The Regenerators: Social Criticism in Late Victorian English Canada

by Ramsay Cook

A crisis of faith confronted many Canadian Protestants in the late nineteenth century. Their religious beliefs were challenged by the new biological sciences and by historical criticism of the Bible. Personal salvation, for centuries the central concern of Christianity, no longer seemed an adequate focus in an age that gave rise to industrial cities and grave social problems. No single word, Cook claims, catches more correctly the spirit of the late Victorian reform movement than 'regeneration': a concept originall meaning rebirth and applied to individuals, now increasingly used to describe social salvation. In exploring the nature of social criticism and its complex ties to the religious thinking of the day, Cook analyses the thought of an extraordinary cast of characters who presented a bewildering array of nostrums and beliefs, from evolutionists, rationalists, higher critcis, and free-thinkers, to feminists, spiritualists, theosophists, socialists, communists, single-taxers, adn many more. THere is Goldwin Smith, 'the sceptic who needed God,' spreading gloom and doom from the comfort of the Grange; W.D. LeSueur, the 'positvist in the Post Office'; the heresiarch Dr R.M. Bucke, overdosed on Whitman, with his message of 'cosmis consciousness'; and a free-thinking, high-rolling bee-keeper named Allen Pringle, whose perorations led to 'hot, exciting nights in Napanee.' It is a world of such diverse figures as Phillips Thompson, Floar MacDonald Denison, Agnes Machar, J.W. Bengough, and J.S. Woodsworth, a world that made Mackenzie King. Cook concludes that the path blazed by nineteenth-century religious liberals led not to the Kingdom of God on earth, as many had hoped, but, ironically, to the secular city.

Genres: History, Canada, Nonfiction

290 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

Reviews

[Dasha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cook's writing and arguments hold up surprisingly well considering this book is nearly 40 years old. Cook argues that the work of Christian liberals in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century paved the ground for a secular society. Indeed, their attempts to create a flexible version of Christianity in response to science and historical critique (as well as broader social crises tied to economic downturns and urban plights) created a religion with loose theological foundations, bound to crumble. Cook's work is largely focused on the urban and on Central Canada - one wonders how those in Western Canada or British Columbia responded. Moreover, the work of Canada's Protestant churches abroad in this period largely increased - bringing up questions related to domestic and global Christianity.

[AskHistorians]

A major work in discussing the development of the idea of social regeneration in late 19th and early 20th century Canada, and how this movement built many of the secular social institutions of Canada.