McMaster General Studies Series

Most accounts of Canada and the First World War either ignore or merely mention in passing the churches' experience. Such neglect does not do justice to the remarkable influence of the wartime churches nor to the religious identity of the young Dominion. The churches' support for the war was often wholehearted, but just as often nuanced and critical, shaped by either the classic just war paradigm or pacifism's outright rejection of violence. The war heightened issues of Canadianization, attitudes to violence, and ministry to the bereaved and the disillusioned. It also exacerbated ethnic tensions within and between denominations, and challenged notions of national and imperial identity. The authors of this volume provide a detailed summary of various Christian traditions and the war, both synthesizing and furthering previous research. In addition to examining the experience of Roman Catholics (English and French speaking), Anglicans, Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, Lutherans, Mennonites, and Quakers, there are chapters on precedents formed during the South African War, the work of military chaplains, and the roles of church women on the home front.

This book--an edited compilation of twenty-nine essays--focuses on the difference(s) that a Christian worldview makes for the disciplines or subject areas normally taught in liberal arts colleges and universities. Three initial chapters of introductory material are followed by twenty-six essays, each dealing with the essential elements or issues in the academic discipline involved. These individual essays on each discipline are a unique element of this book. These essays also treat some of the specific differences in perspective or procedure that a biblically informed, Christian perspective brings to each discipline. Christian Worldview and the Academic Disciplines is intended principally as an introductory textbook in Christian worldview courses for Christian college or university students. This volume will also be of interest to Christian students in secular post-secondary institutions, who may be encountering challenges to their faith--both implicit and explicit--from peers or professors who assume that holding a strong Christian faith and pursuing a rigorous college or university education are essentially incompatible. This book should also be helpful for college and university professors who embrace the Christian faith but whose post-secondary academic background--because of its secular orientation--has left them inadequately prepared to intelligently apply the implications of their faith to their particular academic specialty. Such specialists, be they professors or upper-level graduate students, will find the extensive bibliographies of recent scholarship at the end of the individual chapters particularly helpful.

Public discussion about the relationship between religion and public life in Canada can be heated at times, and scholars have recently focused on the historical study of the many expressions of this relationship. The experience of Canada's smaller Protestant Christian groups, however, has remained largely unexplored. This is particularly true of Canada's Baptists. This volume, the first produced by the Canadian Baptist Historical Society, explores the connections between Baptist faith and Baptist activity in the public domain, and expands the focus of the existing scholarship to include a wide range of Canadian Baptist beliefs, attitudes, perspectives, and actions related to the relationship between Baptist faith and practice and public life.

While Baptists through the years have been certain that "war is hell," they have not always been able to agree on how to respond to it. This book traces much of this troubled relationship from the days of Baptist origins with close ties to pacifist Anabaptists to the responses of Baptists in America to the war in Vietnam. Essays also include discussions of the English Baptist Andrew Fuller's response to the threat of Napoleon, how Baptists in America dealt with the War of 1812, the support of Canadian Baptists for Britain's war in Sudan and Abyssinia in the 1880s, the decisive effect of the First World War on Canada's T. T. Shields, the response of Australian Baptists to the Second World War, and how Russian Baptists dealt with the Cold War. These chapters provide important analyses of Baptist reactions to one of society's most intractable problems.

The centenary of America's declaration of war in 1917 is a fitting time to examine afresh the reaction of the American churches to the conflict. What was the impact of the war on the churches as well as the churches' hoped-for influence on the nation's war effort? Commenting on themes such as nationalism, nativism, nation-building, dissent, just war, and pacifism, this book provides a window into those perilous times from the viewpoint of Mainline and Evangelical Protestants, Roman Catholics, Lutherans, Pentecostals, Mennonites, Quakers, Mormons, and Jehovah's Witnesses. Also included are chapters on developments among American military chaplains in the First World War and the reaction of the American churches to the Armenian Genocide.

Hundreds of people were converted, leading to significant church growth, in an 1857 revival led by Phoebe Palmer in the city of Hamilton, Ontario, Canada that contributed to the beginning of the Second Great Awakening. This book explores the 1857 setting in the world and in Hamilton, including the key churches and people involved in the revival. What happened was not typical for revival meetings led by the Palmers, as this account shows. The book continues with a summary of the impact of the Hamilton revival around the globe, linking it to other revivals and the Second Great Awakening as a whole. The account ends with what subsequently unfolded in the Hamilton area and the churches involved. Many of the primary sources are in the Appendix, and the book includes numerous pictures and maps. Scholars, ministers, and lay people alike will appreciate this exploration of a chapter in Canada's spiritual history.

How should Christians respond to terrorism and terrorists in their midst? Terrorism is a global problem, and no society on earth faces it alone. The mainly Christian society of Kenya has suffered more than most as it attempts to counter the threat of al-Shabaab. Some pastors have asked for permission to carry guns. Many Christians support government military action, while others recommend pacifist stances, and strive for dialogue and reconciliation with the Muslim community. In this book, ten Kenyan Christian thinkers and practitioners share their experiences and insights. A response section from seven others, including a Kenyan Muslim scholar, enrich the discussion.

