Berruyer S Bible

The French Jesuit Isaac-Joseph Berruyer's Histoire du peuple de Dieu was an ambitious attempt to connect the ideas of the Enlightenment with the theology of the Catholic Church. A paraphrase of the Bible written in vernacular French, the Histoire promoted progress, the pursuit of happiness, the fundamental goodness of humanity, and the capacity of nature to shape moral human beings. Berruyer aimed to update the Bible for a new age, but his work unleashed a furor that ended with the expulsion of the Jesuits from France. Berruyer's Bible offers a fresh perspective on the history of the Catholic Enlightenment. By exploring the rise and fall of Berruyer's Histoire, Daniel Watkins reveals how Catholic attempts to assimilate Enlightenment ideas caused conflicts within the church and between the church and the French state. Berruyer's Bible flips the traditional narrative of the Enlightenment on its head by showing that the secularization of French society and the political decline of the Catholic Church were due not solely to the external assaults of anti-clerical philosophes but also to the internal discord caused by Catholic theologians themselves. Built upon extensive research in archives across Western Europe and the United States, Berruyer's Bible paints a vivid picture of the tumultuous intellectual world of the Catholic Church and the power of radical ideas that shaped the church throughout the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and beyond.

Christie and Gauvreau look at the ways in which reformers expanded the churches' popular base through mass revivalism, established social work and sociology in Canadian universities and church colleges, and aggressively sought to take a leadership role in social reform by incorporating independent reform organizations into the church-sponsored Social Service Council of Canada. They also explore the instrumental role of Protestant clergymen in formulating social legislation and transforming the scope and responsibilities of the modern state. The enormous influence of the Protestant churches before World War II can no longer be ignored, nor can the view that the churches were accomplices in their own secularization be justified. A Full-Orbed Christianity calls on historians to rethink the role of Protestantism in Canadian life and to see it not as the garrison of anti-modernity but as the chief harbinger of cultural change before 1940.

"As Canadian as the maple leaf" is how one observer summed up the United Church of Canada after its founding in 1925. But was this Canadian-made church flawed in its design, as critics have charged? A Church with the Soul of a Nation explores this question by weaving together the history of the United Church with a provocative analysis of religion and cultural change.

Semple covers virtually every aspect of Canadian Methodism. He examines early nineteenth-century efforts to evangelize pioneer British North America and the revivalistic activities so important to the mid-nineteenth-century years. He documents Methodists' missionary work both overseas and in Canada among aboriginal peoples and immigrants. He analyses the Methodist contribution to Canadian education and the leadership the church provided for the expansion of the role of women in society. He also assesses the spiritual and social dimensions of evangelical religion in the personal lives of Methodists, addressing such social issues as prohibition, prostitution, the importance of the family, and changing attitudes toward children in Methodist doctrine and Canada in general. Semple argues that Methodism evolved into the most Canadian of all the churches, helping to break down the geographic, political, economic, ethnic, and social divisions that confounded national unity. Although the Methodist Church did not achieve the universality it aspired to, he concludes that it succeeded in defining the religious, political, and social agenda for the Protestant component of Canada, providing a powerful legacy of service to humanity and to God.