Religious Studies in Ontario

Religious Studies in Ontario
Author: Harold Remus
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press
Total Pages: 443
Release: 2006-01-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0889206368

Most Ontario universities were established by Christian denominations; a Christian ethos was assumed and pervasive, and students were required to take courses designed to teach and inculcate religion. This insightful and comprehensive study demonstrates how, as Ontario society became secularized and pluralistic, so too did universities. Today, religion is again studies in university classrooms but as “religious studies,” a relatively new field that reflects the religiously pluralistic nature of Ontario and the world-wide explosion of knowledge. This authoritative volume will be of interest to students of religion in and outside academic circles, to adminstratots of academic institutions and granting agencies and to persons wanting to know more about the social and cultural changes that have transformed Ontario and Canadian society.

Religious Studies in Atlantic Canada

Religious Studies in Atlantic Canada
Author: Paul W.R. Bowlby
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press
Total Pages: 223
Release: 2006-01-01
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0889208751

What is “Religious Studies” and what is its future in Atlantic Canada? How have universities founded by Roman Catholic and Protestant denominations, and public universities, differed as they approached the study of religious life and traditions? Religious Studies in Atlantic Canada surveys the history and place of the study of religion within Canadian universities. Following a historical introduction to the public and denominationally founded universities in the Atlantic region, the book situates the departments of religious studies in relation to the distinctive characteristics of the various universities in the region, focusing on curriculum, research and teaching. Bowlby examines the current strengths of the religious studies departments in Atlantic Canada, and where those departments are fragile, i.e., where departments have thrived because of careful long-term planning, as well as where crises of retirements have radically affected the size and strength of departments. In conclusion Bowlby suggests strategies for future survival and growth in the field of religious studies. Religious Studies in Atlantic Canada is the last of a six-part series on the state of the art of religious studies in Canada, a unique account of the regional differences in the development of religious studies in Canada. Written for anyone interested in the teaching of religion as well as the specialist, the book provides an introduction and an overview of religious studies curricula, faculty research, and teaching areas at the region’s universities.

Fifty Years of Religious Studies in Canada

Fifty Years of Religious Studies in Canada
Author: Harold Coward
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press
Total Pages: 239
Release: 2014-11-07
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1771121033

In Canadian universities in the early 1960s, no courses were offered on Hinduism, Buddhism, or Islam. Only the study of Christianity was available, usually in a theology program in a church college or seminary. Today almost every university in North America has a religious studies department that offers courses on Western and Eastern religions as well as religion in general. Harold Coward addresses this change in this memoir of his forty-five-year career in the development of religious studies as a new academic field in Canada. He also addresses the shift from theology classes in seminaries to non-sectarian religious studies faculties of arts and humanities; the birth and growth of departments across Canada from the 1960s to the present; the contribution of McMaster University to religious studies in Canada and Coward’s Ph.D. experience there; the Centre for Studies in Religion and Society at the University of Victoria; and the future of religious studies as a truly interdisciplinary enterprise. Coward’s retrospective, while not a history as such, documents information from his varied experience and wide network of colleagues that is essential for a future formal history of the discipline. His story is both personally engaging and richly informative about the development of the field.

Understanding the Consecrated Life in Canada

Understanding the Consecrated Life in Canada
Author: Jason Zuidema
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press
Total Pages: 425
Release: 2015-12-21
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1771121394

The story of the consecrated life in Canada since the 1960s should be about much more than numerical decline. Although the falling numbers are significant among Catholic religious in communities that pre-date Vatican II, many communities continue to show stability and even growth. This book provides nuance to that story by adding detailed portraits of movements, communities and institutions. In four parts, this book presents essays from the leading scholars on religious life in Canada that seek to address the state of religious communities dedicated to religious virtuosity normally characterized by formal promises of chastity, poverty, and obedience. The essays examine a broad range of topics related to the general state of consecrated (or “religious” or “monastic”) life in contemporary Canadian Christian and Buddhist traditions. In the first section, the contributors trace the demographics and definitions of religious life in Canada. The second section examines Canadian developments in Catholic religious life during the Vatican II and the post-Vatican II eras. A third section explores trends in contemporary Canadian religious life, while the fourth section describes the consecrated life in other Canadian religious traditions.

Religion and Family Life

Religion and Family Life
Author: Richard J. Petts
Publisher: MDPI
Total Pages: 246
Release: 2019-05-03
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 3038979287

There has been increased interest among scholars in recent decades focused on the intersection of family and religion. Yet, there is still much that is not well-understood in this area. This aim of this special issue is to further explore the influence of religion on family life. In particular, this issue includes a collection of studies from leading scholars on religion and family life that focus on ways in which religion and spirituality may influence various aspects of family life including family processes, family structure, family formation, family dissolution, parenting, and family relationships. The studies included incorporate both qualitative and quantitative analyses, incorporate a number of different religious traditions, focus on religiosity among both adults and youth, and explore a number of important issues such as depression, intimacy, sexual behavior, lying, divorce, and faith transmission.

Churches and Social Order in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Canada

Churches and Social Order in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Canada
Author: Michael Gauvreau
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Total Pages: 329
Release: 2006
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0773576002

By examinng education, charity, community discipline, the relationship between clergy and congregations, and working-class religion, the contributors shift the field of religious history into the realm of the socio-cultural. This novel perspective reveals that the Christian churches remained dynamic and popular in English and French Canada, as well as among immigrants, well into the twentieth century.

After Evangelicalism

After Evangelicalism
Author: Kevin N. Flatt
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Total Pages: 401
Release: 2013-07-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0773588574

At a time when Canadians were arguing about the merits of a new flag, the birth-control pill, and the growing hippie counterculture, the leaders of Canada's largest Protestant church were occupied with turning much of English-Canadian religious culture on its head. In After Evangelicalism, Kevin Flatt reveals how the United Church of Canada abruptly reinvented its public image by cutting the remaining ties to its evangelical past. Flatt argues that although United Church leaders had already abandoned evangelical beliefs three decades earlier, it was only in the 1960s that rapid cultural shifts prompted the sudden dismantling of the church's evangelical programs and identity. Delving deep into the United Church's archives, Flatt uncovers behind-the-scenes developments that led to revolutionary and controversial changes in the church's evangelistic campaigns, educational programs, moral stances, and theological image. Not only did these changes evict evangelicalism from the United Church, but they helped trigger the denomination's ongoing numerical decline and decisively changed Canada's religious landscape. Challenging readers to see the Canadian religious crisis of the 1960s as involving more than just Quebec's Quiet Revolution, After Evangelicalism unveils the transformation of one of Canada's most prominent social institutions.

Studying Religion

Studying Religion
Author: Russell T. McCutcheon
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 221
Release: 2014-12-05
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1317491661

Widely used as a primer, a text and a provocation to critical thinking, 'Studying Religion' aims to develop students' skills. The book clearly explains the methods and theories employed in the study of religion. Essays are offered on a range of topics: from the history and functions of religion to public discourse on religion and the classification of religions. The works of key scholars - from Karl Marx, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Rudolf Otto to Mircea Eliade, James G. Frazer, and Sigmund Freud - are analysed and explored. 'Studying Religion' represents a shift away from the traditional focus of describing the exotic or curious religious 'Other' to an examination of how religious behaviours and institutions are studied. The book will be invaluable to students of religious studies.