295 - Religion In Canada: A Study In Polarities

Religion In Canada: A Study In Polarities
By Joseph C. McLelland

"The Christian Pavilion at Expo '67, the International Exhibition at Montreal, is a bold annunciation of what's happening. Truly ecumenical-the fruit of eight cooperating churches including the Roman Catholic-the controversial building attempts to meet the challenge and need of our electronic age by opting for contemporary symbols of faith rather than historical and traditional ones. Critics aplenty, mostly within the churches, are charging that it is a surrender to the theories of Marshall McLuhan, Canada's prophet of technological environment. The lack of familiar and identifiable Christian symbols, and the use of modern photographs showing the variety of human life and problems, offend popular piety and theological conservatism."

CANADA is a geographer's dream and a politician's nightmare. Across four thousand miles of the most varied terrain imaginable-from peach orchards to frozen tundra, from the world's most ancient rock formation to prairie only lately tamed to wheatfields-a mere twenty million people share a land of plenty and of latent natural resources. Yet the sheer size of its space makes communication a problem, and regionalism of state and church is the price of unity. Canada's story concerns two "founding nations," French and English, and their subsequent attempts to work out a viable relationship. Novelist Hugh Maclennan termed them "two solitudes," and only recently has genuine dialogue begun. This basic polarity is crossed by a third force,

Joseph C. McLelland is Professor of Philosophy of Religion, the Faculty of Divinity, McGill University, Montreal, P.Q. He did his doctorate at New College, Edinburgh, and is the author of The Reformation and Its Significance Today (1962). Dr. McLelland must be! by now the most read theological interpreter of Expo '67, having already commented on the fair in The Christian Century (July 12) and in The Ecumenist (May-June).

296 - Religion In Canada: A Study In Polarities

consisting of immigrants from other than French and English lands. Notably central European, these groups have not adopted the American "melting pot" philosophy, but have created a mosaic of ethnic groups, an old-world style which adds to the complexity of the new search for a Canadian identity.

A famous student revue at McGill University once described what it means to be a Canadian. You spend half your time telling the British you aren't an American, and the other half telling Americans you aren't British; there's no time left for being Canadian. The truth in that statement has now been swallowed up by a new reality: the "French fact" has asserted itself in an explosive way. The bold challenge hurled at Confederation ("one hundred years of injustice") by the Quebec séparatistes has sharpened the issue of Canada's ties with Europe and the U.S.A. If the Québecois see in their English-speaking countrymen only a pale imitation of the Yankee stereotype, English-Canadians see Quebec as the bulwark against American imperialism, What is distinctive about Canada seems destined to stand or fall with the future of Quebec.

The traditional image of the Canadian as a diffident gentleman, ambivalent in orientation, suffering from an inferiority complex as little brother to his southern neighbor-this is now at issue. One hundred years after Confederation, the corpse of colonialism and dependency is being interred and a nation is struggling to be born.

I

Religion in Canada must be approached in terms of the foregoing analysis. Colonialism was not altogether a bad thing for the church. At first it was a case of zealous pioneers bringing their faith with their culture: early missionaries, military chaplains, circuit riders. Then it was schooling, for the history of higher education in Canada is inseparable from the story of Christian concern for a literate laity. Most of the Canadian universities were established by churchmen with some form of evangelical intention. Much later, the colonial spirit still lingered in the custom of church leaders and theologians from abroad who spent considerable time and effort in the service of the young Dominion before returning to France or England or Scotland to continue their careers. Early in the present century a British publishing

297 - Religion In Canada: A Study In Polarities

house launched a series of volumes, "The Canadian Library of Religious Literature," to honor the work of these and other theologians in Canada. Names such as T. R. Glover, A. R. Gordon, John Baillie, and Nathaniel Micklem belong to Canada through such theological colonialism.

It was in part owing to the presence of such men that the great debate arising from critical scholarship in the last century was resolved more or less amicably. There was the usual bitterness and heat, the simplistic dichotomy of orthodoxy-heresy, and some cases of professors leaving their posts by choice or compulsion. But in general the continuing effects of the debate polarized within the churches; no distinct sectarian spirit was institutionalized. Today the "conservative evangelical" is to be found within all denominations, nor is any Canadian theological seminary (as distinct from Bible college) sectarian in this sense. Of course, proximity to the U.S.A. is an advantage in this regard, since its conservative seminaries offer haven to our more demanding fundamentalists.

