Van Die, Marguerite. “Canadian Methodist Spirituality in the Late Nineteenth Century: Revisiting the Past, Renewing the Future.” April 30, 2019, Tyndale University College & Seminary, Toronto, Ontario: MPEG-3, 39:20 min. 1 00:00:00.160 --> 00:00:01.060 Thank you very much. 2 00:00:01.090 --> 00:00:06.570 It is amazing to see such a crowd of people who are interested in Methodism. 3 00:00:06.600 --> 00:00:10.660 In the world in which I live, that just doesn't happen. 4 00:00:10.690 --> 00:00:16.700 And I was staying with a friend last night who looks rather as gance at my ongoing 5 00:00:16.720 --> 00:00:20.740 interest in Methodism, and she said, Be sure you've got some jokes to put in every 6 00:00:20.760 --> 00:00:23.700 now and then to make sure they're still all awake. 7 00:00:23.730 --> 00:00:26.600 I don't have any jokes. 8 00:00:26.720 --> 00:00:30.220 I don't think John Wesley went for jokes either. 9 00:00:30.240 --> 00:00:35.740 You, who are preachers, will probably have quite a share of those, because I gather, 10 00:00:35.770 --> 00:00:39.660 at least in my tradition, a joke sometimes begins a sermon. 11 00:00:39.680 --> 00:00:43.300 But my address is quite earnest. 12 00:00:43.330 --> 00:00:48.260 But like the traditional sermon, I'd like to cover three points. 13 00:00:48.290 --> 00:00:51.020 And first of all, why I chose this topic 14 00:00:51.050 --> 00:00:54.220 and some of the challenges that are part of the topic. 15 00:00:54.250 --> 00:00:58.960 Secondly, some misunderstandings that people have had, maybe some of you as 16 00:00:58.990 --> 00:01:04.850 well, about Methodism in Canada during the latter part of the 19th century. 17 00:01:04.880 --> 00:01:06.930 And then I want to present some contrary 18 00:01:06.960 --> 00:01:11.240 evidence through the experience of a few individuals, and I want to set them in 19 00:01:11.270 --> 00:01:15.100 their wider social, political, cultural context. 20 00:01:15.130 --> 00:01:16.850 And finally, and this may be a bit 21 00:01:16.880 --> 00:01:19.930 controversial, but controversy is good for Methodists. 22 00:01:19.960 --> 00:01:25.490 I'd like to give a few thoughts how awareness of spirituality and its changing 23 00:01:25.520 --> 00:01:30.420 context might offer us some insights and opportunities for our own time. 24 00:01:30.440 --> 00:01:32.100 And I'm especially interested in your 25 00:01:32.130 --> 00:01:38.740 feedback, since you are clergy, unlike an academic like myself. 26 00:01:38.770 --> 00:01:41.210 So why this topic? 27 00:01:41.240 --> 00:01:43.420 Well, spirituality is a topic that's hard 28 00:01:43.450 --> 00:01:47.290 to examine at any time and certainly so in the past. 29 00:01:47.320 --> 00:01:49.740 And I've got a definition up there for it. 30 00:01:49.770 --> 00:01:52.020 It's a very simple one. 31 00:01:52.050 --> 00:01:54.290 More often than not, spirituality gets 32 00:01:54.320 --> 00:01:58.780 forgotten when historians do a quick sweep of Christian history. 33 00:01:58.810 --> 00:02:01.980 It's easier to focus on the writings of 34 00:02:02.010 --> 00:02:06.180 great preachers and theologians, and then we look at the past through their eyes, 35 00:02:06.210 --> 00:02:08.940 through the eyes of the preacher, the theologian. 36 00:02:08.970 --> 00:02:12.450 Spirituality can't be quantified at institutions. 37 00:02:12.480 --> 00:02:17.320 You can't analyze it the way you analyze doctrine, and those who practice it in the 38 00:02:17.350 --> 00:02:21.450 past can't be interviewed, and you certainly can't poll them. 39 00:02:21.480 --> 00:02:23.960 So we have to study spirituality through 40 00:02:23.990 --> 00:02:28.040 the few accounts that we do have of people's experience, the way they've 41 00:02:28.070 --> 00:02:34.480 written about it in diaries, letters, biographies, and other published works. 42 00:02:34.600 --> 00:02:38.500 When Dr. Petler asked me for a topic entitled I 43 00:02:38.530 --> 00:02:42.540 happened to be Reading, a recent work by one of my favorite cultural historians. 44 00:02:42.570 --> 00:02:47.580 His name is Robert Orsi, and he studies religion as lived experience. 45 00:02:47.610 --> 00:02:51.660 So not so much as belief, but as experience. 46 00:02:51.690 --> 00:02:55.460 And Orsi's interest is largely in Roman Catholics. 47 00:02:55.480 --> 00:02:57.260 And in his latest book, the one I Was 48 00:02:57.290 --> 00:03:01.940 Reading, he looks at the many ways in which Roman Catholics in the 19th and 20th 49 00:03:01.970 --> 00:03:06.220 centuries experience the presence of the divine. 50 00:03:06.250 --> 00:03:10.820 Some of his examples are appearances by the Virgin Mary. 51 00:03:10.840 --> 00:03:12.800 She seemed to appear quite frequently in 52 00:03:12.830 --> 00:03:18.640 the 19th century visits to shrines, veneration of saints, and, of course, the 53 00:03:18.670 --> 00:03:22.820 belief of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. 54 00:03:22.850 --> 00:03:25.700 All the examples he lists were precisely 55 00:03:25.730 --> 00:03:30.460 those areas where Roman Catholics and Protestants strongly differed. 56 00:03:30.490 --> 00:03:34.780 Protestants would have nothing to do with the doctrine of transubstantiation. 57 00:03:34.810 --> 00:03:39.220 They saw the veneration of Mary and the saints as idolatry. 58 00:03:39.250 --> 00:03:43.660 They dismissed the sacred nature of the priesthood and the papacy, and they were 59 00:03:43.690 --> 00:03:48.140 strongly critical of the Church's control over the reading of the Bible. 60 00:03:48.170 --> 00:03:50.860 It's not surprising, therefore, that given 61 00:03:50.890 --> 00:03:56.540 such dismissal of their valued spiritual practices, roman Catholics saw Protestants 62 00:03:56.570 --> 00:04:01.020 as totally lacking any experience at all of sacred presence. 63 00:04:01.050 --> 00:04:03.600 As Robert Orsi Succinctly summarizes the 64 00:04:03.630 --> 00:04:08.100 difference between the two to be Catholic equals sacred presence. 65 00:04:08.130 --> 00:04:12.740 To be Protestant equals sacred absence. 66 00:04:12.770 --> 00:04:18.700 We know, of course, that such a stereotype was and is quite misinformed. 67 00:04:18.720 --> 00:04:21.060 And you who are in the Wesleyan Holiness 68 00:04:21.090 --> 00:04:25.820 tradition, will have no trouble in providing examples of sacred presence in 69 00:04:25.840 --> 00:04:29.740 revivals and in the lives of preachers and laypeople. 70 00:04:29.770 --> 00:04:36.460 And the same can be said for Wesley's followers in early 19th century Canada. 