Bewildered with a variety of opinions:

Religion and the Statein Upper Canada,

1791-1854

Scott McLarenHumanities & Religious Studies Librarian

PhD candidate, Book History and Print Culture

British North American Colonies

Map of Upper Canada 1800

Church Establishment

Symbiotic relationship between church and state where each shores up the others interests

Britain’s established churches: Church of England and Church of Scotland

What could the state give the church? What could the church give the state? William Warburton (1748) and the doctrine of

“public utility” William Paley (1783) and the exclusively religious

role of the church

Revolutionary War

Church of England established in the middle colonies and Congregationalists in the New England colonies

1st Amendment (1791): Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Methodist Episcopal Church

Christmas Conference (1784)

Travelling preachers Arminian theology and

republicanism Revivalism and

religious competition

John Graves Simcoe

“Every establishment of Church and State that upholds the distinction of ranks and lessens the undue weight of the democratic influence, ought to be introduced”

“I have always been extremely anxious, both from political as well as more worthy motives that the Church of England should be essentially established in Upper Canada”

Preventing a second revolution

Constitutional Act (1791) and the formation of “Clergy Reserves” for the “maintenance of a Protestant clergy”

Jacob Mountain appointed first British North American bishop in 1793

Simcoe’s Marriage Act of 1793 restricts the solemnization of marriage to Church of England clergymen

Simcoe sets aside land in principle towns and helps to pay for the construction of churches

Methodism in Upper Canada

William Losee appointed to form a preaching circuit outside Kingston in 1791

The “Canada Fire” and the introduction of camp meeting revivalism

http://www.yorku.ca/scottm/journals/1805sep28.htm

Anglican response

“The Methodists are making great progress among us and filling the country with the most deplorable fanaticism. You can have almost no conception of their excesses. They will bawl twenty of them at once, tumble on the ground, laugh, sing, jump, and stamp” John Strachan, 1806

Postwar developments

Strachan becomes a member of the Executive and Legislative councils and gains the complete confidence of L-G Sir Peregrine Maitland (1818-1828)

Methodists continue to make massive advances and form their own conference in 1824

Anglican fortunes do not rally in spite of additional clergy and SPG grants

Strachan continues to be unable to establish a university controlled by the Church of England

Upping the ante…

Mountain’s episcopal charge in July 1820 calls Methodists “self-appointed Teachers” who “proceed from error to error” who are “extravagantly enthusiastic” who cause “mischief” through their “ignorance and folly”

Strachan’s 1825 eulogy for Mountain calls Methodists “[…] uneducated itinerant preachers who, leaving their steady

employment, betake themselves to preach the Gospel from idleness or a zeal without knowledge, by which they are induced, without any preparation, to teach what they do not know, and what from their pride they disdain to learn”

Egerton Ryerson

“Received on trial” in 1825 Son of a U.E.L. settler Educated in the province’s

state-supported grammar schools

Familiar with William Paley and Blackstone’s commentaries

A fervent and articulate proponent of revivalism and the possibility of immediate conversion

Contesting in the public sphere

What is the public sphere? A space where anyone can voluntarily participate Separate from the influence and control of the state Transforms publishing from a merely public activity

into that space where the reading public adjudicates disputes on the basis of rational argument

Emphasis on Kantian rationality to the total exclusion of other factors attendant on personal modes of communication such as rank and status

See Jürgen Habermas’s The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere

Religion and the public sphere

Church of England Emphasis on rationality Reluctant to sever its concerns and welfare

from the state Antidemocratic views oppose taking a reading

public as impersonal adjudicators

Methodism Emphasis on egalitarianism and voluntarism

Christian Guardian

Egerton Ryerson elected first editor in 1829

Quickly becomes the highest circulating weekly in Upper Canada with subscribers within and without Methodism

Serves as a platform to attack Strachan and the advocates of church establishment

Clergy Reserves

Land, land, land: the problem of free land

Lease or sell? Obstacle to

infrastructure The Church of Scotland

and the meaning of “Protestant Clergy”

British Wesleyans

Merger in 1833 to resituate Methodism as a loyal religious movement

Continual conflict with Wesleyans over political use of Christian Guardian

Collapse of union in 1840 Changes in Britain alter Wesleyan position Reunified in 1847 Clergy Reserves secularized in 1854

Protestant Consensus

Church of England drops its pretensions to establishment (Strachan dies in 1867)

Methodism become more moderate—less emphasis on revivalism, decline of camp meetings, formal educational standards for ministerial candidates

Ryerson becomes Chief Superintendent of Education in 1844

Normal School in St James Square established in 1847 to educate teachers—eventually evolves into the ROM and Ryerson University.