The Resistance to Church Union in Canada 1904-1939

A.J. Pell is editor of the Canadian Evangelical Review and an instructor
of Liturgy, Anglican Studies Program, Regent College, Vancouver.

When the United Church of Canada came into existence on 10 June 1925, members of three major Christian denominations created a new model for the churches of Jesus Christ world-wide. This event marked the beginning of a series of mergers around the globe to reunite disparate Christian churches. Previous studies of that initial union have concentrated upon this merger from the perspective of admirers. N. Keith Clifford, a member of the Religious Studies Department at the University of British Columbia, explores the merger by giving a voice to the viewpoint of those Presbyterians who remained outside the new church.

Beginning with the 1902 call of William Patrick, a Presbyterian scholar and principal of Manitoba College, for organic union of Presbyterians and Methodists in Canada, Clifford traces the path of church union through the controversy within Presbyterian circles between unionists and their opponents. Wisely he ends his clearly written narrative not with the 1925 birth of the United Church of Canada, but with the 1939 revision of the federal United Church of Canada Act. It was this second legislative action that finally gave peace to the new church by allowing Presbyterians who remained outside union to retain their name and clear title to the properties which had not been swallowed by the United Church.

By giving us this new, broader understanding of the battle within the Presbyterian Church of Canada over church union, Clifford has made it possible for his readers to learn two important lessons. The first, to which he points in his conclusion, concerns the extent to which the United Church of Canada Act almost reversed the traditional Canadian position that religious denominations are not creations of the state, but free and voluntary associations of believers. The unrevised act came perilously close to denying religious freedom to the continuing Presbyterians. Second, by showing how much of the resistance to union was a grassroots lay movement, Clifford has reminded us that no major change in the life of any church can take place without the informed free consent of the laity. Where a wide consensus among the laity is lacking, division will most surely result.