The Canadian experience of ecumenism reflects in part this early harmony, and in part the hard facts of the churches' social context. The question of harmony and unity has been raised by the pressures of ministering to a population distributed thinly along thousands of miles of railway in the prairie provinces, to lumbermen and miners working in frontier situations where manpower of every kind is at a premium, and to a people in general unwilling to carry the burden of old-world divisions into the twentieth century. Such sociological factors made for comity arrangements, cooperative ministries, and ecumenism by contract. The movement for organic union, initiated by Presbyterians in the late nineteenth century, gained momentum in the early decades of this century. It won unanimous acceptance among the Methodists and Congregationalists, but the Presbyterians themselves created a new division. When the United Church of Canada was formed in 1925, some third of The Presbyterian Church in Canada voted against union and continued their denomination. The ecumenical spirit had blossomed early in Canada, however, and despite recurring bitterness, especially on the part of continuing Presbyterians, it has fertilized new fruit in the current Anglican-United conversations looking toward organic union.

The working document for these conversations, Principles of

298 - Religion In Canada: A Study In Polarities

Church Union, seeks "a new embodiment" of the church. It envisages a new distribution of power and an amalgam of Anglican and United. (Reformed) polities. Critics charge that this is a weakness, that it is content to re-align old forms and is reluctant to seek genuine newness. The crucial issue of "constitutional episcopacy" is, however, being tackled with honesty and promises to prove helpful to ecumenism in general. Even the Presbyterians have now agreed to send observers to the conversation group. The significance of the proposal may be measured by the statistics of Canadian church life. Over 45% of Canadians are Roman Catholic; of Protestants, 20% are United Church and 13% Anglican, followed by Presbyterians and Lutherans, roughly 3.5% each.

It is obvious that the most important factor in describing religion in Canada is the French Roman Catholic presence. Canada was discovered, explored, and settled by Frenchmen. The fact that a few were Huguenot and that other pioneers, chiefly Scots, opened up the West does not alter the primary significance of Quebec's claim to special status as the embodiment of the founding nation. British by conquest, Canada inherits its distinctive genius and its problématique from its earlier roots. The contemporary search for a viable "biculturalism and bilingualism" operates against the background of the basic polarity.

French-Canadian culture is traditionally conservative, geared to the rural, simple needs and tastes of the habitant, who looked to his cure' for guidance in things spiritual-and political. Paternalism has flourished under charismatic personalities, notably Premier Maurice Duplessis, le chef. The Roman Catholic Church followed the conservative line, a good child of the puritan spirit of the Counter Reformation. Few recognized the signs of reformation present in theologians informed by contacts with France, the journalists and writers, or the politicians of more liberal bent. When the death of Duplessis offered opportunity for change, no half measures could contain the explosive forces in political economy, the arts, education, and the church. Violence, terrorism, fatalities followed; but out of the brief courtship of separatist theory has emerged a more stable quest for more realistic forms of confederation.

During this unsettling period, Vatican Council II was exerting its own distinctive influence for change. Cardinal Paul-Emile

299 - Religion In Canada: A Study In Polarities

Léger, once typical of the traditional French-Canadian curé, became a convert to Pope John's aggiornamento and blessed the avant-garde of his diocese in their efforts to interpret and apply it to Quebec. A popular symbol of the new mood is found in the radical departure in church architecture-challenging and controversial-and even rural Quebec is spotted with such edifices. Education was bound to be a battleground between old guard and new, as the process of laicization sought to wrest it from the church and create a proper Ministry of Education in the government. And through it all, theology moved as a midwife assisting at new birth.

II

A new kind of polarity, however, cuts across all former divisions. No longer is the old liberal-fundamentalist debate our concern, or even the Roman Catholic-Protestant separation, but another sort of engagement, the conflict between conservative and radical responses to the demand for new forms in churchly life, worship, and theology. The vitality of ecumenism in Canada has been caught up in this phenomenon; the Christian Pavilion at Expo '67, the International Exhibition at Montreal, is a bold annunciation of what's happening. Truly ecumenical-the fruit of eight cooperating churches including the Roman Catholic-the controversial building attempts to meet the challenge and need of our electronic age by opting for contemporary symbols of faith rather than historical and traditional ones. Critics aplenty, mostly within the churches, are charging that it is a surrender to the theories of Marshall McLuhan, Canada's prophet of technological environment. The lack of familiar and identifiable Christian symbols, and the use of modern photographs showing the variety of human life and problems, offend popular piety and theological conservatism.