71 00:04:36.480 --> 00:04:40.140 And I'd like to give you a description of one of those experiences. 72 00:04:40.160 --> 00:04:42.980 The first Mass camp meeting held in five 73 00:04:43.010 --> 00:04:47.980 in central Canada on at Hay Bay, on the Bay of Quinte. 74 00:04:48.000 --> 00:04:49.860 And it's written you may be familiar with 75 00:04:49.880 --> 00:04:52.420 this already, but it's written by Methodist Episcopal. 76 00:04:52.450 --> 00:04:55.820 Itinerant Nathan Banks, and this is how he described it. 77 00:04:55.840 --> 00:05:00.300 It might be said of a truth that the God of the Hebrews has come into the camp. 78 00:05:00.330 --> 00:05:02.580 For the noise was heard far off. 79 00:05:02.600 --> 00:05:04.960 The groans of the wounded, the shouts of 80 00:05:04.980 --> 00:05:08.880 the delivered, the prayers of the faithful, the exhortations of the 81 00:05:08.910 --> 00:05:14.340 courageous penetrated the very heavens and reverberated through the neighborhood. 82 00:05:14.360 --> 00:05:16.100 End of quote. 83 00:05:16.130 --> 00:05:18.220 Preacher's accounts of the early 19th 84 00:05:18.250 --> 00:05:23.140 century, whether it was an upper or lower Canada, the Maritimes or Newfoundland, are 85 00:05:23.160 --> 00:05:26.020 filled with such stories of divine presence. 86 00:05:26.040 --> 00:05:27.700 Possibly some of those stories are more 87 00:05:27.730 --> 00:05:31.100 exuberant than John Wesley would even have been comfortable with. 88 00:05:31.130 --> 00:05:33.860 And you'll find similar accounts almost a 89 00:05:33.890 --> 00:05:38.740 century later by Holiness preachers in eastern Ontario and Western Canada. 90 00:05:38.770 --> 00:05:41.160 And you may still I'd love to talk to you 91 00:05:41.190 --> 00:05:43.860 afterwards, you may still be experiencing this. 92 00:05:43.890 --> 00:05:46.140 But what about Nathan Bang's successors, 93 00:05:46.170 --> 00:05:50.340 the mainline Methodists in the years after 1850? 94 00:05:50.360 --> 00:05:54.460 Historians who have written about the period have argued that by the 1850s and 95 00:05:54.480 --> 00:05:59.540 60s, methodists were no longer looking for divine presence. 96 00:05:59.570 --> 00:06:03.860 The argument that the historians put forward is that in their desire to become 97 00:06:03.890 --> 00:06:09.140 respectable and accepted, methodists lost their experience of the sacred. 98 00:06:09.170 --> 00:06:14.220 They abandoned the old exuberant religion of the heart in favor of college trained 99 00:06:14.250 --> 00:06:19.220 ministers and orderly services in impressive Gothic and Romanesque style 100 00:06:19.250 --> 00:06:23.340 churches, churches which we still see throughout the landscape. 101 00:06:23.360 --> 00:06:25.660 What mattered now was Methodist influence 102 00:06:25.690 --> 00:06:30.860 at the center of political power and the newly formed Canadian nation. 103 00:06:30.880 --> 00:06:32.920 Now, my own research and writing has been 104 00:06:32.950 --> 00:06:37.140 on methodism in the second half of the 19th century, right up until the time that 105 00:06:37.170 --> 00:06:41.780 the mainline Methodist joined the United Church of Canada in 1925. 106 00:06:41.800 --> 00:06:47.300 I've looked at family papers, accounts of Methodist practices, doctrinal emphasis, 107 00:06:47.330 --> 00:06:51.980 and theological training, and I disagree strongly with the view that the 108 00:06:52.010 --> 00:06:56.580 denomination had lost its spiritual core in the process. 109 00:06:56.600 --> 00:07:02.220 I've also become more aware of the complexity and tensions that are part of 110 00:07:02.250 --> 00:07:06.740 trying to understand spirituality in a changing context. 111 00:07:06.770 --> 00:07:13.500 And on this last topic, I'd like to offer a few reflections at the end of the talk. 112 00:07:13.530 --> 00:07:15.380 So are you still awake? 113 00:07:15.410 --> 00:07:17.860 All right. No joke. 114 00:07:17.890 --> 00:07:19.760 But we continue. 115 00:07:22.120 --> 00:07:24.680 We today know something of the speed of 116 00:07:24.710 --> 00:07:29.540 change caused by the Internet, social media, and advanced technology. 117 00:07:29.560 --> 00:07:33.060 We know how it's made our lives so very different from that of previous 118 00:07:33.090 --> 00:07:37.860 generations, even the generation of our parents, in a different way. 119 00:07:37.890 --> 00:07:40.540 But just as comprehensively life changed 120 00:07:40.570 --> 00:07:48.540 for 19th century Canadians and Methodists after mid century, this is my main theme. 121 00:07:48.570 --> 00:07:51.420 When people's everyday experience changes, 122 00:07:51.450 --> 00:07:58.420 their spirituality or experience of the sacred also expresses itself in new forms 123 00:07:58.450 --> 00:08:02.620 that reflect their changed communal and self identity. 124 00:08:02.650 --> 00:08:05.740 Our world changes, and our spirituality, 125 00:08:05.770 --> 00:08:11.160 which is our experience of God in the world, also changes. 126 00:08:11.720 --> 00:08:14.100 So what was the new context? 127 00:08:14.130 --> 00:08:17.700 By the 1850s, the relatively humble status 128 00:08:17.730 --> 00:08:22.580 of Methodists, especially in the villages and towns, had really changed a lot. 129 00:08:22.600 --> 00:08:25.300 It now included a number of professionals, 130 00:08:25.330 --> 00:08:29.060 well to do entrepreneurs, tradesmen and farmers. 131 00:08:29.090 --> 00:08:33.300 Most now listed Canada as their country of birth. 132 00:08:33.320 --> 00:08:40.660 This shift in membership status was part of a wider socioeconomic restructuring, 133 00:08:40.690 --> 00:08:45.180 which was brought about by canal and railway construction, large scale 134 00:08:45.200 --> 00:08:49.820 immigration after the end of the Napoleonic Wars, and rising farm input. 135 00:08:49.850 --> 00:08:54.860 So the frontier became much more settled. 136 00:08:54.890 --> 00:08:58.900 In Ontario between 1851 and 1871, the 137 00:08:58.930 --> 00:09:03.780 number of people living in places of 1000 or more almost tripled. 138 00:09:03.810 --> 00:09:07.800 New Brunswick's Methodists became the fastest growing religious group in that 139 00:09:07.820 --> 00:09:11.260 colony, and most were respectable tradesmen. 140 00:09:11.290 --> 00:09:16.140 And their prosperity was beginning to find expressions in new places of worship. 141 00:09:16.170 --> 00:09:20.180 Constructed in the impressive Romanesque and Gothic styles. 142 00:09:20.200 --> 00:09:24.140 In central Canada, methodists were becoming the province's most prolific 143 00:09:24.170 --> 00:09:28.300 builder of churches, increasing the number of churches by fivefold. 