academy, the Baptist school, where he had once taught. Spidle was then requested to listen to a statement to be found on page 80 of Case's Jesus Through the Centuries: The spark that ignited the tinder of a new faith for Peter was the need felt within himself during the crucifixion, for his former leader's reinstatement in divine favor. The notion of Jesus's apotheosis, so readily suggested by popular Gentile religions in Peter's environment, brought to him too valuable a relief from his perplexity and too vivid an assurance of future help to leave any room for questioning the propriety of his procedure. Peter did not actually believe that a deceased man had become a god. No Jew, however unschooled, could have assented to any such affirmation. It remained for his Greek successors in the new religion to recognize in Jesus a full fledged Christian deity ... Strictly speaking, this risen Jesus was not an absolute deity; He was only a messianized hero. "Would you say that was in any way fundamentalistic?" Spidle, perhaps the most influential Maritime Baptist, was asked. "I will let the fundamentalist say whether it is or not," was his brusque reply. Similar re-

Evangelical to Liberal to Evangelical?

43

sponses were given to questions about three other quotations from Case's writings. The lawyer representing the fundamentalists wondered how any orthodox Baptist university could confer an honourary degree on a person like Case, whose modernist views were so well known. In reply Spidle stressed that "the degree was not conferred upon him for his theological views but because he was a teacher in the academy whose centenary was being celebrated." Again the lawyer endeavoured to pressure Spidle into admitting that Case was a modernist. There was, understandably, a biting edge to the lawyer's question, "Do you mean seriously to say, as an educationist of this province, you do not care to answer a simple question in regard to extracts I have read as being the work of a fundamentalist or modernist?" Spidle said, "I make no pronouncements on the matter." The final question was "Does Acadia, as a university, teach organic evolution?" "That belongs to the Department of Biology. I am not a member of that Department," answered Spidle. This was obviously not Dean Spidle's finest hour. The thick history of the Kingston Parsonage Trial is of critical importance because it reveals what Spidle actually said under cross-examination, after swearing to "tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth." What he said about theology accurately reflected what was being taught in the interwar years at Acadia. By the 19505 Acadia had without question become even more liberal: the legacy of nineteenth-century populist evangelicalism had been marginalized by a faculty preoccupied with so-called academic respectability and modernity. When, in the 1950s, Dr Gordon Warren, the dean of Acadia's faculty of theology, was asked by some New Brunswick evangelical leaders what "he believed about the virgin birth," Warren replied, "I believe it but there is a great many strands to the thing which cause some doubt and I would not definitely say yes." William Lumsden, another theology professor, was asked the same question. "Yes, I believe in the virgin birth," he answered, "but I believe that there could be some knowledge or facts, such as archaeological discoveries, come to us later which would lead us to see that we were wrong in accepting that position." Professor Fraser, a philosopher, threw oil on the flickering flames of controversy when he declared, "I don't know which virgin birth you are talking about, the one in Matthew or the one in Luke. There are two virgin births and I do not know which one you want me to respond to ... I do not know which one to accept."34 It is not surprising that Baptist conservative evangelicals in the Maritime Convention discouraged potential theological students from attending Acadia. Instead these men were sent either to Gordon College in Massachusetts or to Toronto Bible College. When they returned to