The Christian Pavilion uses architecture and design to create an atmosphere of contrasts: height and depth, gloom and light, despair and hope, are the stuff of existence. Its interior design moves through man's potential as steward of a good creation, his fall into inhumanity and hubris, and his faith witnessing to a presence here and now that provokes him to hope. The theme of "The Eighth Day" was chosen to suggest what Christian theology can and must say about the general Expo theme of "Man and His

300 - Religion In Canada: A Study In Polarities

World." After the seven days of the divine work, man enters his heritage; it is his world, but a world without hope unless he responds to the light that is in it. The difficulty of saying this without relapsing into pious phrases is obvious.

Compounding the difficulty, however, is the fact that so many Canadian pulpiteers have failed to get the message. Preaching glibly about "Man and God's World," they sneer at the "humanism" of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's idea of terre des hommes. Their corrective, however, does not do justice either to the profound understanding of the Expo theme (they are usually English preachers, ignorant of French-Canada's appreciation of Saint-Exupéry) or to the intention of the commentary offered by the Pavilion. The latter is not so much wounded by humanism as laboring under the ambiguity of the gospel itself. How does one communicate this kind of truth? Kierkegaard or McLuhan, electronic age or hellenistic culture, are there holy words which convey divine truth in themselves? Not far from the Christian Pavilion at Expo is another building in which "Sermons from Science- pursues the hard sell, complete with arguments for God's existence, the smooth patter of Moody Bible Institute professionals, and elaborately trained counselors in an after-room. Two solitudes?

The most significant thing about the Christian Pavilion is not its decision to communicate in contemporary modes but the ecumenical nature of its decision. For it is the result of a lengthy and agonizing dialogue among the sponsoring churches-representing some 95% of Canada's Christians-and represents another kind of decision more basic than the first, namely, to witness not to the churches, not even to ecumenism, but to God. Whatever one's judgment concerning the success or failure of that witness, it is necessary to measure this self-transcendence of Canadian ecumenism. It reflects a large step forward in a very short time; it augurs well for the coming years. In the committee discussions leading up to Expo, for example, it became clear that the new polarity had little relevance to the old. It was as if the old battle-lines had not shifted, but that the action had; one was constantly surprised to discover who were one's new friends, and enemies. This lesson is only beginning to be learned by the participating churches. Their younger people caught on quite soon, for in part the new polarity corresponds to the difference between generations. Whether our

301 - Religion In Canada: A Study In Polarities

youth sing Go-Go or yé-yé, they are one in their demand for relevant worship, morality, and theology.

III

How does one measure theological activity? The traditional yardstick of literary output may prove deceptive. The profound influence of Bernard Lonergan, for instance, on generations of Canadian Roman Catholics studying in Rome, is not to be evaluated in terms of his written works, which have been published only recently (Insight and Collection). In fact the international flavor of theology is familiar to Canadians, so that it is difficult to describe what "Canadian" theology is like. In the Canadian Journal of Theology, founded in 1955 as the successor to the Canadian Journal of Religious Thought, 1924-1932, one finds closely similar themes and opinions to those expressed in American journals. There are also similar societies: for biblical literature (related to the American S.B.L.), theology, and church history. A striking difference from the U.S. is that our small population makes a single society adequate for a discipline!

Centers of theological study in Canada are few, and geographically far apart. The two largest cities, Montreal and Toronto, have long been distinguished locations for graduate work and authorship. McGill University's interdenominational Faculty of Divinity, combined with the Roman Catholic resources of Montreal, including the philosophical and theological faculties of l'Université de Montreal, promises increasing stimulus for research and ecumenical teaching. The University of Toronto has five theological colleges, including St. Michael's Roman Catholic, all of which now cooperate at the graduate (post-B.D.) level. These are signs of our time; closer cooperation is to be expected, according to the recent A.A.T.S. report on theological education headed by a Canadian, Charles Feilding of Trinity College, Toronto.