144 00:09:28.320 --> 00:09:30.320 So you can imagine what an impact that 145 00:09:30.350 --> 00:09:35.260 would have on the community to see themselves growing so quickly. 146 00:09:35.290 --> 00:09:37.340 The perception that these changes were 147 00:09:37.370 --> 00:09:41.780 accompanied by spiritual decline comes largely from the warnings and 148 00:09:41.810 --> 00:09:45.740 reminiscences of an older generation of preachers. 149 00:09:45.770 --> 00:09:48.620 They look back with nostalgia on what came 150 00:09:48.650 --> 00:09:53.900 to be seen as Methodism's heroic period the years of camp meetings in frontier 151 00:09:53.930 --> 00:10:00.340 settlements, dramatic conversions and self sacrificing itinerant preachers. 152 00:10:00.370 --> 00:10:05.060 Such lamentations are familiar in times of change. 153 00:10:05.080 --> 00:10:11.140 David Hempton, who is a historian of Irish Methodism lovingly, labels these men the 154 00:10:11.170 --> 00:10:17.020 Old Croakers, and some of us have become Old Crokers, 155 00:10:17.050 --> 00:10:22.460 old Croakers preachers trained in an earlier period who have lost influence and 156 00:10:22.490 --> 00:10:26.060 find themselves out of step with the times. 157 00:10:26.080 --> 00:10:29.140 In actual fact, far from losing spiritual 158 00:10:29.170 --> 00:10:36.100 vitality, the 1850s were a period of intense revival in central Canada. 159 00:10:36.130 --> 00:10:41.940 Between 1849 and 1859, the membership of the Wesleyan Methodist Church more than 160 00:10:41.970 --> 00:10:47.860 doubled, from roughly 24,000 to roughly 51,000. 161 00:10:47.890 --> 00:10:56.100 And that of the Methodist new connections almost doubled as well, from 3389 to 5708. 162 00:10:56.130 --> 00:11:02.620 In the Maritimes, Methodism grew little during this decade, but suddenly in 159, 163 00:11:02.650 --> 00:11:08.640 over 300, over 3000 new members came in largely through revivals, not in the 164 00:11:08.670 --> 00:11:12.460 country, but in such major urban centers as Halifax, St. 165 00:11:12.490 --> 00:11:16.780 John and and Charlottetown and Methodist Connectional Funds. 166 00:11:16.800 --> 00:11:18.700 Funds for the entire denomination, not 167 00:11:18.730 --> 00:11:23.660 counting local funds, doubled during the decade. 168 00:11:23.690 --> 00:11:25.580 Now, one reason why some of the Old 169 00:11:25.610 --> 00:11:29.620 Croakers may have looked with nostalgia to the to the primitive simplicity of the 170 00:11:29.650 --> 00:11:33.580 past was that lay influence had also increased. 171 00:11:33.610 --> 00:11:38.940 Lay influence increases influence of the clergy tends to decrease. 172 00:11:38.970 --> 00:11:44.260 Lay people demanded a better educated ministry, more reflective, less emotional 173 00:11:44.290 --> 00:11:48.460 preaching, and some wanted a reform of the class meeting. 174 00:11:48.490 --> 00:11:53.620 Some saw the class meeting's reliance on personal testimonies as becoming stale. 175 00:11:53.650 --> 00:11:59.020 Same old, same old repetition of my conversion story. 176 00:11:59.050 --> 00:12:02.860 And they saw that as a deterrent to drawing in new members. 177 00:12:02.890 --> 00:12:08.780 In 1874, laymen for the first time were granted seats in the General Conference as 178 00:12:08.810 --> 00:12:12.520 an inducement to try to get the New Connection Methodists to unite with the 179 00:12:12.550 --> 00:12:16.620 Wesleyans to form the Methodist Church of Canada. 180 00:12:16.650 --> 00:12:19.340 The denomination's welltodo, male members 181 00:12:19.370 --> 00:12:23.700 took on prominent roles nationally and also at the local level. 182 00:12:23.730 --> 00:12:27.860 The denomination was expanding, and so they played a vital role as church 183 00:12:27.890 --> 00:12:33.140 trustees, members of building committees, fundraisers and stewards. 184 00:12:33.170 --> 00:12:35.620 Their wives and daughters served in 185 00:12:35.650 --> 00:12:40.900 providing poor relief, sunday school teaching and other forms of outreach. 186 00:12:40.930 --> 00:12:46.860 As a result, the 1850s brought profound changes among ministry and laity. 187 00:12:46.890 --> 00:12:49.740 As self conscious modernizers. 188 00:12:49.770 --> 00:12:52.720 A new generation of laity and clergy went 189 00:12:52.750 --> 00:12:57.460 about building churches, founding colleges, establishing periodicals and 190 00:12:57.490 --> 00:13:03.260 newspapers, constructing new disciplines and forming committees. 191 00:13:03.290 --> 00:13:09.140 In this process, especially in urban centers, ministers wanted to ensure that 192 00:13:09.170 --> 00:13:14.260 material progress did not happen at the expense of spiritual growth. 193 00:13:14.280 --> 00:13:15.640 That's always the danger, right? 194 00:13:15.670 --> 00:13:21.140 We become rich and we lose our spiritual core. 195 00:13:21.170 --> 00:13:23.100 And so ministers realize this would 196 00:13:23.130 --> 00:13:29.220 require a renewal of lay spirituality in a form more fitting for the Times. 197 00:13:29.250 --> 00:13:30.860 How did this happen? 198 00:13:30.890 --> 00:13:37.360 Very simply and very much in keeping with Methodist identity, the 1850s saw a 199 00:13:37.390 --> 00:13:42.380 revitalization of John Wesley's teaching on Christian perfection. 200 00:13:42.410 --> 00:13:47.700 This would have a profound impact on denominational leaders such as theologian 201 00:13:47.730 --> 00:13:53.740 and Victoria College Chancellor Nathaniel Burwash and Albert Carmen, who after 1883 202 00:13:53.770 --> 00:13:57.980 became the general superintendent of the Methodist Church of Canada. 203 00:13:58.010 --> 00:14:00.900 And you can tell by their dates of death 204 00:14:00.930 --> 00:14:07.220 as well, that they had an extensive influence because they died in old age. 205 00:14:07.250 --> 00:14:14.420 And in those days, you didn't retire, you died in harness, and they held on. 206 00:14:14.450 --> 00:14:18.060 So it shaped the leaders, the doctrine of Christian perfection. 207 00:14:18.080 --> 00:14:22.940 It also shaped many lay leaders, clergy leaders. 208 00:14:22.970 --> 00:14:25.140 In earlier accounts, there are references 209 00:14:25.170 --> 00:14:30.280 to Christian perfection entire sanctification or holiness, 210 00:14:30.320 --> 00:14:34.940 but they're really few and far between because most of the emphasis is on 211 00:14:34.970 --> 00:14:39.420 conversion and the accompanying experience of the witness of the Spirit. 