44

Canadian Protestant Theological Education

the Maritimes, they were determined to take over control of the Convention and Acadia. By the early 1960s the conservative evangelicals, making shrewd and effective use of their New Brunswick base, took effective control of the Convention and its mouthpiece, the Atlantic Baptist. But before they could effectively organize themselves for the battle over Acadia - to make it a truly Christian university - they found themselves outmanoeuvred by a besieged liberal minority. This minority made brilliant use of the Acadia Alumni Association and its contacts in the Nova Scotia Legislative Assembly to ensure that legislation would be introduced that would effectively secularize Acadia and remove it from possible conservative evangelical control. This bold preemptive strike placed the conservative evangelical majority on the defensive, and eventually it would have to be satisfied with control over a separate seminary, the Acadia Divinity College. Within a decade of its creation in 1969 the college had a majority of conservative evangelicals on staff and, moreover, the flow of conservative evangelical students to Acadia Divinity College had begun in earnest, not only from Atlantic Canada but also from Central Canada. Acadia University and Acadia Divinity College reflected a movement over a period of less than 100 years from an evangelical position to a liberal evangelical and then a largely liberal one, and back to an evangelical position. This progression exemplified changing theological realities in the region as well as a fascinating power struggle between leaders of two very different theological perspectives.35 Acadia's trajectory has been followed in certain key respects by McMaster University and McMaster Divinity College. According to the new Ontario Baptist institution's original Act of Incorporation of 1 December 1880, the following doctrines were to be stressed: The Divine Inspiration of the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments and their absolute Supremacy and Sufficiency in matters of faith and practice; the existence of one living and true God, sustaining the personal relation of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the same in essence and equal in attributes, the total and universal depravity of mankind, the election and effectual calling of all God's people, the atoning efficacy of the Death of Christ, the free justification of believers in Him by His imputed Righteousness; the preservation unto eternal life of the Saints, the necessity and efficacy of the influence of the Spirit in regeneration and sanctification; the resurrection of the dead, both just and unjust; the general judgment, the everlasting happiness of the righteous and the everlasting misery of the wicked; immersion in the name of the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit, the only gospel "baptism," that parties so baptized are alone entitled to Communion at the Lord's Table and that a Gospel Church is a Body of baptized believers voluntarily associated together for the service of God.36

Evangelical to Liberal to Evangelical?

45

By the 1920s it was clear that what Clark H. Pinnock has called "the Modernist Impulse"37 was exerting a great deal of influence at McMaster University. And this helps to explain the bitter struggle between socalled fundamentalists and modernists that resulted in the bitter split in the Convention in 1926 and 1927. The shift in theological emphasis at McMaster was conveniently captured in two key statements made by two of the institution's chancellors. The third chancellor of McMaster University, the Reverend O.C.S. Wallace, enunciated in his inaugural address in 1895 what he must have realized was a strong defence for Christian higher education. He was, with good reason, widely regarded as a staunch defender of the evangelical status quo, but he was also well known as somebody very concerned about preparing his "students for the challenges of life in the outer world."38 As far as Wallace was concerned, in 1895 McMaster University existed "for the teaching rather than the pursuit of truth." He went on, "Much of the educational work of the present day is a menace to all that is holiest in faith and loftiest in morality because it is moulded in form and determined in spirit by the contrary of that principle ... We are not denying that there is truth to pursue, but we do most confidently and solemnly affirm that there is truth to teach ... Before such truths as have been abundantly proven or clearly revealed we dare not take the attitude of the ... doubter and the agnostic."39 In his inaugural address given in November 1923, Chancellor Howard Primrose Whidden clearly revealed how much his philosophy of education and his commitment to "Christian truth" differed from that of Wallace. In his brief address, the words "Christian" or "Christ" were not even referred to once. The sentence underscored in the beginning of his speech was "Liberal education should seek to relate the individual to the universe." No mention was made of McMaster's motto, "In Christ All Things Consist." The essence of Whidden's vacuous address was captured in this paragraph: "We see then how natural it is to urge in a truly liberal educational programme that recognition be given to the study of universal things in human life. The mind of youth must be brought into sympathetic acquaintance with the best there is in the experience of man ... If the coming leaders of thought and action are to know the best that has been thought or said in other days, the old humanities must not be thrown to the discard."40 Whidden and his successors pushed McMaster University into a liberal and secular position; thus, when in 1957 the Baptist Convention of Ontario and Quebec cut its official ties with the university, and a divinity college, which it still controlled, came into being, all these developments seemed to be inevitable. For its first twenty years of existence McMaster Divinity College was quite content to move in what to many was a liberal direction. But an

