Rethinking Church, State, and Modernity: Canada Between Europe and America

Front Cover
David Lyon, Marguerite Van Die
University of Toronto Press, 2000 - Political Science - 353 pages
0 Reviews

Ambitious in scope, Rethinking Church, State, and Modernity considers some central concepts in the sociology and history of religion and, simultaneously, how Canada's religious experience is distinctive in the modern world. The contributors to this volume challenge the institutional approach that stresses a strict division between "church" and "state", which seems inappropriate in late-modern and post-modern scenarios. Rather, the authors favour an interpretation that is marked more by fluidity than fixity.

Canada, which stands somewher between the largely secularised Europe and the relatively religious United States, is well situated as a testing ground for the leading conceptions of the fate of religion in modern and postmodern societies. The book focuses mainly on Christianity, looking at what is distinctive about Canadian situations, and discusses the concomitant decline of some religious groups and the ongoing vitality of others in an increasingly multi-faith and globalized society. The emergence of constitutional rights and identity politics have both contributed to the transforming relationship between church and state and the contributors to this volume pay special attention to the political and social attitudes of religious groups and to the consequences of these attitudes. Subjects covered include: the role of God in the Canadian Constitution; anglophone religious responses to the referendum crisis of 1995; evangelical subcultures in Canada and the United States; and specifically postmodern topics such as the body and consumerism.

 

What people are saying - Write a review

We haven't found any reviews in the usual places.

Contents

Introduction
3
Canada in Comparative Perspective
23
Heritage and Project
34
Continuities
52
Canada and
69
Religion
90
Christian Groups Engage Canadian Politics
113
The Catholic
131
Denomination
189
A Generic Evangelicalism? Comparing Evangelical Subcultures
228
The Steeple or the Shelter? Family Violence and ChurchandState
249
The Politics of the Body in Canada and the United States
263
Religion Identity and Politics
283
References
303
Index
339
Copyright

Catholicism and Secularization in Quebec
149

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 92 - The Parliament of Canada, affirming that the Canadian Nation is founded upon principles that acknowledge the supremacy of God, the dignity and worth of the human person and the position of the family in a society of free men and free institutions; Affirming also that men and institutions remain free only when freedom is founded upon respect for moral and spiritual values and the rule of law...
Page 90 - Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law: Guarantee of Rights and Freedoms 1 The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society. Fundamental Freedoms...
Page 39 - I think what I and most other sociologists of religion wrote in the 1960s about secularization was a mistake. Our underlying argument was that secularization and modernity go hand in hand. With more modernization comes more secularization. It wasn'ta crazy theory. There was some evidence for it. But I think it's basically wrong. Most of the world today is certainly not secular. It's very religious.
Page 96 - We are now living in a social climate in which people are beginning to realize, perhaps for the first time in the history of this country, that we are not entitled to impose the concepts which belong to a sacred society upon a civil or profane society. The concepts of the civil society in which we live are pluralistic, and I think this parliament realizes...
Page 156 - The peoples may, for their own ends, freely dispose of their natural wealth and resources without prejudice to any obligations arising out of international economic co-operation, based upon the principle of mutual benefit, and international...
Page 283 - In our sensible zeal to keep religion from dominating our politics, we have created a political and legal culture that presses the religiously faithful to be other than themselves, to act publicly, and sometimes privately as well, as though their faith does not matter to them...
Page 77 - And be it further enacted, that the persons called Quakers, Menonists and Tunkers, who from certain scruples of conscience, decline bearing arms, shall not be compelled to serve in the said militia, but every person professing that he is one of the people called Quakers, Menonists or Tunkers, and producing a certificate of his being a Quaker, Menonist or Tunker, signed by any three or more of the people (who are or shall be by them authorized to grant certificates for this or any other purpose of...
Page 81 - ... and which they were cultivating to such manifest advantage — I felt infinitely prouder in being able to throw over them the aegis of the British Constitution, and in bidding them freely share with us our unrivalled political institutions, and our untrammelled personal liberty.
Page 79 - The fullest privilege of exercising their religious principles is by law afforded to the Mennonites, without any kind of molestation or restriction whatever, and the same privilege extends to the education of their children in schools.
Page 74 - The traveller from Europe edges into it like a tiny Jonah entering an inconceivably large whale, slipping past the Straits of Belle Isle into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, where five Canadian provinces surround him, for the most part invisible.

References to this book

All Book Search results »

About the author (2000)

DAVID LYON is a member of the Department of Sociology at Queen's University. Marguerite Van Die is Associate Professor, Queen's University/Queen's Theological College.

Bibliographic information