212 00:14:39.450 --> 00:14:41.660 But it was especially the efforts of two 213 00:14:41.690 --> 00:14:47.220 American revivalists, james Caughty and Phoebe Palmer, who instilled in Methodist 214 00:14:47.250 --> 00:14:50.820 audiences a new interest in Christian perfection. 215 00:14:50.850 --> 00:14:54.980 In 1857, Palmer came to Hamilton, Ontario, 216 00:14:55.010 --> 00:14:58.180 and it was the first of a series of Canadian visits. 217 00:14:58.210 --> 00:15:02.820 Religion was big news in those days and the press always covered it. 218 00:15:02.850 --> 00:15:06.820 And revivalists made very good use of always contacting the press. 219 00:15:06.850 --> 00:15:09.260 And the way Palmer billed her revival 220 00:15:09.290 --> 00:15:14.860 method in the Hamilton Spectator was as a laity for the Times. 221 00:15:14.890 --> 00:15:17.580 And as she explained to the newspaper, two 222 00:15:17.610 --> 00:15:23.040 things made her revival a success the practical nature of revival and the 223 00:15:23.070 --> 00:15:27.020 role of organization and discipline among church members. 224 00:15:27.040 --> 00:15:28.520 And the way she describes that. 225 00:15:28.550 --> 00:15:31.700 She came to a regular weekly prayer meeting in the evening. 226 00:15:31.730 --> 00:15:34.740 There were about 50 to 75 people there and 227 00:15:34.770 --> 00:15:40.580 in the course of her talking, somehow the spirit started to move and quite a number 228 00:15:40.610 --> 00:15:44.920 of businessmen stood up and they said, we are going to Tithe and we are going to 229 00:15:44.950 --> 00:15:50.580 bring one new member to next night to tomorrow night's prayer meeting. 230 00:15:50.610 --> 00:15:53.860 So it was quite disciplined, quite well organized. 231 00:15:53.890 --> 00:16:00.940 And as a result, the next night this happened. 232 00:16:00.970 --> 00:16:06.080 And as a result, 18 days of meeting, afternoon and evening, took place in the 233 00:16:06.110 --> 00:16:10.160 church apparently was overflowing with people. 234 00:16:10.400 --> 00:16:12.620 And similar accounts emerged from her 235 00:16:12.650 --> 00:16:17.580 impact and other urban centers and also the preaching of James caughthe. 236 00:16:17.610 --> 00:16:21.300 Their methods were part of a shift that matched the world of the laity. 237 00:16:21.330 --> 00:16:26.060 I think that's important revivals were sober in style. 238 00:16:26.080 --> 00:16:28.780 They called on the cooperation of wives 239 00:16:28.810 --> 00:16:33.700 and sisters, the importance of the family, and in these ways, they targeted a middle 240 00:16:33.730 --> 00:16:38.980 class who was active in the new commercial and industrializing marketplace, 241 00:16:39.010 --> 00:16:42.780 starting in New York City and also involving Palmer. 242 00:16:42.810 --> 00:16:47.980 A number of American large urban centers experienced similar revivals in the late 243 00:16:48.010 --> 00:16:54.500 1850s, and the press describes these as the businessmen's revivals. 244 00:16:54.530 --> 00:16:59.500 Holiness was now experienced as a heightened sense of the sacred and abiding 245 00:16:59.530 --> 00:17:04.460 experience of God's love that went beyond the emotional moment of conversion. 246 00:17:04.490 --> 00:17:07.290 It expressed itself in a daily structuring 247 00:17:07.320 --> 00:17:13.570 of one's time in ways that were practical and service oriented. 248 00:17:13.600 --> 00:17:18.980 Earlier accounts of revivals by ministers had emphasized the emotional experience of 249 00:17:19.000 --> 00:17:22.900 the witness of the spirit in conversion, but they hadn't talked very much about 250 00:17:22.930 --> 00:17:26.900 what happened to the convert's life after conversion. 251 00:17:26.930 --> 00:17:29.240 Accounts now took pains to note the 252 00:17:29.270 --> 00:17:34.240 absence of emotional manifestations and revivals, the disciplined involvement of 253 00:17:34.270 --> 00:17:41.120 the late, and the consistent practice of piety as the test of conversion. 254 00:17:41.720 --> 00:17:44.010 Thanks to an interest in biography, 255 00:17:44.040 --> 00:17:49.680 especially among laylives men and women, for this period, a number of converts have 256 00:17:49.710 --> 00:17:53.770 left behind a rich description of their experience and subsequent religious 257 00:17:53.800 --> 00:17:58.290 practice, and I'd like to talk about three of these very briefly. 258 00:17:58.320 --> 00:18:00.290 Most of the new converts had already, 259 00:18:00.320 --> 00:18:04.570 since childhood, been socialized in evangelical Christianity. 260 00:18:04.600 --> 00:18:06.900 And so there are no vivid accounts the way 261 00:18:06.930 --> 00:18:11.140 there are of the earlier period of a misspent youth. 262 00:18:11.170 --> 00:18:13.200 Once I was a sinner, they realized they 263 00:18:13.230 --> 00:18:17.220 were sinners, but it was a different kind of sense of sinfulness. 264 00:18:17.250 --> 00:18:21.090 So here's the first one, and it's Charles Colby. 265 00:18:21.120 --> 00:18:26.660 In the village of Stanstead in Quebec and Eastern Townships, charles Colby, an 1858 266 00:18:26.690 --> 00:18:30.770 young lawyer, fell in love with a young Methodist woman from Vermont. 267 00:18:30.800 --> 00:18:40.050 And shortly after that he experienced he had profound experience of divine love. 268 00:18:40.080 --> 00:18:44.530 And as he wrote to his new mother in law, 269 00:18:44.560 --> 00:18:49.380 although he'd been raised in a Christian home, he confessed that his knowledge of 270 00:18:49.410 --> 00:18:53.460 God had always been intellectual rather than experiential. 271 00:18:53.490 --> 00:18:55.980 Suddenly, as he experienced God's goodness 272 00:18:56.010 --> 00:19:00.810 and love, his relationship with the divine had changed. 273 00:19:00.840 --> 00:19:03.640 In his words, all the barriers which had 274 00:19:03.670 --> 00:19:07.800 previously separated me from the Savior had come down, and for the first time in 275 00:19:07.830 --> 00:19:13.700 my life, I was able to enter into prayer as an intimate dialogue with God. 276 00:19:13.730 --> 00:19:16.080 He realized that God's nature was love and 277 00:19:16.110 --> 00:19:19.700 that religion was primarily a matter of the heart rather than the head. 278 00:19:19.730 --> 00:19:23.620 And of course, this intersected with the experience that he had also had of 279 00:19:23.650 --> 00:19:28.050 recently falling in love and planning to marry and start a family. 280 00:19:28.080 --> 00:19:30.050 He did marry. He did start a family. 