Overview

Challenging widely-held views that religious institutions entered a period of decline and irrelevance after 1900, Nancy Christie and Michael Gauvreau argue that the Methodist, Presbyterian, and United Churches actually enjoyed their greatest cultural influence during the first four decades of the 20th century. By examining the relationship of these churches to both popular culture and the emerging welfare state, the authors challenge the main tenets of secularization theories. Christie and Gauvreau look at the ways in which reformers expanded the churches' popular base through mass revivalism, established social work and sociology in Canadian universities and church colleges, and aggressively sought to take a leadership role in social reform by incorporating independent reform organizations into the church-sponsored Social Service Council of Canada. They also explore the instrumental role of Protestant clergymen in formulating social legislation and transforming the scope and responsibilities of the modern state.The enormous influence of the Protestant churches before World War II can no longer be ignored, nor can the view that the churches were accomplices in their own secularization be justified.

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Reviews

A Full-Orbed Christianity offers nothing less than a fundamental reinterpretation of the relationship between religion and social reform in the first four decades of the twentieth century. Christie and Gauvreau open up a number of new and provocative issues, especially the relationship between religious reform and the development of the welfare state. Without doubt the book's impact will be enormous. William Westfall, Department of History, York University.

Author Information

Nancy Christie is professor, history, Trent University and the author of several prize-winning books, including A Full-Orbed Christianity: The Protestant Churches and Social Welfare in Canada, 1900-1940, and Engendering the State: Family, Work, and Welfa Michael Gauvreau is professor of history at McMaster University and the author of a number of prize-winning works, including The Catholic Origins of Quebec’s Quiet Revolution, 1931–1970.

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