The Bible and Protestant British North American Identity in the Early 1860s

Abstract

The Bible is the basis of the civil laws of our land. The laws of England, and of Canada are justly celebrated throughout the world: they are wise and humane, just and equal, at once our glory and our boast; and it is because they are founded on the Bible. --Christian Guardian, 18 September 1861 Canada wants virtuous men--men with their hearts attuned to holiness-- men who will take the Bible as the Charter of their faith.... --G. Ross, Minister of Education, Ontario, 1893 (1) It is a commonplace in Canadian historiography and popular commentary that Canadians have usually defined themselves by what they are not--namely, Americans. (2) A corollary to that truism is that Canadians have also long defined themselves in terms of their moral superiority to Americans. (3) That is, in addition to perceiving themselves as being different from Americans--though just what that difference is made of has not always been clear--Canadians have often perceived their nation to be better than the United States. This was perhaps true during the American Civil War, when it seemed obvious to British North America's opinion-makers, many of whom were themselves recent immigrants from Britain, (4) that American republicanism (often held to be synonymous with political and cultural anarchy) was disintegrating. (5) Yet another historiographical truism is that, in the nineteenth century, Protestant Canadians saw and spoke about their world in explicitly Christian--that is to say, in biblical--terms. (6) This was probably especially true in the middle part of the century, when commitment to the Christian religion went from strength to strength. Whereas in 1842 some 17 percent of Upper Canadians claimed to have religion, by 1871 that number had dropped to just over one percent. Ten years later less than one percent of Ontarians claimed to adhere to no religion. (7) Thus, in the mid-nineteenth century, the Bible was the one text English-speaking Canadian Protestants shared in common. One scholar overstates the case when he says that all Protestant Canadians agreed that the Bible was the word of God and must be interpreted literally; (8) for Biblical literalism, as presently conceived, was not an influential hermeneutic in the English-speaking world until the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. (9) Yet it would be difficult to overestimate the importance of the Bible in nineteenth-century Protestant culture, a fact which makes the biblical illiteracy that prevails today, even in our universities, highly regrettable. In mid-nineteenth century Protestant British North America the Bible was read and used as a textbook in public schools and it was employed to teach illiterate fugitive slaves and their children to read. (10) One scholar has written that, along with a portrait of Queen Victoria, the Bible was to be found in most Upper Canadian homes, where it was employed during family devotions. (11) The biblical names of many Upper Canadian villages--Bethany, Shiloh, Kedron, Salem, Hebron, Zion, Ebenezer--serve as reminders of British America's religious heritage. (12) Perhaps another indication of the importance of the Good Book in nineteenth-century North American Protestant culture is that Bibles were sometimes taken from dead Confederates and brought home as war trophies by British North Americans who fought on the side of the North in the American Civil War. (13) Given the centrality of the Bible in British Canadian culture, it is not surprising that anti-Americanism and the British North Americans' sense of their nation's moral superiority over the United States were often enunciated in biblical terms. A recent study of the American Civil War's impact on the Maritime Provinces has noted this (albeit only in passing), (14) but just how these sentiments were expressed has not yet been explored in Canadian historiography. (15) This paper proposes to do that. …