281 00:19:30.080 --> 00:19:32.700 He was a devoted husband and father, 282 00:19:32.730 --> 00:19:38.460 and like so many others in this period, it was a really turbulent economic time, and 283 00:19:38.490 --> 00:19:44.530 charles Colby lost his house at one point in time, he became insolvent. 284 00:19:44.560 --> 00:19:50.140 He was often away on business, he entered politics, and he served his 285 00:19:50.170 --> 00:19:55.050 country's federal parliament from 1867 to 1891. 286 00:19:55.080 --> 00:19:59.080 And even though he was often away from home, he maintained an active interest in 287 00:19:59.110 --> 00:20:01.980 the welfare of Stanstead's Methodist congregation. 288 00:20:02.010 --> 00:20:04.330 He was a member of the management committee. 289 00:20:04.360 --> 00:20:07.660 He kept an eye on the Stationing Committee's selection of preachers to 290 00:20:07.690 --> 00:20:10.860 ensure that they always met his congregation's needs. 291 00:20:10.890 --> 00:20:14.200 You weren't supposed to do that, but they all did it. 292 00:20:14.280 --> 00:20:17.010 And with a view to the education of his four children. 293 00:20:17.040 --> 00:20:22.160 He was also an enthusiastic supporter and trustee of Stanstead Wesleyan College when 294 00:20:22.190 --> 00:20:30.290 it opened its doors in 1874, moving then to Halifax james Bain Morrow. 295 00:20:30.320 --> 00:20:32.900 He was raised in a devout Methodist family. 296 00:20:32.930 --> 00:20:37.500 At age 16, he started to work for the Samuel Cunard Steamship Company. 297 00:20:37.530 --> 00:20:40.570 And he worked for there in a number of 298 00:20:40.600 --> 00:20:44.360 very influential positions for the rest of his life. 299 00:20:45.080 --> 00:20:47.440 After attending a series of revivals at a 300 00:20:47.470 --> 00:20:52.040 Sunday school at Argyle Street Methodist Church, he came home and he wrote in his 301 00:20:52.070 --> 00:20:57.900 diary in 1851, I find the service of Christ to be perfect freedom, and I have 302 00:20:57.930 --> 00:21:01.050 to rejoice in what I experience of the love of God. 303 00:21:01.080 --> 00:21:05.600 And shortly after that he took the leadership of a young boys class and he 304 00:21:05.630 --> 00:21:10.330 began a long career of active church involvement which included lay preaching, 305 00:21:10.360 --> 00:21:15.660 teaching a sunday saturday evening band meeting, leading a sunday evening band 306 00:21:15.690 --> 00:21:21.290 meeting assistance and church extension leadership in the local and national YMCA 307 00:21:21.320 --> 00:21:24.250 and on the executive of the book and track society. 308 00:21:24.280 --> 00:21:26.320 So there were all these organizations 309 00:21:26.350 --> 00:21:29.770 which had been grown up during this period. 310 00:21:29.800 --> 00:21:32.120 They needed leaders, and many of those who 311 00:21:32.150 --> 00:21:37.050 had experienced Christian perfection became very involved in them. 312 00:21:37.080 --> 00:21:39.620 In Belleville 313 00:21:39.650 --> 00:21:44.250 Jane Clement Jones unfortunately, it's hard to get pictures of women. 314 00:21:44.280 --> 00:21:46.700 So what we have of Jane Clement Jones is a 315 00:21:46.730 --> 00:21:50.250 window that was dedicated to her memory after she died. 316 00:21:50.280 --> 00:21:54.700 It's in Bridge Street United Church in Belleville. 317 00:21:54.730 --> 00:21:58.160 Jane Clement Jones, 318 00:21:58.240 --> 00:22:07.040 during one of James caught his revivalist campaigns in 1856, jane attended. 319 00:22:07.070 --> 00:22:09.220 She was 30 years old, pregnant with her 320 00:22:09.250 --> 00:22:13.660 fifth child, and she also experienced a new sense of consecration. 321 00:22:13.690 --> 00:22:16.780 And what a sense of consecration it was. 322 00:22:16.810 --> 00:22:18.920 In the next 38 years, she became a 323 00:22:18.950 --> 00:22:23.900 tireless and highly conscientious class leader, first to a group of young women. 324 00:22:23.930 --> 00:22:27.380 And after 1869, she took on a senior boys 325 00:22:27.410 --> 00:22:34.330 class, which over its 14 year existence had a total of 770 young men. 326 00:22:34.360 --> 00:22:36.320 Young men often came to Belville. 327 00:22:36.350 --> 00:22:38.380 They studied at a school of business. 328 00:22:38.410 --> 00:22:40.700 Jane would meet them at the train station. 329 00:22:40.720 --> 00:22:42.180 She would bring them to her home. 330 00:22:42.210 --> 00:22:46.220 She had specialties which would attract them. 331 00:22:46.250 --> 00:22:51.740 In that way, they became members of her young men's class as well. 332 00:22:51.770 --> 00:22:53.380 She was active in poor relief. 333 00:22:53.400 --> 00:22:55.090 She helped establish the Belleville 334 00:22:55.120 --> 00:22:59.810 Hospital, a home for the needy, and the Women's Christian Association. 335 00:22:59.840 --> 00:23:00.940 And along with this. 336 00:23:00.970 --> 00:23:03.700 She was a faithful attendee at Methodist 337 00:23:03.730 --> 00:23:07.260 prayer and class meetings, love feasts and Sunday worships. 338 00:23:07.290 --> 00:23:10.040 And of course, she was also a wife to a 339 00:23:10.070 --> 00:23:14.020 local businessman and a mother to eventually eight children. 340 00:23:14.050 --> 00:23:17.220 Like so many of her generation, I think this is important. 341 00:23:17.250 --> 00:23:19.700 She owed a great deal to a meticulous 342 00:23:19.730 --> 00:23:24.090 organizational ability and an overly developed conscience. 343 00:23:24.120 --> 00:23:26.620 I would feel guilty if I did not go, she 344 00:23:26.650 --> 00:23:32.090 would say, because she spent so much time at her church, which was her second home. 345 00:23:32.120 --> 00:23:36.880 In their work on behalf of young people, Colby, Jones and Morrow exemplified the 346 00:23:36.910 --> 00:23:41.860 concern of Methodist clergy and laity to extend the faith to the next generation. 347 00:23:41.890 --> 00:23:43.880 This was so important to make sure the 348 00:23:43.910 --> 00:23:49.600 faith was transmitted, and the key institution in this was the Sunday School. 349 00:23:49.680 --> 00:23:54.380 Here, prominent local men and women assumed active leadership as teachers and 350 00:23:54.410 --> 00:23:57.900 superintendents, although it was the men who were the superintendents. 351 00:23:57.930 --> 00:24:04.280 William Pearson, for example, an Anglican in 152, was converted to Methodism in one 352 00:24:04.310 --> 00:24:09.220 of James caught his revivals in Toronto's Richmond Street Methodist Church. 353 00:24:09.250 --> 00:24:10.330 He was he. 354 00:24:10.360 --> 00:24:13.740 He worked days in the Toronto Post Office, 355 00:24:13.770 --> 00:24:18.460 but he also served 30 years as the church's Sunday School superintendent. 