Is Jesus Your Personal Saviour?: In Search of Canadian Evangelicalism in the 1990s

A.J. Pell is the rector of Holy Trinity Cathedral, Diocese of New
Westminster in British Columbia.

Evangelicals were traditionally regarded as constituting a very small
minority group within Canadian Christianity. Then, in the 1980s,
Reginald Bibby’s sociological studies of Christianity in Canada led to
the identification and definition of evangelicals, or “conservative
Christians” as they are sometimes called. This interesting and
readable book combines the results of a major public-opinion survey with
in-depth interviews (of persons identified in the Angus Reid poll as
“evangelical”) to draw a sometimes surprising picture of Canadian
evangelicalism in the 1990s.

One of the book’s biggest strengths is its refusal to define
Canadians as evangelicals simply by virtue of their institutional
affiliations. Another strength is the follow-up interviews—conducted
after the poll was taken—which provide a flesh-and-blood context for
the statistics. There are occasional lapses: for example, Rawlyk
asserts, without providing supporting evidence, that one-third of
Canadian evangelicals do not identify themselves as born-again
Christians for fear of being associated with negative aspects of
American fundamentalism. Nevertheless, this book will be a major
authority on the subject of Canadian evangelicalism for many years to
come.