Marshall J. Gauvin and the Church Ad Controversy

Notes: N.B. Author is described as "Brent Stearns, University of Winnipeg" on page 183 but as "Bruce Stearns" on the Contents page (p. [147]).; "Late in the fall of 1930 four influential Protestant ministers visited the office of the Manitoba Free Press and asked that the paid advertisements of the Winnipeg Rationalist Society lectures by removed from the 'Church News' page of the Saturday issue. The Free Press complied by moving the ads to the theatre and entertainment section. The resulting controversy would highlight the career of Marshall J. Gauvin, the Rationalist lecturer who spoke weekly at Winnipeg movie houses from 1926 to 1940. It would also display the tensions between two dying movements in religious thought: that of Rationalism or Free Thought, represented by Gauvin, and the Christian Modernism of the two United Church ministers who organized the action against Gauvin's ads. It provides also an opportunity for studying the theological background to popular Protestant preaching in Winnipeg in these times of developing international economic and political crisis" (p. [173]).

Subjects: Gauvin, Marshall J. (Marshall Jerome), 1881-1978; Rationalism - Canada - History; Christianity - Controversial literature; Modernism (Christian theology); Modernist-fundamentalist controversy