356 00:24:18.490 --> 00:24:21.620 When his church closed in 1888, he joined 357 00:24:21.650 --> 00:24:26.860 Metropolitan Methodist Church, where he taught a Bible class for another 24 years, 358 00:24:26.890 --> 00:24:32.380 resigning in 1912 after 60 years of continuous Sunday School service. 359 00:24:32.400 --> 00:24:35.860 I'm not sure what it would have been like to have been a young child in William 360 00:24:35.890 --> 00:24:41.050 Pearson's Sunday School class at the 60th year of his superintendency, 361 00:24:41.080 --> 00:24:48.180 but he hung in there like other Protestant evangelical 362 00:24:48.210 --> 00:24:53.700 denominations, method of spirituality began in the home with family devotions, 363 00:24:53.730 --> 00:24:56.900 and the results of this are evident in the 1870s. 364 00:24:56.930 --> 00:25:02.050 As in the 1850s, there was another series of revivals, and Methodist membership in 365 00:25:02.080 --> 00:25:10.620 Canada increased from 15.4% in 1871 to 17.2% ten years later. 366 00:25:10.650 --> 00:25:18.140 So more than 2% increase, making Methodists 367 00:25:18.170 --> 00:25:21.740 the country's largest Protestant denomination. 368 00:25:21.770 --> 00:25:26.400 And samples of congregation showed that the majority of converts were children of 369 00:25:26.430 --> 00:25:30.260 parents who had been converted in the 1850s revivals. 370 00:25:30.290 --> 00:25:35.220 And again, when describing the revivals, the emphasis was on the orderly atmosphere 371 00:25:35.250 --> 00:25:40.900 of the revival and on expressions of dedication on the part of the converts. 372 00:25:40.930 --> 00:25:43.050 In place of the old fashioned Methodist 373 00:25:43.080 --> 00:25:47.780 class meeting, young men and women were enrolled in Bible classes, which were led 374 00:25:47.810 --> 00:25:52.810 by lay female and male members for the spiritual needs of young people. 375 00:25:52.840 --> 00:25:57.500 There was the Epworth League, which was organized in Canada in 1889. 376 00:25:57.530 --> 00:26:00.090 Its purpose was to put into active service 377 00:26:00.120 --> 00:26:03.420 the knowledge the children had obtained in the Sunday School. 378 00:26:03.450 --> 00:26:07.860 For example, the League's Department of Citizenship looked at social and political 379 00:26:07.890 --> 00:26:13.660 questions stressing as the best means of creating a strong and vigorous nation. 380 00:26:13.690 --> 00:26:16.050 Patriotism and moral reform. 381 00:26:16.080 --> 00:26:18.540 And how did you get moral reform? 382 00:26:18.570 --> 00:26:22.900 Well, through such means as sabotarian and temperance activity. 383 00:26:22.930 --> 00:26:25.460 Keeping the Sabbath, which was a very hard 384 00:26:25.490 --> 00:26:29.260 we took it for granted many years, but it was very hard to bring that in. 385 00:26:29.290 --> 00:26:32.180 What do you do with the trains on Saturday night? 386 00:26:32.210 --> 00:26:34.680 Do they all stop 387 00:26:35.080 --> 00:26:38.200 and people will explain, well, if they stop, then the crew is simply going to get 388 00:26:38.230 --> 00:26:42.420 drunk on the weekend and the train will have trouble get starting on Monday. 389 00:26:42.450 --> 00:26:45.780 So these practical issues that idealistic 390 00:26:45.810 --> 00:26:49.640 evangelicals like the Methodist had to deal with 391 00:26:50.120 --> 00:26:55.140 and the Epworth League also emphasized a study of Canadian history and politics. 392 00:26:55.170 --> 00:26:58.180 Late 19th century Canadians, as elsewhere 393 00:26:58.210 --> 00:27:02.380 in the English speaking world, strongly believed that theirs was a progressive 394 00:27:02.410 --> 00:27:07.940 age, not just in the material sense, but also in the area of religious knowledge. 395 00:27:07.970 --> 00:27:13.740 In 1910, the Methodist Church of Canada accepted in a moderate form the new 396 00:27:13.770 --> 00:27:18.500 historical approach to the Scriptures known as the Higher Criticism. 397 00:27:18.530 --> 00:27:21.020 This had not happened without controversy, 398 00:27:21.050 --> 00:27:25.810 but in the end it was concluded that both the new and the old readings of Scriptures 399 00:27:25.840 --> 00:27:29.860 were in keeping with Wesley's evangelistic approach. 400 00:27:29.890 --> 00:27:31.780 One of the strongest supporters, 401 00:27:31.810 --> 00:27:36.660 theologian and university chancellor Nathan Nathaniel Bervash, argued that 402 00:27:36.690 --> 00:27:41.380 questions of biblical scholarship were largely irrelevant for those who 403 00:27:41.410 --> 00:27:46.160 concentrated only on the conversion of sinners, such as Methodism's offshoot. 404 00:27:46.190 --> 00:27:52.050 The Salvation Army and Berwash had a lot of respect for the Salvation Army. 405 00:27:52.080 --> 00:27:54.480 However, as he sought the task of 406 00:27:54.510 --> 00:27:59.380 contemporary Methodists went beyond the salvation of the soul to include shaping 407 00:27:59.410 --> 00:28:04.290 Canadian culture with the moral and spiritual truths of Scripture. 408 00:28:04.320 --> 00:28:06.540 He was convinced that faith in Christ was 409 00:28:06.570 --> 00:28:12.180 no longer only a matter of saying, christ died for me or Christ paid my debt. 410 00:28:12.210 --> 00:28:16.020 Such phrases could easily become ritualized and empty. 411 00:28:16.050 --> 00:28:22.020 Rather, faith in Christ meant, said Burwash, the far deeper and broader act of 412 00:28:22.050 --> 00:28:26.980 taking him as the Lord and Master, the example and guide of my life. 413 00:28:27.010 --> 00:28:30.050 Holiness was not just a personal matter. 414 00:28:30.080 --> 00:28:35.440 Those whose lives had been sanctified had a communal responsibility to create a 415 00:28:35.470 --> 00:28:40.940 Christian country in every aspect of life, be it politics, education, temperance, 416 00:28:40.970 --> 00:28:48.000 Sunday observance, or urban social reform, I'm going to just dig a 417 00:28:55.040 --> 00:28:58.050 Henry Rack with whom some of you may be familiar. 418 00:28:58.080 --> 00:29:02.980 John Wesley's biographer has noted that over time, john Wesley's legacy of 419 00:29:03.010 --> 00:29:07.330 perfectionism resulted in two opposing views. 420 00:29:07.360 --> 00:29:09.860 Quote the two elements held in balance in 421 00:29:09.890 --> 00:29:15.020 Wesley an instant gift and experience and a steady progress through pious 422 00:29:15.050 --> 00:29:21.220 cultivation tended to split apart into two different versions of holiness. 