46

Canadian Protestant Theological Education

obvious shift in the Convention towards a conservative evangelical direction and the fear that the College needed to tap into the conservative evangelical reservoir for potential students in order to continue to exist meant that the college felt the need to move in an evangelical direction. The appointment of the eminent conservative evangelical scholar Clark Pinnock in 1977 was a signal that things were beginning to change at McMaster. Another sign to the constituency was given in the mid-1980s when the college, "realizing the churches were feeling alienated from the College, hired a respected denominational churchman, Michael Lang, to go into the churches and do nothing but listen."41 Lang began to look for financial support and students for the college - especially from conservative evangelical congregations. With the appointment of John Irwin, a well-known Canadian evangelical leader, as chairman of the college's Board of Governors in the 1980s, convincing proof was provided that the college was returning to its earlier evangelical tradition. Irwin played a key role in 1987 in hiring Dr William Brackney, the former vice-president of Eastern Baptist College, Pennsylvania, as principal. Brackney described himself as being "progressively evangelical," and in response to a question from Doug Koop of Christian Week maintained that he believed "sincerely in the need for people to respond to the gospel" and that the "task of the church is to call people to Jesus Christ unashamedly."42 It is noteworthy that the title of the Christian Week article on McMaster Divinity College was "The Unlikely Transformation of McMaster Divinity College."43 The first paragraph of the article read: "Something incongruous and largely unexpected is happening. M.D.C., long berated in conservative circles as a bastion of modernism, is now earning a reputation as an increasingly evangelical school."44 There was therefore a ring of authenticity in Brackney's statement that "some people are reluctant to admit that God can shake an institution to its boots."45 The Aeadia-McMaster example, however, was not one followed by Queen's Theological College. The accommodating evangelicalism that Principal George Munro Grant stamped on the theological bias of Queen's University in the late Victorian period had virtually disappeared from the institution at the time of church union in 1925.46 Since 1925 Queen's Theological College has been more or less a liberal institution, with sometimes a little neo-orthodox and evangelical leaven. In fact, from 1927 to the present there has been a noteworthy evangelical presence on the faculty. From 1929 to 1952 the aloof conservative evangelical J.M. Shaw was professor of systematic theology, and from 1947 to 1969 W.F.L. Smith, an evangelical liberal, was professor of church history.47 During the past decade a number of the evangelicals have been appointed, some to permanent positions, others as

Evangelical to Liberal to Evangelical?

47

adjuncts. They, like Shaw and Smith, found that there were evangelical students at the college who looked to them for support, solace, inspiration, and, sometimes, hope for their increasingly beleaguered United Church.48 It is noteworthy that scores of future Canadian Convention Baptist ministers are being educated not at Acadia or McMaster but at Ontario Theological Seminary and Regent College - the two dominant Canadian Protestant seminaries. Since its founding in 1976 Ontario Theological Seminary, under the effective leadership of Ian Rennie until he retired in 1995, has attracted scores of Convention students, many of whom have helped to reshape the contours of Convention theology and church life. The same is true, with somewhat smaller numbers, of Carey College, the Baptist Convention of Western Canada seminary closely linked with Regent College in Vancouver. Since its creation in 1976 Regent has become "one of Canada's most influential seminaries," according to John Stackhouse: "On the campus of one of Canada's premier secular universities was a major evangelical school. A denomination well-known for a strong streak of anti-intellectualism, the Christian Brethren, founded a graduate school, fully accredited by the Association of Theological Schools, with a faculty among the most distinguished in North American evangelicalism."49 Both Regent and Ontario Theological Seminary have pointed in the direction of evangelical growth and evangelical potential. This is the same direction being followed by Acadia Divinity College and McMaster. New religious market forces shaping market shares, thus determining the outreach of competing denominations, appear to be blending with a continuing search for the purity of a religious past to pump new life into an evangelical movement that many observers had described as virtually dead sixty years ago. But this same, almost inexorable movement may, as Finke and Stark have contended, have at its heart a deadly virus - the powerful tendency to adjust the sacred to meet the demands of worldly success. The irony of history, including the history of Christianity in Canada, is energized by the mingling of the forces of change and continuity. Even a superficial examination of the evolution of Canadian Protestant theological education reveals something about this complex intermingling process, as does an equally impressionistic, collective biographical approach involving only four men and women - however representative they might or might not be. In these two very different kinds of probes I have attempted, moreover, to contextualize Canadian evangelicalism in the 1990s within some kind of historical and theological framework. This is essential because in my view Canadian