The inaugural lecture is a tradition that has been practiced in western universities for centuries. These lectures originated in the great universities of continental Europe, spread to Great Britain, and then to North America. The tradition has now been appropriated further by universities around the world and especially of late in majority world countries. The inaugural lecture is a form of academic discourse, in which the recipient of a suitable academic honor--usually the bestowal of a form of professorial appointment--offers a public lecture in recognition of the event. McMaster Divinity College follows in this academic tradition by attaching public inaugural lectures to the appointment of scholars to professorial positions, and in particular to those appointed to endowed and named professorial chairs within the institution. McMaster Divinity College currently has six such endowed, named chairs held by its faculty. This volume contains the six lectures by those in these six chairs, representing the fields of preaching, theology, pastoral studies, Christian worldview, ministry studies, and Christian history. Each of these inaugural lectures is a contribution to scholarship in the field and a token of the inaugural professorial lecture.

The stories of the women have often stayed in the shadows of Canadian Baptist history. The writers of this book have sought out neglected primary source materials to reveal the lives and work of an array of Baptist women in Canada's history. Read here about the Acadian Mary Lore hungrily reading her French Bible and welcoming the message of Baptist missionaries in Lower Canada, Jane Gilmour leaving her home in Britain to minister with her husband in Montreal and the wilds of Upper Canada, a group of remarkable black Baptist women in southern Ontario in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Isabel Crawford from Niagara becoming an advocate for the Kiowa people of Oklahoma, Miriam Ross from Nova Scotia ministering in the Congo, Lois Tupper, pioneer female Baptist theological educator, and, more generally, the work of Baptist women in the Maritimes in the nineteenth century and western Canada in the first half of the twentieth century. Empowered by their Baptist faith, these Canadian women did remarkable things, and their stories deserve to be told and read.

The Toronto 2018 Symposium on Christian Higher Education provided an opportunity for leaders in the Canadian Christian higher education movement to reflect deeply on its development, current reality, and future possibilities. The Canadian Christian higher education scene comprises a wide range of institutions, including Christian universities, Bible colleges, and seminaries and graduate schools. Each type has its own distinctive history and likewise represents both challenges and opportunities. Even though they are intertwined in their common purpose, these higher educational institutions express this purpose in various ways. This volume is a collection of the papers and plenary talks designed to share the content of the symposium with a wider audience. The papers are all written by active scholars and researchers who are connected to the member institutions of Christian Higher Education Canada (CHEC). They not only illustrate the quality of the scholarship at these institutions, but they make their own critical contribution to an ongoing discussion regarding the role and place of Christian higher education within the wider society. This volume is intended to be helpful to students, faculty, staff, board members, and supporters of Canadian and other Christian higher education institutions, as well as interested individuals and scholars.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, there were a number of smaller religious bodies that sought to develop religious and national identity on the margins--something especially difficult when the nation was at war in South Africa. This book examines rich and varied extant sources that provide helpful windows into the wartime experience of Canada's religious minorities. Those groups on the margins experienced internal struggles and external pressures related to issues of loyalty and identity. How each faith tradition addressed those challenges was shaped by their own dominant personalities, ethnic identity, history, tradition, and theological convictions. Responses were fluid, divided, and rarely unanimous. Those seeking to address such issues not only had to deal with internal expectations and tensions, but also construct a public response that would satisfy often hostile and vocal external critics. Some positions evolved over time, leading to new identities, loyalties, and trajectories. In all cases, being on the margins meant dealing with two dominant national and imperial narratives--English or French--both bolstered respectively by powerful Anglo-Saxon Protestantism or French Quebec Catholicism. The chapters in this book examine how those on the margins sought to do just that.

As the first single-volume work to present a national picture of Baptist engagement with the fundamentalist movement in Canada in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Canadian Baptist Fundamentalism fills an important gap in the historiography. It explores the contributions of well-known fundamentalists, such as T. T. Shields, William "Bible Bill" Aberhart, and J. J. Sidey, while also introducing the reader to several lesser-known figures, including Joshua Denovan, E. J. Stobo, and T. A. Meister. Together, these studies demonstrate the diversity of the fundamentalist movement as it emerged and developed across Canada. By drawing on material from across the country, Canadian Baptist Fundamentalism addresses old themes in new ways--and, in the process, raises a variety of questions and possibilities for new avenues of study.

Martin Luther's nailing of the Ninety-Five Theses on the church door at Wittenberg was a pivotal moment in the birth of what would become known as the Reformation. More than five hundred years later, historians and theologians continue to discuss the impact of these events and their ongoing relevance for the church today. The collection of essays contained in this volume not only engages the history and theology of this sixteenth-century movement, but also focuses on how the message and praxis of the Protestant reformers can be translated into a post-Christendom West.