The Evangelical Century: College and Creed in English Canada from the Great Revival to the Great Depression

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

This is an important, revisionist, and ground-breaking study that
profoundly reshapes our understanding of Canadian Protestantism during
the Victorian period and beyond. Gauvreau has convincingly argued that
the 19th century in Canada was indeed the “Evangelical Century” and
that to forget this basic fact is to distort significantly Canadian
historical reality. For Gauvreau, key Protestant thinkers, especially
those who taught in theological colleges, succeeded in accommodating
their brand of evangelicalism with certain key features of so-called
modern thought. In the process, they did not necessarily secularize
their faith but rather energized their society and various denominations

The Evangelical Century raises fundamental questions about the still
widely accepted view of the almost inevitable and reductionist
destruction, by the late 19th century, of Canadian evangelicalism by the
forces unleashed by Darwin, biblical criticism, and new secular
philosophies. Instead, Gauvreau puts forward a sophisticated and richly
textured argument that stresses the powerful thrust of accommodating
evangelical continuity rather than that of sudden, secularized change.
In the process, he has underscored the importance of so-called
liberal-evangelical leaders such as Samuel Nelles, Nathanael Burwash,
George Munro Grant, and William Caven.

Gauvreau’s volume is energized by a conviction that religious ideas
are valid in themselves and not just manifestations of false
consciousness. He understands the power of Christian social concern
found in the rediscovery of the Old Testament prophetic voice by leading
Canadian Protestant theologians and thinkers.

This is a boldly conceived and controversial book. Gauvreau is not
afraid to challenge other scholars and he, in turn, will doubtless be
challenged by others. But this scholarly debate should throw much new
light on a largely neglected area of Canadian intellectual and religious
history.