48

Canadian Protestant Theological Education

evangelicalism in the 1990s cannot be understood without at least some attention being paid to its history. Contemporary Canadian evangelicalism cannot and should not be severed from its past. It should not be surprising, therefore, that one in six Canadians in the mid-1990s may be considered to be evangelicals. One hundred years ago perhaps one in four could be and 200 years ago fewer than one in twenty. Within the time frame of the past century Canadian evangelicalism seems to have declined, at least in terms of the percentage of the total population. But if the time frame is stretched back to the 1790s, the prevailing authorized version of declension and secularization appears to be a completely wrong-headed explanatory device. In my search for Canadian evangelicalism in the 1990s I have first looked to the past in order to try to find some guideposts for my contemporary investigation. After doing this in albeit cursory fashion, however, I realized that before I could critically study Canadian evangelicals I would have not only to find them but I would have to carefully locate them within the existing world of Canadian religious belief and practice. This existing contemporary world has been given shape and substance not by the techniques of the historian but by the work of skilled experts involved in public opinion surveys and by the discourse of sociologists. I thus found myself floating between disciplines, compelled to ask new questions about old problems and becoming suddenly aware of new scholarly boundaries to explore.

CHAPTER THREE

"A Nation of Believers "?

The cover of the 12 April 1993 issue of Maclean's magazine carried the banner headline in pristine white: "GOD IS ALIVE - Canada is a nation of believers." Below was a Bible opened at the eighteenth and nineteenth chapters of the New Testament Gospel of John containing the powerful crucifixion and resurrection story. A simple wooden crucifix was carefully arranged on the open pages of the Bible, connecting the arrest of Jesus Christ with Pontius Pilate's decision to have the so-called King of the Jews crucified on Golgotha. The actual sixteen-page cover story - the largest ever done by Maclean 's on such a Canadian religious topic and one that would trigger a Niagara of reaction in the media and the pulpit from Newfoundland to British Columbia - was introduced with what the team of Maclean's reporters and researchers had, weeks before, considered to be preposterous nonsense: "Despite Common Assumptions about the Decline of Religion, Most Canadians Are Committed Christians." The Maclean's writers set the stage with a vignette of a Sunday morning in early spring, when crocuses bloom and the breeze carries an earthy scent, filled with the promise of new life. Skiers rise early to catch the last slushy days of downhill thrills, while Saturday-night revellers sleep languorously late, the laughter of children mingling with the chirping of birds drifting in their open windows. Somewhere, a church bell tolls. Regular churchgoers - far fewer in number than they were a few decades ago - make their way to morning service. But the Sunday brunch and shopping crowd pay little heed. It is not that they have forsaken God - many just do not feel compelled to worship in an established church any more. Whatever beliefs they hold tend to be private ones - their lives clearly divided between the public, secular world of Caesar, and the personal, reflective realm of God. That, at least, is the conclusion of a revealing new study conducted by the Angus Reid Group ... the most comprehensive examination yet of faith in Canada.1

50

A Nation of Believers?

