“The Ideology of All Democratic Nations”: World War II and the Rise of Religious Instruction in Ontario and Victoria*

Abstract

This chapter examines the establishment of legally mandated Protestant training in both Ontario and Victoria. Fearing moral decay at home and a menacing world environment seemingly unfavorable to the ‘British way of life’ in the 1940s, educators asserted that religion, and specifically Protestant Christianity, was the only means by which the moral core of democracy could be preserved. Legislation passed in Ontario and Victoria mandated that time be set aside for religious instruction. This was especially complicated for Victorian educators because, since its inception in 1872, the education system was legally secular. The solution reached was to allow an outside organization, the Council for Christian Education in Schools, to legally administer religious education in public schools. In both places religious minorities, particularly Catholics and Jews, opposed the legislation but were largely marginalized.