Canadian Evangelicalism

Abstract Evangelicalism came to Canada with American and British settlers and missionaries beginning in the 1760s. In a society of newcomers with Protestant heritages but few established religious institutions, evangelicalism was able to spread rapidly, with Baptists and Methodists taking the lead in the Maritimes and Upper Canada, respectively. Canadian Protestants in this period were divided about several interrelated doctrinal and practical issues, making two poles distinguishable, with radical evangelicals on one end of the spectrum. Evangelicals held a range of views, however, and learned to channel early revivalism into disciplined institutional patterns. By the 1820s, most Protestants in Canada were converging toward a broad evangelical consensus. In keeping with the interpretations of Charles Taylor and other scholars, early evangelicals were able to outpace other religious groups (like the state-supported Anglicans) in Canada’s emerging “Age of Mobilization” partly because of their nimble structures and voluntarist ethos.