The new study referred to by Maclean's was one I had commissioned, eventually involving a random selection of 6,014 Canadians aged eighteen and over. It was indeed the largest and most comprehensive study of Christian belief and practice ever conducted in Canada. The information undergirding the study was collected over a four-month period as part of the monthly national Angus Reid Poll, a public-opinion survey conducted over the telephone, which collects information through interviews on a myriad of topics of social and political concern. The 6,014 surveys took place in January, February, March, and April of 1993. Potential respondents were identified using a modified randomdigit dialling method that ensured that all telephone numbers, both listed and unlisted, had an equal chance of being selected. Unless otherwise noted, the information being discussed and analysed in this chapter is based on the results of the 6,014 interviews. The results, as expressed as percentages, may be considered accurate 1.3 percentage points above or below the figures cited, nineteen times out of twenty. Some questions were asked of only 1,500 Canadians, and for these questions the margin of error would be 2.6 percentage points above or below the figures cited, nineteen times out of twenty. What follows is an interesting and accurate picture of the religious views of Canadians in early 1993. Further surveys conducted in 1994 clearly suggest that the 1993 Angus Reid/G.A. Rawlyk snapshot is still remarkably stable and accurate. A large number of tables are included in the text to permit the reader to judge the merits of the various arguments being put forward in this key chapter. Moreover, it is hoped that the tables will be of use to other scholars of Canadian Christianity who do not have direct access to the survey results. This is, of course, an important aspect of the scholarly enterprise. RELIGIOUS FAITH, CHRISTIAN BELIEF, AND CHRISTIAN

EXPERIENCE

When asked to respond to the statement "My religious faith is very important to me in my day-to-day life," 36 per cent of Canadians strongly agreed, 30 per cent moderately agreed, 17 per cent disagreed moderately, 16 per cent disagreed strongly, and 1 per cent "did not know." All Canadians, Christians and non-Christians alike, were included in the general response. The regional breakdown was extremely interesting, underscoring some basic differences between the regions - especially between the four Atlantic Provinces and British Columbia (tables). Members, adherents, and former adherents of the various Christian denominations as well as those of other faiths, no faith, and no affilia-

A Nation of Believers?

51

Table 3 Importance of religious faith: A regional perspective "My religious faith is very important to me in my day-to-day life. "

Total

B.C.

Alta.

Manit./ Sask.

Out.

Que.

Atlantic

6,014

688

556

501

2,160

1,563

546

Agree strongly

36%

26%

34%

38%

35%

38%

44%

Agree moderately

30%

26%

31%

34%

28%

31%

33%

Disagree moderately

17%

22%

20%

15%

19%

14%

14%

Disagree strongly

16%

24%

13%

11%

17%

17%

8%

1%

1%

2%

1%

1%

1%

1%

Unweighted base

Don't know/Not sure

Table 4 Importance of religious faith: A denominational perspective - Anglican and Roman Catholic "My religious faith is very important to me in my day-to-day life. " Anglican attendance

R. C. attendance

Weekly/ Occ./ NonTotal Anglican monthly never Christian R. C.

Unweighted base 6,014

573

154

311

108 2,284

Weekly/ Occ./ Nonmonthly never Christian

953

1,054

277

Agree strongly

36%

32%

68%

22%

13%

43%

69%

27%

16%

Agree moderately

30%

34%

27%

41%

20%

34%

26%

44%

22%

Disagree moderately

17%

21%

4%

26%

30%

14%

4%

20%

26%

Disagree strongly

16%

12%

1%

10%

35%

8%

0%

8%

34%

1%

1%

1%

1%

2%

0%

0%

0%

1%

Don't know/ Not sure

tion respond to the "religious faith" question in surprisingly different ways, especially when regularity of worship attendance is taken into account. There are, as might be expected, especially noteworthy differences between Canadians associated with the United Church, the largest Protestant denomination, and those connected to the conservative

52

A Nation of Believers?

