Protestant Liberty: Religion and the Making of Canadian Liberalism, 1828-1878
Date
2019-08-29
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Abstract
This study offers a new interpretation of the origins and nature of nineteenth-century liberalism by re-examining the role of religion in the politics of Upper Canada (Ontario). Whereas other recent studies have characterized this era’s liberal thought as neutral toward religion and universally transferable across cultures, this study argues that the early origins of Canadian liberalism were firmly rooted in the British tradition of Protestant Dissent and based on the premise of guarding against the encroachment of illiberal non-Protestant faiths. After the union of Upper Canada with the predominantly French-Catholic Lower Canada in 1840, this “Protestant liberty” perspective came into conflict with a more neutral alternative which sought to strip liberalism of its religious roots in order to appeal to Catholic voters and allies. Beginning with the reform victory in the 1828 election, this study traces the development of liberal thought in Upper Canada through the political turmoil and rebellions of the 1830s, the Union of the Canadas and its resultant mid-century sectional crises, and the separation of this union due to the reformers’ initiative in the Confederation talks of the 1860s. As a political strategy in the early national period of the 1870s, however, the Liberal Party explicitly sought a more decisive break from its Protestant heritage and instead began to favour the culturally neutral version of liberalism based on free markets and appeals to the workingman. This eventual marginalization and stigmatization of the “Protestant liberty” perspective signaled the beginning of a secular-materialist ethos for the liberal order in Canada.
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Liberalism, Canadian history, Protestant-Catholic relations, George Brown, William Lyon Mackenzie, Evangelicalism, Protestant Dissent, Alexander Mackenzie, James Lesslie, Liberal Order Framework, John Roaf, Liberal Party of Ontario, Ontario History, Upper Canada, 19th-century Canada
Citation
Forbes, J. M. (2019). Protestant Liberty: Religion and the Making of Canadian Liberalism, 1828-1878 (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.