Protestants, Catholics, and Masonic Conspiracies: The British Association in Montreal (1884).

Abstract

The British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS), like many nineteenth-century institutions, sought to avoid controversy by excluding the discussion of political and religious topics from its proceedings. Nonpartisanship was a veneer it could hide behind. Yet during the Montreal meeting of 1884-the first time the association ventured beyond the comfortable confines of the British Isles-this "middle way" was tested. While local and visiting Anglophones, many of them BAAS members, viewed the proceedings and character of the association as "decidedly friendly" to religion and as promoting the broad interests of Protestants, Montreal's episcopacy and French-speaking press rallied against the anti-Catholic BAAS, accusing it of harboring a dangerous Masonic clique. In different material and social spaces, the relationship between science, religion, and the association was conceived in distinct ways. In examining this case, this essay seeks to augment the growing body of scholarship within science studies that recognizes the importance of writing both the history and the geography of encounters between science and religion.