Certain special institutions are noteworthy on the Canadian scene. The Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies in Toronto, with which Gerald Phelan was long associated, has included as visiting lecturers Jacques Maritain and Etienne Gilson. Toronto's Roman Catholic theological community, where R. A. F. McKenzie once taught biblical studies, continues to flourish-Gregory Baum and Leslie Dewart are well-known examples. At McGill University,

302 - Religion In Canada: A Study In Polarities

the Institute of Islamic Studies, presently chaired by Charles Adams, was founded by Wilfred Cantwell Smith, now of Harvard. As a center for intensive research in Islamic culture and theology, it provides both opportunity for academic study and stimulus for wider dialogue. Interest in comparative religious studies is still inchoate in Canadian theological circles but has received sudden encouragement from the developing departments of religion in a number of our universities.

It may be another sign of the changing times that we seem to be moving from "theology" back to "religion." For example, the original Journal of Religion was succeeded by the Journal of Theology; today the new Society for the Study of Religion is pressing for some journal to recognize the broader interests of the departments of religious studies. Might the Journal of Theology therefore revert to its old name and style? More than words is at stake here. Religion as an academic subject is burgeoning in Canada, and theological education has not yet taken account of it. How it will affect the traditional Bachelor of Divinity courses, and especially whether it is best done by theologians or phenomenologists (for want of a better term), remain open questions. Three new religious studies departments are worth noting. McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, calls its department, headed by philosopher George Grant, "Religious Sciences"; at the University of British Columbia. the department is chaired by William Nicholls who has begun an optimistic program which specializes in Buddhism; at Sir George Williams University in Montreal, a vigorous department may help bridge the gulf between the old YMCA-style religious enthusiasm and the new mood of objective yet stimulating concern.

Like Americans, Canadians do not usually follow the European style of "schools" of disciples imitating a master. Thus the Death-of-God theology is of widespread influence in Canada, but only two distinctive voices can be said to have emerged. An erstwhile Anglican Church administrator, Ernest Harrison, has championed the cause (e.g., Church Without God) but lacks sufficient depth to engage the theological community. At the other extreme stands Kenneth Hamilton of Winnipeg's United College. Thanks to a conservative American publishing house, he has quickly risen to literary fame through his critiques (Revolt Against Heaven; God is Dead: The Anatomy of a Slogan). Others who provide helpful

303 - Religion In Canada: A Study In Polarities

commentaries on contemporary movements are William Hordern of Saskatoon and William Fennel of Toronto. Also in Toronto are Eugene Fairweather, editor of the Canadian Journal of Theology, David Hay, active in the Faith and Order Commission of the W.C.C., and Stanley Glen, whose books on pastoral psychology (e.g., Erich Fromm: A Protestant Critique) represent a small but growing group of Canadians competent in that field.

Another area of obvious significance is that of Canadian church history. The Centennial year is encouraging deeper concern with this as with other aspects of Canadiana. A team of noted specialists is producing a three-volume work: John Webster Grant, John Moir, and H. H. Walsh. Dr. Walsh's earlier book, The Christian Church in Canada (1956), remains the only complete church history in a single volume. One of his colleagues at McGill, James S. Thomson, now Professor Emeritus, continues to provide mature commentary on the Canadian theological enterprise; his chapter in the 1965 Literary History of Canada is the best survey to date, despite its neglect of Roman Catholic sources.

IV

The polarities of Canadian life and times make "dialogue" a word pregnant with meaning and hope. Our political unrest and ambivalence turns on moving from uneasy coexistence between French and English to a positive federalism coupling these peoples without denying the distinction. While politicians worry, and youth protest, philosophers and theologians begin to mount their own commentary and to experiment in their own dialogical relationships. Patterned after the British model, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation-long regarded with envy by many Americans-provides an open forum for both monologue and dialogue. Its "University of the Air" has produced slim but important volumes, such as the symposia Makers of Modern Thought and W. C. Smith's The Faith of Other Men. Television personality Pierre Berton, a professional controversialist, initiated popular debate with his provocative book, The Comfortable Pew, which was commissioned by the Anglican Church with the considerable and controversial support of Ernest Harrison.