Table 5 Importance of religious faith: A denominational perspective - United and Conservative churches "My religious faith is very important to me in my day-to-day life. " United attendance

Total Unweighted base 6,014

Conservative attendance

Weekly/ Occ./ Non- Conserv. Weekly/ United monthly never Christian churches monthly

Occ./ Nonnever Christian

757

223

384

150

448

294

113

41

Agree strongly

36%

29%

65%

15%

11%

67%

90%

25%

22%

Agree moderately

30%

37%

33%

45%

22%

19%

8%

47%

27%

Disagree moderately

17%

22%

2%

28%

33%

9%

1%

22%

27%

Disagree strongly

16%

11%

10%

31%

4%

6%

22%

1%

1%

1%

2%

Don't know/ Not sure

1%

•

1%

2%

Table 6 Importance of religious faith: A denominational perspective — Lutheran and Presbyterian "My religious faith is very important to me in my day-to-day life. " Lutheran/Presbyterian attendance Lutheran/ Total Presbyterian Weekly/monthly Unweighted base

Occ./never

Non-Christian

6,014

406

163

176

67

Agree strongly

36%

42%

72%

23%

18%

Agree moderately

30%

31%

23%

39%

30%

Disagree moderately

17%

17%

4%

26%

24%

Disagree strongly

16%

10%

1%

11%

25%

1%

1%

1%

3%

Don't know/Not sure

A Nation of Believers?

53

Figure i Importance of religious faith: A world view "My religious faith is very important to me in my day-to-day life. " Source: Based on data collected by the Angus Reid Group.

churches - Baptist, Pentecostal, Mennonite, Wesleyan, Nazarene, Christian and Missionary Alliance, and many other smaller evangelical and charismatic denominations. In addition, there is also the same kind of correlation between frequency of church attendance and perceived strength of religious faith. Canadian Lutherans and Presbyterians respond in a strikingly similar manner to Roman Catholics to the statement about the significance of religious faith in their day-to-day lives. It is important to try to locate the Canadian response to the statement "My religious faith is very important to me in my day-to-day life" within a global context. In March 1992 the Angus Reid Group conducted a comprehensive international survey of 4,500 people in sixteen countries and, contrary to the expectation of many pundits who expected Canada to be one of the world's most secular societies, Canadian responses to the "religious faith" statement positioned the country as one of the six "most spiritually oriented states included in this global sampling."2 Well over one-half of the survey respondents in seven of the sixteen countries described their own religious faith to be strongly or moderately important to their everyday existence (fig. i). It may surprise some that the United States led the list, with Japan at the bottom. More than eight out of ten Americans described their faith to be

54

A Nation of Believers?

particularly salient in their lives, while large majorities in India (79 per cent), Italy (71 per cent), Spain (69 per cent), Mexico (67 per cent), Singapore (65 per cent) and Canada (61 per cent) underscored their religiosity. The results of the 1993 survey confirmed the overall validity of the 1992 results with respect to Canada and, in fact, suggested that Canada was moving significantly upward on the chart in the direction of the United States. Some would argue that as the twenty-first century approaches, even in the realm of religion Canada is being increasingly Americanized. From the survey results about the importance of religious belief it is also possible to squeeze information concerning the possible determining significance of age, gender, education, household income, and place of residence. Canadians who are women, over fifty-five, with little higher education, earning less than $30,000 per year, and living in rural and small-town locations are more likely to be more religious than their mirror opposites (table 7). The evidence seems to be overwhelming that what might be referred to as Canada's strong sense of religiosity has continued to exist in the twentieth century, despite the elite view, widely propagated both within and outside the country, that Canadians have become fundamentally secular in their outlook. Overall, Canadian Christian religiosity is shaped by regionalism, denominationalism, frequency of church attendance, age, gender, education, and household income. In addition, the 1993 survey results underscored the validity of the generally accepted view that older rural and small-town Canadians, whether Protestant or Roman Catholic, tend to be far more religious than their younger fellow Canadians, especially those living in large urban centres (table 8). Some would argue that because so much of Canadian religiosity is tied to an older, rural, small-town, poorly educated, conservative Christian past, urban, educated, liberal, modernity can only lead to secularism. However, one must always realize that secularization is not inevitable, as the American religious experience clearly demonstrates, and that as the sociologist John Wilson has perceptively observed, "Much confusion is sown by labelling changes as 'declines' when in fact they may only be changes."3 One of the most-cited pieces of evidence for the secularization of Canada has been the very real decline in church attendance over the past fifty years. According to Gallup surveys, in 1994 the number of people who say that they have attended "church or synagogue in the past seven days" is approximately half of what it was immediately after World War II. In 1946, 67 per cent of all Canadians worshipped "in the past seven days." In 1986, the Gallup percentage had plummeted to 31 per cent, only to rise eight years later to 36 per cent.4