423 00:29:21.250 --> 00:29:23.980 Later, perfectionists and pentecostals 424 00:29:24.010 --> 00:29:29.460 concentrated on the gift as an experience with little specific moral content. 425 00:29:29.490 --> 00:29:34.180 Others concentrated on the element of gradual progress. 426 00:29:34.210 --> 00:29:39.140 Some, such as Burwash's former student Ralph Horner, and the holiness tradition, 427 00:29:39.170 --> 00:29:44.220 which emerged after the 1870s, emphasized the first version. 428 00:29:44.250 --> 00:29:46.380 Mainline Methodist generally highlighted 429 00:29:46.410 --> 00:29:51.330 the moral dimension of gradual progress, of sanctification or perfect love. 430 00:29:51.360 --> 00:29:54.940 So you see this distinction right between the two, and I'm sure you've probably 431 00:29:54.970 --> 00:30:01.620 looked at it before in your lectures in this in emphasizing gradual progress of 432 00:30:01.650 --> 00:30:05.220 sanctification, they were part of a Protestant evangelical 433 00:30:05.250 --> 00:30:09.380 moral order that was intent on building a godfearing nation. 434 00:30:09.410 --> 00:30:12.920 Since the 1840s and 50s, Methodists had 435 00:30:12.950 --> 00:30:16.740 joined other committed Evangelicals Presbyterians, Congregationalists, 436 00:30:16.770 --> 00:30:21.810 Baptists and some Anglicans in moral crusades in favor of prison reform, 437 00:30:21.840 --> 00:30:26.810 antislavery temperance and prohibition and Sabbath reform. 438 00:30:26.840 --> 00:30:32.540 In the decades after Confederation in 1867, their combined forces and growing 439 00:30:32.570 --> 00:30:37.330 political and social influence saw them increasingly seeking parliamentary 440 00:30:37.360 --> 00:30:43.570 legislation in support of prohibition and Sabbath observance. 441 00:30:43.600 --> 00:30:46.420 In their eyes, the one obstacle to success 442 00:30:46.450 --> 00:30:51.960 in making Canada a Christian country by Evangelical Protestant standards were the 443 00:30:51.990 --> 00:30:58.500 Roman Catholics, who counted for 41.5% of the Canadian population. 444 00:30:58.530 --> 00:31:03.140 But during the same time, Roman Catholics had also established a parallel moral 445 00:31:03.170 --> 00:31:06.380 order or public religion, especially in Quebec. 446 00:31:06.410 --> 00:31:09.570 So you've got this huge public moral 447 00:31:09.600 --> 00:31:15.020 order, protestant, Evangelical, but in Quebec and amongst some Roman Catholics 448 00:31:15.050 --> 00:31:20.180 elsewhere, you've got the same thing, but it's roman Catholic 449 00:31:20.210 --> 00:31:24.700 anticatholicism had been a feature of British North America from the start. 450 00:31:24.730 --> 00:31:29.740 With Confederation, it took on a more nationalistic expression as Protestants 451 00:31:29.770 --> 00:31:34.620 and Catholics both started to compete for influence in the new nation. 452 00:31:34.650 --> 00:31:40.180 Shaping Protestant fear of Roman Catholic expansion were the wealth worn criticisms 453 00:31:40.200 --> 00:31:42.290 which I mentioned at the beginning of the talk. 454 00:31:42.320 --> 00:31:44.460 And you may remember the central to this 455 00:31:44.490 --> 00:31:47.540 was their understanding of sacred presence. 456 00:31:47.570 --> 00:31:52.810 Protestants dismissed the exuberant ways Roman Catholics practiced sacred presence. 457 00:31:52.840 --> 00:31:54.940 They dismissed it as superstition. 458 00:31:54.970 --> 00:31:57.700 Roman Catholics saw Protestant religion as 459 00:31:57.730 --> 00:32:02.960 a total denial of a sacred experience and of tradition. 460 00:32:03.160 --> 00:32:06.180 What became lost in these verbal wars, 461 00:32:06.210 --> 00:32:11.810 except among a few spokespersons, was the reality that during these years, roman 462 00:32:11.840 --> 00:32:17.810 Catholics and Protestants had both drawn on the experience of the sacred. 463 00:32:17.840 --> 00:32:20.050 But they had done that in different ways. 464 00:32:20.080 --> 00:32:24.290 But they'd both drawn it to build their parallel moral orders. 465 00:32:24.320 --> 00:32:29.220 Roman Catholics, like Protestants, held a patriarchal view of the family that rested 466 00:32:29.250 --> 00:32:32.540 on the sanctity of marriage and on male authority. 467 00:32:32.570 --> 00:32:34.520 Their priests were just as concerned as 468 00:32:34.550 --> 00:32:37.780 Methodist clergy to educate the young and the faith. 469 00:32:37.800 --> 00:32:39.780 Where Methodists used the Bible to train 470 00:32:39.810 --> 00:32:43.780 the child's conscience, roman Catholics used the Little Catechism. 471 00:32:43.810 --> 00:32:48.660 15% of the Little Catechism was devoted to the sacrament of Penance, which was seen 472 00:32:48.690 --> 00:32:51.660 as the best way to train the child's conscience. 473 00:32:51.680 --> 00:32:53.500 So training of the child's conscience was 474 00:32:53.530 --> 00:32:57.780 taking place on both sides of the Christian divide. 475 00:32:57.810 --> 00:33:00.320 Internal discipline, social welfare, and 476 00:33:00.350 --> 00:33:04.860 the conviction that religion was not only a private but also a public matter were as 477 00:33:04.890 --> 00:33:08.940 important to Roman Catholics as to Methodists and Evangelicals generally. 478 00:33:08.970 --> 00:33:11.380 Roman Catholic laypeople were as actively 479 00:33:11.410 --> 00:33:15.420 involved in Methodists as Methodists were in poor relief. 480 00:33:15.450 --> 00:33:17.810 And they shared a concern to inculcate 481 00:33:17.840 --> 00:33:22.570 sound habits like self discipline, temperance and frugality. 482 00:33:22.600 --> 00:33:26.810 And when it came to helping the state carry out its politics of assimilating 483 00:33:26.840 --> 00:33:31.960 native children by teaching them Canadian habits, roman Catholics shared with 484 00:33:31.990 --> 00:33:37.290 Methodists and other mainline Protestants aperternalism, which led them to decide 485 00:33:37.320 --> 00:33:42.540 the future of native peoples with good intentions, but without representation and 486 00:33:42.570 --> 00:33:47.680 openness to aboriginal experience of the sacred. 487 00:33:47.960 --> 00:33:55.660 Now I'm starting to wind down, but it's a slow winding down. 488 00:33:55.690 --> 00:34:00.440 The two faith groups were able to build a parallel moral order in the latter half of 489 00:34:00.470 --> 00:34:05.780 the 19th century that lasted well beyond 1925, the year when a number of 490 00:34:05.810 --> 00:34:09.500 evangelical denominations formed the United Church of Canada. 