Evangelical Century: College and Creed in English Canada from the Great Revival to the Great DepressionGauvreau explores the persistence and development of the evangelical creed as the intellectual expression of Protestant religion which largely defined English-Canadian culture in the Victorian period. This popular theology, which linked Methodist and Presbyterian church colleges to the world of popular preaching, was based on the Bible not only as the foundation of personal piety but as a sacred record of human history: past, present, and future. Gauvreau shows that the evangelical creed proved flexible when faced with the challenges of Darwinian evolution, higher criticism, and other new intellectual currents, and that it remained central to the intellectual life of the churches. By accommodating those aspects of modern thought most compatible with evangelicalism and filtering out those more threatening, clergymen-professors such as Samuel Nelles, Nathanael Burwash, George Monro Grant, and William Caven were able to find creative ways to move their churches toward social reform in the late nineteenth century. The evangelical synthesis lost its cultural supremacy only in the twentieth century, when the complexity of theological discussion in the church colleges broke down the close links between professor and preacher. |
Contents
3 | |
The Evangelical Colleges 18201860 | 13 |
Evangelicalism and the Problem of the Past | 57 |
The Preaching of History | 91 |
Every Thought is to be Brought into Captivity to the Obedience of Christ | 125 |
Toward a Theology of Reform | 181 |
College and Creed in Crisis | 218 |
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Evangelical Century: College and Creed in English Canada from the Great ... Michael Gauvreau No preview available - 1991 |
Common terms and phrases
American Baconian believed Bible biblical criticism biblical literalism British North America Canadian Carman Caven central century certainty Chown Christ Christian church colleges clergymen clergymen-professors colonial Common Sense congregation culture Darwinism declared Disciplined Intelligence divine doctrine early Egerton Ryerson English Canada Enlightenment ethics evangelical creed evangelical theology evolution evolutionary experience faith Free Church gelical German gospel Grant higher criticism historians historical criticism historical study historical theology human ideal ideas inductive theology insistence intellectual interpretation Knox College Lecture liberal McCulloch McKillop method Methodist and Presbyterian moral Nathanael Burwash natural theology Nelles Papers nineteenth-century Old Testament outlook philosophy preachers preaching Presbyterian and Methodist Presbyterian College Principal professors prophecy prophets Protestant Protestantism Queen's reason reform religion religious revelation revival Ryerson scientific Scottish Scottish Enlightenment Scripture secular sermon social gospel society spirit tenets theology and history theology of history thought Toronto tradition truth University Victoria College Victorian views William