:A Long Eclipse: The Liberal Protestant Establishment and the Canadian University, 1920–1970.(McGill‐Queen's Studies in the History of Religion, number 32.)

Abstract

When I entered college in 1958, I joined the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship (IVCF). Two years later, my religious views having become more liberal, I moved over to the Student Christian Movement (SCM). By the time I received my B.A. degree, I had lapsed into a non-aggressive and durable agnosticism. These personal details illustrate one aspect of the phenomenon that Catherine Gidney discusses in her study of liberal Protestantism and the Canadian universities from 1920 to 1970: the decline of Protestant influence on Canadian campuses. Her focus is on six English Canadian institutions. It is no surprise that, during the first half of the twentieth century, Protestantism dominated the ethos of the denominational universities she discusses: the University of King's College in Halifax (Anglican), Victoria University, Toronto (Methodist/United Church of Canada), and McMaster University in Toronto (to 1930) and Hamilton, Ontario (Baptist). The same was true, however, of the three nonsectarian universities she studies: Dalhousie University in Halifax, University College in the University of Toronto, and the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver. Dalhousie had its roots in Presbyterianism, but by 1920 it was private and nondenominational. University College and UBC were both founded as provincial, nondenominational entities.