491 00:34:09.530 --> 00:34:15.210 Observers even in the 1950s and 1960s would be struck by the country's high rate 492 00:34:15.240 --> 00:34:18.580 of church attendance and religious involvement. 493 00:34:18.610 --> 00:34:20.620 Looking back, however, from our vantage 494 00:34:20.650 --> 00:34:25.300 point of the early 21st century, we realized that the close fit between 495 00:34:25.330 --> 00:34:30.260 spirituality and public life also helped lay the groundwork for the rapid 496 00:34:30.290 --> 00:34:35.060 secularization of society that began in the 1960s. 497 00:34:35.090 --> 00:34:37.420 There are many reasons for secularization 498 00:34:37.450 --> 00:34:40.380 that are far beyond the control of the churches. 499 00:34:40.410 --> 00:34:42.860 However, the need to revitalize people's 500 00:34:42.890 --> 00:34:48.480 lives with new forms of sacred presence is as real today as it was in the 19th 501 00:34:48.510 --> 00:34:53.780 century, when the experience of perfect love flourished in Canadian methodism. 502 00:34:53.810 --> 00:34:56.780 But I believe it must happen. 503 00:34:56.810 --> 00:35:00.380 It must happen in a vastly changed world. 504 00:35:00.410 --> 00:35:05.170 The second half of the 20th century, a century that was torn by two world wars, 505 00:35:05.200 --> 00:35:10.690 has proven to be a major turning point in bringing Protestants and Roman Catholics 506 00:35:10.720 --> 00:35:16.260 to both acknowledge the importance of a shared Christian experience. 507 00:35:16.290 --> 00:35:19.080 And it should be another 508 00:35:20.280 --> 00:35:22.900 pointing out to the need for a personal experience. 509 00:35:22.930 --> 00:35:28.380 Carl Ronald, the German Jesuit theologian who left such a strong imprint on Vatican 510 00:35:28.410 --> 00:35:34.480 II, wrote in 1972, it's up there where men and women have not 511 00:35:34.510 --> 00:35:38.640 begun to have the experience of God and of God's Spirit, who liberates us from the 512 00:35:38.670 --> 00:35:42.690 most profound anxieties of life and from our endless guilt. 513 00:35:42.720 --> 00:35:48.210 There really is no point in proclaiming to them the ethical norms of Christianity. 514 00:35:48.240 --> 00:35:50.690 What he's saying is Christianity can 515 00:35:50.720 --> 00:35:55.130 continue to be ethical, it can continue to be moral, but 516 00:35:55.160 --> 00:36:01.620 if it's not based on the experience of the love of Christ, it really is empty. 517 00:36:01.650 --> 00:36:05.060 His words echo John Wesley's emphasis on experience. 518 00:36:05.090 --> 00:36:07.300 They're also in keeping with Wesley's own 519 00:36:07.330 --> 00:36:11.760 openness to Roman Catholic spiritual and mystical writings, for which and of 520 00:36:11.760 --> 00:36:15.820 course, there was little interest in that in the late 19th century among Methodists. 521 00:36:15.850 --> 00:36:18.300 They were not interested in whatever 522 00:36:18.330 --> 00:36:22.640 positive Wesley found in Roman Catholicism. 523 00:36:22.800 --> 00:36:28.620 Today, Roman Catholics such as Thomas Merton, joan Chittister and Richard Rohr 524 00:36:28.650 --> 00:36:32.460 have become valued guides to many Protestants looking for an authentic 525 00:36:32.490 --> 00:36:35.900 Christian experience of God's abiding love. 526 00:36:35.930 --> 00:36:38.340 That experience of love now happens in a 527 00:36:38.370 --> 00:36:43.460 world vastly different from that of the late 19th and early 20th century 528 00:36:43.490 --> 00:36:48.440 globalization and official multiculturalism in Canada, the advent of 529 00:36:48.470 --> 00:36:52.860 the Internet and social media have not only changed the way we identify 530 00:36:52.890 --> 00:36:57.860 ourselves, but also the way we experience God. 531 00:36:57.890 --> 00:37:01.940 There are those who point to new developments, such as climate change, 532 00:37:01.970 --> 00:37:06.940 contact with other world religions, and aboriginal respect towards 533 00:37:06.970 --> 00:37:13.940 nature as evidence that God's love exists far beyond our earlier imagination. 534 00:37:13.970 --> 00:37:17.820 The imagination, for example, of the 19th century. 535 00:37:17.850 --> 00:37:23.650 One contemporary writer who addresses this is Brian McLaren in The Great Spiritual 536 00:37:23.680 --> 00:37:29.170 Migration how the world's largest religion is seeking a better way to be Christian. 537 00:37:29.200 --> 00:37:32.020 And McLaren says, must we stay where we 538 00:37:32.050 --> 00:37:36.100 are, forever defining ourselves as a system of beliefs? 539 00:37:36.130 --> 00:37:41.480 Or may we migrate to a new understanding of Christian faith as a way of life, a 540 00:37:41.510 --> 00:37:45.860 practice of ongoing personal growth and cultural evolution? 541 00:37:45.890 --> 00:37:47.980 Wesley and 19th century Methodists would 542 00:37:48.010 --> 00:37:54.460 agree with his emphasis on Christian faith as a way of life in the 21st century. 543 00:37:54.490 --> 00:37:57.200 We also know that we can't revert to 19th 544 00:37:57.230 --> 00:38:03.620 century understandings of dominion over the Earth and violent conflict with those 545 00:38:03.650 --> 00:38:06.940 with whom we differ on matters of religion. 546 00:38:06.970 --> 00:38:09.520 And so McLaren and others remind us that 547 00:38:09.550 --> 00:38:14.740 it is again time for Christians to migrate to an identity that reflects the needs of 548 00:38:14.770 --> 00:38:21.100 our time to move away from the extractive, consumptive, and unsustainable way of life 549 00:38:21.130 --> 00:38:24.580 that is destroying our planet and civilization. 550 00:38:24.610 --> 00:38:27.540 To look instead to the common good, 551 00:38:27.570 --> 00:38:30.650 as do the Roman Catholic writers I've just mentioned. 552 00:38:30.680 --> 00:38:33.210 McLaren invites Christians to experience 553 00:38:33.240 --> 00:38:39.620 God's perfect love in ways that focus not only on the individual, on a denomination 554 00:38:39.650 --> 00:38:44.580 or a country, but on the entire universe and on everything that's in it, on people 555 00:38:44.610 --> 00:38:50.100 of different faith or of no faith, animals, the environment, and so forth. 556 00:38:50.130 --> 00:38:55.260 He does not say that this revitalization of Christianity will be easy. 557 00:38:55.280 --> 00:38:57.280 But then neither were the challenges that 558 00:38:57.310 --> 00:39:02.460 Wesley faced in industrializing England, nor those that 19th century Canadian 559 00:39:02.490 --> 00:39:07.500 Methodist faced when they tried to live their faith in their time. 560 00:39:07.530 --> 00:39:10.440 So thank you very much for listening.