Independent Greek Church in Canada, 1903–1912

Abstract

The Independent Greek Church in Canada, 1903–1912, was a middle ground between The Presbyterian Church in Canada, which desired to bring the growing Ukraine diaspora into the Presbyterian fold, and the Ukrainian immigrant intelligentsia, who imagined an independent, Protestant, and culturally and linguistically Ukrainian church. Using the work of Richard White on middle ground and the work of Lamin Sanneh on non-dominant cultures’ agency in missionary contexts, the paper offers a new interpretation of the Independent Greek Church in Canada, an interpretation that valorizes the agency of the Ukrainian participants in the denomination. Yet, as a middle ground, the denomination was too unstable to survive long. The growing uniformity of Canadian Presbyterianism ended this unexpected pairing on the Canadian Prairies. (PB)