The Lord's Dominion: The History of Canadian Methodism

David E. Smith is a professor of political Studies at the University of
Saskatchewan and the author of Building a Province: A History of
Saskatchewan in Documents and The Invisible Crown.

Neil Semple has written a learned church history of masterful
proportions. More than that, he offers a historical vista of national
life that leaves the reader wondering why no one has done this before.

Here, for the first time, told with clarity and grace, is the story of
an evangelical doctrine of rebirth and transformation, imported into
British North America and propagated by missionaries at home and abroad.
Their message fed a national literary tradition of books and journals
that spread from city to farm and into every region. Through education
and congregational example, through moral crusade and personal
conversion, the Methodist Church aspired, as Semple convincingly
demonstrates, to become Canada’s “truly national church.”

Doctrinally, Canadian Methodists were not exclusive. Had that been the
case, union with the Congregationalists and a majority of Presbyterians
to form the United Church of Canada in 1925 would not have been
possible. But as an organization, they were distinctive. Local autonomy
was never a virtue; rather, Methodists acted together as a
“connexion.” Central direction was welcomed, not feared. For this
reason, the Methodist Church was eminently suited to succeed in the
vast, lonely Canadian environment.

Semple has made a major scholarly contribution to our understanding of
Canadian history and of the history of religion in this country. Were it
not a sin, members of the United Church of Canada might even feel a
twinge of pride in this exploration of its Methodist heritage.