Voices and Visions: 65 Years of the United Church of Canada

George A. Rawlyk is a professor of History at Queen’s University and
the author of Champions of the Truth: Fundamentalism, Modernism, and the
Maritime Baptists.

The United Church came into being in 1925—a union of most Canadian
Methodists and Congregationalists, and a majority of Presbyterians.
Never strong on theology, and preoccupied with organization and the
dynamic implications of the Social Gospel, the United Church during the
past 65 years has profoundly affected Canadian religions and secular
life. The Church has tried, often unsuccessfully, to bring together what
J.W. Grant perceptively called “the party of memory and the party of
hope.” But the old pietism and the new liberalism have not mixed well:
instead of creating a powerful religious dynamic, the United Church has
produced an organization obsessed with relevance and with the already
redundant last American theological craze.

Despite the unevenness almost always present in a book by a number of
authors, this is the best available general introduction to the United
Church. One of the chapters in particular, J.W. Grant’s “What’s
Past is Prologue,” is superbly written: ironic, perceptive, and both
pessimistic and optimistic at the same time. There are also many
marvelously evocative photographs, both color and black-and-white.