John Dougall (1808-1886): Portrait of an Early Social Reformer and Evangelical Witness in Canada
https://archives.anglican.ca/link/article37452
- Author
- Vander Hoef, Lorraine
- Material Type
- Journal Article
- Journal
- Journal of the Canadian Church Historical Society
- Date
- 2001 Fall
- Author
- Vander Hoef, Lorraine
- Material Type
- Journal Article
- Date
- 2001 Fall
- Volume
- 43
- Issue
- 2
- Page
- [115]-145
- Notes
- "John Dougall is probably best known within Canadian historiography as the militant Protestant journalist who founded a successful periodical business in the nineteenth century Montreal publishing world. In a period in which most journal ran no more than three years, Dougall's primary publication, the 'Montreal Witness', proved a notable exception. Edited by three generations of Dougalls, the newspaper spanned ten decades of publication. Although Dougall has received most attention in various histories of the nineteenth-century periodical industry, it is difficult to account for the work and policies of this editor without regard for his religious beliefs. Only loosely identified with the political reform movement in Canada in the 1820s, John Dougall is more clearly understood within the complex milieu of the evangelical reform movement at mid-century. His optimistic views of the burgeoning nineteenth-century press and its potential to influence society at large, and his desire to provide inexpensive religious materials for the moral improvement of all Canadians, however, go beyond the evangelical concerns for individual piety, and in them may be found seeds of of the later social reform movement in this country. In particular, John Dougall wrote and devoted his journals to issues of religious freedom, political independence, and principles of moral and social reform, such as temperance, Sunday observance, and the abolition of slavery in the United States. .... the following biographical sketch and appended bibliography is an attempt to draw back the curtain on one of Canada's temperance workers and evangelical reformers. It is hoped that the growing field of Canadian evangelical historiography will do more to place John Dougall and other evangelicals of the mid-nineteenth century at the roots of the later social gospel movement" (p. [115]-116).
- Article includes "Bibliography of Sources on John Dougall", pages 134-145. Bibliography divided into sections: Primary Sources: Published Works -- Anonymous Reflections and Autobiographical Writings -- Committee Reports -- Manuscript Collections -- Periodicals and Newspapers edited and published by John Dougall -- Periodicals edited and published by J. Dougall under the editorship of John Redpath Dougall -- Periodicals of Societies in which John Dougall Had Membership -- Secondary Sources: Databases -- Biographical Selections -- Additional Biographical and Historical Works with Relevant Source Material -- Periodical Histories -- Church Histories.
- Article divided into sections: Changing the Verities of Mission: From Commerce to Christianity -- The Embodiment of Mission: R.V. Bingham -- Lugard and Indirect Rule: A "Theologian" and his Theology" -- Philosophical Shifts within the SIM.
- Author is "currently a doctoral student at the University of Toronto's Centre for the Study of Religion .... Her article draws on the biographical research for her doctoral dissertation on John Dougall's daughter: 'The Theological New Woman: Religious Thought in the Writings of Lily Dougal'. Her thesis will explore Lily Dougall's central theological conceptions, as well as her connection with B.H. Streeter and other Broad church theologians of the period" (p. 170).
- Subjects
- Dougall, John, 1808-1886
- Dougall, John Redpath, 1841-1934
- Dougall, Lily, 1858-1923
- Religious newspapers and periodicals - Canada - History
- Evangelicals - Canada - 19th century
- Church and social problems - Canada - History - 19th century
- Temperance - Canada
- Temperance - Religious aspects - Congregational churches
- Temperance - Religious aspects - Protestant Evangelical churches
- Location
- General Synod Archives