George A. Rawlyk – författare

Relative to evangelicalism elsewhere in the English-speaking world, radical evangelicalism in Canada was defined centrally (often almost exclusively) by the New Birth experience or by similar experiences, such as sanctification. Over time, however, there has been significant change regarding the centre of Canadian evangelicalism. This change, sometimes gradual and sometimes sudden, is of crucial importance in understanding all aspects of evolving Canadian Protestantism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Prominent preachers such as Henry Alline, William Black, David George, Freeborn Garrettson, and Harris Harding as well as rank-and-file evangelists figure in The Canada Fire. Through letters, diaries, and autobiographies the actors and actresses in this unfolding religious drama speak for themselves, and their voices are permeated with vulnerability and honesty. The Canada Fire is not only a book about the distant past; it also throws light on the changing face of Canadian Protestantism in general, and Canadian evangelicalism in particular.

Rawlyk sees the Baptists of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick as reaching their zenith during the latter half of the nineteenth century. He makes some controversial comments on the differences between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia Baptists of both the present and past century. Ravished by the Spirit does not deal merely with a distnt historical past but raises some fundamental and disconcerting questions about the vulnerability of the Baptist denomination in contemporary Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

In his chapter on Acadia, Barry Moody argues that the university has been surprisingly open to a variety of theologies and pedagogical perspectives, tracing this to the liberality and breadth of vision of Nova Scotia Baptists. His study helps explain the remarkable strength of the Baptist tradition in late nineteenth-century Nova Scotia. J.R.C. Perkin''s chapter on one of Acadia''s distinguished presidents, Watson Kirkonnell, shows Kirkonnell as representative of this tradition and its strength. G.A. Rawlyk examines some of the underlying forces which significantly affected the development of McMaster University. He suggests that the cutting edge of McMaster''s nineteenth century Evangelicalism may have been dulled by the enthusiastic manner in which "consumerism" and "modernity" were appropriated by the Baptist Convention leadership which controlled the university. In his discussion of Brandon College, Walter Ellis argues that Brandon failed as a Baptist institution of higher learning largely because it was out of touch with Western Canadian realities. If it had been a bible college rather than a Manitoba variant of McMaster, Brandon might still be in existence and Conventional Baptists might as a result be a far stronger force in the West. These essays on individual institutions highlight the pressure on denominational universities to emphasize not only Christian spirituality but secular scholarship. They will be of interest to all those who are concerned not only with the fate of Baptist institutions but the entire Christian church in Canada.

Rawlyk argues that in the early part of this century the Maritime Baptist mainstream was far more accommodating and open-minded than Baptists in central Canada and the West. He shows that during the fundamentalist-modernist controversies of the 1920s and 1930s the vast majority of Maritime Baptists rejected the closed-minded Central- Canadian Fundamentalism of T.T. Shields. Instead they stressed what Barry Moody has referred to as the prevailing "Breadth of Vision" and "Breadth of Mind" of the nineteenth-century Maritime Baptist tradition. The Maritime Baptist mainstream emerges in Champions of the Truth not only as surprisingly progressive but as a force which, Rawlyk believes, helped significantly to shape certain key features of Maritime life between the wars. Rawlyk provides an answer to the question of why the Maritime Baptists in the 1920s and 1930s did not experience the same kind of bitter schism as central Canadian and western Baptists. As well, he attempts to explain the weaknesses of Maritime fundamentalism - especially that preached by the two sectarian Baptists, J.J. Sidey and J.B. Dagget. In the foreword to this volume, Larry McCann, Davidson Professor of Canadian Studies at Mount Allison University, describes Champions of the Truth as "a remarkable volume" and Rawlyk as "a gifted historian." He says that Rawlyk''s essays, firmly rooted in a theoretical base and centring on dialectical analysis, constantly provoke.

Relative to evangelicalism elsewhere in the English-speaking world, radical evangelicalism in Canada was defined centrally (often almost exclusively) by the New Birth experience or by similar experiences, such as sanctification. Over time, however, there has been significant change regarding the centre of Canadian evangelicalism. This change, sometimes gradual and sometimes sudden, is of crucial importance in understanding all aspects of evolving Canadian Protestantism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Prominent preachers such as Henry Alline, William Black, David George, Freeborn Garrettson, and Harris Harding as well as rank-and-file evangelists figure in The Canada Fire. Through letters, diaries, and autobiographies the actors and actresses in this unfolding religious drama speak for themselves, and their voices are permeated with vulnerability and honesty. The Canada Fire is not only a book about the distant past; it also throws light on the changing face of Canadian Protestantism in general, and Canadian evangelicalism in particular.

To George Rawlyk Canadian evangelicalism has always been, and still is, more accommodating that its American counterpart. In Is Jesus Your Personal Saviour? he sets out to define the quintessential nature of evangelicalism in Canada in the 1990s and to distinguish it from the more extreme evangelicalism in the southern United States.

An impressive list of specialists in the field examine the evangelical impulse in various denominations, from the mainstream Methodists, Presbyterians, Anglicans, and United, through Baptists, Mennonites, and Lutherans, to the more sectish groups, including Holiness, Christian Mission Alliance, and the Pentecostals. Also included are comparisons between Canadian and American, British, and Australian evangelicalism and essays on evangelical networks, leaders and revivals, women, and evangelicalism in the 1990s. Growing out of a conference sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trusts in 1995 at Queen''s University, the essays elaborate a variety of important themes in the study of historical and contemporary evangelicalism and weave them together to provide an informative and challenging exploration of aspects of the evangelical experience in Canada. Contributors include Phyllis D. Airhart, Alvyn J. Austin, David W. Bebbington, Edith L. Blumhofer, Robert K. Burkinshaw, Sharon Anne Cook, Nancy Christie, P. Lorraine Coops, Duff Crerar, Michael Gauvreau, Daniel C. Goodwin, Andrew S. Grenville, Bruce L. Guenther, Bryan V. Hillis, D. Bruce Hindmarsh, Mark Hutchinson, William H. Katerberg, Kevin Kee, Ronald A.N. Kydd, Barry Mack, Mark A. Noll, David Plaxton, Darrel R. Reid, John G. Stackhouse, Jr, Marguerite Van Die, Richard W. Vaudry, and Marilyn Färdig Whiteley.

Presbyterianism was not only the largest and most influential Protestant denomination in the Maritimes during much of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries but also one of the largest and most influential Protestant denominations in Canada. While t