Table 7 Importance of religious faith: A demographic perspective -Age, gender, education, and household income "My religious faith is very important to me in my day-to-day life." Age

Gender

Household income

Education

18-34

35-54

55+

Male

Female

Some high school

6,014

1,987

2,565

1,450

3,107

2,907

989

1,567

1,930

1,513

1,755

1,716

2,072

Agree strongly

36%

24%

36%

51%

29%

43%

46%

38%

32%

32%

43%

38%

27%

Agree moderately

30%

32%

30%

26%

30%

29%

26%

31%

32%

28%

27%

29%

33%

Disagree moderately

17%

21%

17%

13%

20%

14%

16%

16%

18%

19%

16%

17%

20%

Disagree strongly

16%

21%

16%

9%

20%

12%

12%

13%

17%

20%

13%

15%

20%

1%

1%

1%

1%

1%

1%

1%

1%

1%

1%

1%

1%

1%

Total

Unweighted base

Don't know/Not sure

Comp. high school

Post sec./ some univ.

Univ. grad.

223 174, 177, 182, 184, 186, end times. See Armageddon 193, 196, 199,215,217, Evangelical Fellowship of 218-19; belief in and Canada, 135, 137, 140 church attendance, 67, 69; belief in by Canadians Finke, Roger, 31, 47 generally, 62-3; belief in formalists, 10, 11, 12, 166 by elites, 62; demofundamentalists, 3, 6, 12, graphic influences on 138-9, 141, 160, 165, attitudes and beliefs, 171 63-4, 66-70, 74, 76; denominational influgender of evangelicals, 143 ences on attitudes toward, glossolalia, 28, 120 63-5, 69, 70, 74. See also God: attitudes toward, crucicentrism 58-9,60-2, 149, 151, l6l !54. !59> > ^o. !74. 181-2, 184, 186, 192-3, Kingston Baptist Parsonage case, 40-3 196, 199, 202, 216, 218, 219, 220; belief in, 56-7, Lawrence, Nancy, 14, 30 76; characteristics of, 153-4, 161-2, 166, 173, Lawrence, Rev. William, 14 177,178-9, 181, iSS.See liberalism, 3, 4, 12, 31, 39, 44, 46, 141, 223; liberal also death of God

Protestant hegemony, 32, 105, 117-18; in theological education, 32, 34-5 Lovesey, Dorothy May, 19 loyalty, denominational, 129-31 Lutherans, 35—6, 59, 129, 130, 175; and activism (witnessing), 108; and Bible reading, 99, 100, 101; and biblicism, 96, 97; and conversionism, 84, 86 Maclean's, 32, 49-50 McMaster Divinity College, 45-6- 47 McMaster University, 21, 22,23,33,35,39,44-6 Masters, Donald, 33-4 Mennonites, 36, 130, 131 Methodists, 10, 20, 33 middle-class respectability, 11, 12, 22, 24, 27, 36, 43. i i ? missionaries, 123-4 Missionary Alliance Church, 178 New Birth, 10, 12, 14-15, 18, 26,80, 117, 118, 153, l6o,

2 1 1 , 2 1 2 , 213, 214 .

