“A Fragment of Heaven on Earth”? Religion, Gender, and Family in Turn-of-the-Century Canadian Church Periodicals

Abstract

This article examines the ideals and anxieties about gender, family, and religion expressed in nineteen turn-of-the-century Canadian Christian journals. This article reveals the existence of a range of common ideals across denominations. Idealization of the Christian home was shared as was a profoundly unrealistic idealization of the Christian role of mothers. While religious anxieties were similar in many ways across denominations and regions, they did differ in both expected and more surprising directions. Anxieties about men’s religious roles were strongest in British Columbia, where a skewed gender ratio left many men without the “civilizing” and Christianizing influence of white women. While young men were the focus in British Columbia, francophone Catholics tended to focus more attention on the religiously delinquent husband and father. Despite efforts to draw men into family prayer, most denominations recognized the increasingly strong association between women, Christianity, and the home and granted women Christian leadership roles in this important sphere.