The mood of change and open discussion encourages our younger thinkers. Hitherto the "brain drain" has included a steady stream

304 - Religion In Canada: A Study In Polarities

of recent graduates and mature teachers to the more stimulating and lucrative academies to the south. Canada is proud of such children: R. B. Y. Scott, J. D. Smart, A. C. Cochrane, Gerald Cragg, Donald MacLeod, to give a few familiar names. Now that Canadian universities are expanding, greater opportunity presents itself for work on larger faculties with better library and research facilities. Donald D. Evans of Toronto's philosophy department is one hopeful sign-his The Logic of Self-Involvement (1963) represents a creative move toward fruitful dialogue between analytic philosophy and theology. Leslie Dewart's The Future of Belief (1966) calls for a radical restatement of Christian theism. Interpreters of Rahner, such as Charles Henkey of Loyola College, Montreal, and disciples of Paul Ricoeur, a regular visitor to Montreal, may be expected to introduce European elements into the Oxonian atmosphere of professional philosophy in most Canadian centers.

Canada has not been noted for historical theology, except for individual scholars like Raymond Klibansky and Eric Jay of McGill, Paul Vignaux of Université de Montreal, or Eugene Fairweather of Toronto. It is to be expected that greater influence in the fields of ethics and practical theology should be forthcoming. For one thing, Canadians have been spared-partly because of history and partly because a small nation escapes the responsibility and engagement of larger ones-the typical American horror of communism with its consequent reaction of belligerence. The Social Gospel took positive root in Canadian political life, and in our country Norman Thomas would probably have been a founding member of the Canadian Commonwealth Federation Party and its successor, the New Democratic Party. Both have nurtured significant Christian social concern. A symposium edited by R. B. Y. Scott and Gregory Vlastos in 1936, Towards the Christian Revolution, summed up the radical nature of this widespread mood. In more recent years, a monthly journal, Christian Outlook, was published in Montreal (1960-1966) to express New Left thinking. Its editor was J. A. Boorman, pupil and critic of Reinhold Niebuhr, Maintenant (Montreal) is a lively Roman Catholic journal of protest and renewal.

The new breed of socio-theologian is becoming prominent in Canada as elsewhere. W. E. Mann, S. Crysdale, and others are

305 - Religion In Canada: A Study In Polarities

pioneering in this none too popular approach. The Board of Evangelism and Social Service of The United Church of Canada has long been an outspoken source of stimulation for all the churches in the area of social action. The Canadian Council of Churches conducted an experimental analysis of the suburban community of Burlington, Ontario, last year under the caption "Satellite City by the Skyway." The Council also runs an Urban Training Project in Toronto, so that inner city workers now add their voice to exponents of renewal. A much earlier attempt to grapple with the social context of religion was the Antigonish Movement sponsored by St. Francis Xavier College in Nova Scotia. It and the related Credit Union movement among Roman Catholics stem largely from the social teaching of Leo XIII.

Theology and the arts is a final polarity to be mentioned. Expo '67 is the catalyst in providing an environment where artist and academic, esthete and theologian may combine resources to experiment with designs for living. Numerous theatrical projects, moreover, without attempting to rival the prestigious Stratford (Ontario) Festival, present opportunity for new dialogue. Cinema festivals, psychedelic happenings, protest rallies may revolve around youth subculture, but they all force questions which traditional theologies could not foresee. In this respect Canada differs little from the U.S. in problem-solving: demands for new forms and expressions of religion, shortage of candidates for ministry, uncertainty created by new morality and new theology.

A more positive and significant role for Canada, it would seem, blends religion and politics. The critique being mounted against U.S. foreign policy, particularly in south-east Asia, unites students, political leftists, pacifists, and many kinds of concerned Christians. If Canada has a distinctive place in the sun because of its peculiar heritage, it will be as peacemaker, prophet of "convergence"-that harmony of opposites destined to be Canada's cross and crown. Jacques Maritain's preference for a logic which does not separate but unites (distinguire pour unire) is one element in such a philosophy. If pluralism set the stage in Canada, secularism has now supplied the lines, even in Quebec. At such a time as this, theology needs to move along lines of hope, toward a future which it cannot describe with any precision but whose power it traces already in places of peace, signs of renewal, and men of good grace.