See also born-again Christians; conversionism New Lights, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20 Noll, Mark, 13, 222-3 Old Lights, 14-15 Pentecostals, 24, 36, 129, 130, 131, 137, 140, 142, 160, 161, 171, 174, 175, 182, 184, 201, 203, 215, 221. See also charismatic movement Pinnock, Clark H., 45, 46 populism, 6-7, 9, 43, 117, 140, 151, 222-3, 224, 225-6. See also privatization of belief

Index

quadrilateral ideology, 9-10, 80, 115, 118, 227n. 4. See also activism; biblicism; conversionism; crucicentrism Queen's Christian Fellowship, 27 Queen's Theological College, 39, 46-7 Queen's University, 25, 27, 33.35

by age group, 54-5; by denomination, 51, 53, 54; by educational background, 54-5; by gender, 54-5; in a global context, 53; by household income, 54-5; by place of residence, 54, 56; by region, 51. See also church attendance; God; Jesus Christ respectability, middle-class. See middle-class respectability restorationism, 80 Roman Catholics, 10, 33, 35,59,80, 139, 150, 163, 165, 167-8, 196, 197, 221; and activism, 108, 124, 125; and Bible reading, 99, 100, 123; and biblicism, 96, 97, 121, 122; and the charismatic movement, 118, 150, 155, 183; and conversionism, 81, 84, 87, 119, 120, 206; and crucicentrism, 126; and divine healing, 127, 128; and evangelicals, 116, 118, 120, 129, 130, 131, 135, 136, 137, 138, 141, 142, 201, 203, 223; and prayer, 127, 128; and the privatization of belief, 128-9; and the Rapture, 113, 132; and religious television, 134; and Women Aglow, 137

Rand, Silas Tertius, 18 Rapture: belief in, 114,115, 132, 133; definition, 113 religious faith, importance of, in Canada, 50-6, 76;

Satan. See Devil Shaw, J.M., 35, 46, 47 Shields, Thomas Todhunter, 21, 25 Smith, W.F.L., 46, 47

prayer: belief in efficacy of, 103-4, ^S, 176, 195, 207, 208-9; demographic influences, 1034, 107, 108; denominational influences, 104, 105, 106; regional influences, 103, 105; frequency of, 103, 115, 127-8, 148, 152-3, 1578, 160, 164-5, 1^9» 172, 176, 178-9, 180-1, 183, 185, 187, 189, 191, 194, 198, 202, 206-10 prayer groups, 131 Presbyterians, 11, 12, 27, 32.33.35.36,59. 129, 130, 185; and activism (witnessing), 108; and Bible reading, 99, 100, 101; and biblicism, 96, 97; and conversionism, 84, 86 privatization of belief, 73, 76-9, 113, 115-16, 128-9, 165. See also populism

239 Social Gospel, 133, 223 Spidle, Simon, 40-3 Stackhouse.John, 135, 139-40 Stark, Rodney, 31, 47 television evangelism, 5, 134, 135, 147, 150, 156, 160, 163, 165, 168, 172, 175, 178, 180, 183, 189, 191, 194, 197,201, 205 Trinity, 24, 44, 69, 72, 121, 127, 161, 166, 170, 177, 179, 190, 192, 203, 215-17, 219, 220. See also Holy Spirit United Church, 27, 32, 35, 36,47,59, 129, 130, 178, 185, 187, 188, 189; and activism, 108, 123; and Bible reading, 99, 100, 101; and biblicism, 96, 97; and conversionism, 81, 84, 86; and the Rapture, 113 virgin birth, 43 Virgin Mary, 43, 127, 171, 201

Wallace, Rev. O.C.S., 45 Wells, David, 222-3, 236n. 20 Wesley, John, 9, 29 witnessing, 123-5, 14&> 150-2, 156-7, 163-4, 168, 172, 176, 178, 180, 183, 185, 189, 191, 194, 197-8, 201-2, 205-6. See also activism Women Aglow, 135, 136, 137 Wuthnow, Robert, 73, 223