Canadian Evangelicalism in the Twentieth Century: An Introduction to Its Character

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

This is a pioneering examination of a hitherto neglected area of
Canadian religious history. Written from a largely Ontario–British
Columbia–Alberta perspective, Canadian Evangelicalism focuses most of
its attention on a small number of evangelical parachurch organizations.
As the author points out, the book is basically an “initial character
sketch of the fellowship as a whole drawn largely from profiles of a few
key institutions, an outline that further research should fill in and
modify.”

After pushing T.T. Shields and William Aberhart unceremoniously to the
darkest periphery of the evangelical fundamentalist movement in Part 1,
Stackhouse in Part 2 deals with what he calls “The Mainstream of
Canadian Evangelicalism to the 1960s.” There are three cogently
written chapters in this section; the first deals with the Toronto Bible
College from 1894 to 1968, the second with Prairie Bible Institute (1922
to 1979), and the third with Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship (1929 to
1970). Part 3, which covers the period to the early 1990s, contains
seven brief chapters on the “Sermons from Science” Pavilion at Expo
’67; the evolution of Ontario Theological Seminary; Prairie Bible
Institute; Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship; Trinity Western
University; Regent College; and the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada.

Stackhouse writes about Canadian evangelicalism as an empathetic yet
critical insider. His lively book should connect with both the scholarly
and the more general readership.