A Profusion of Spires: Religion in Nineteenth-Century Ontario

Notes: "This work is the principal study of religion before 1900 in the planned thirty-two volumes of the Ontario Historical Studies Series. .... This book is an important milestone on the road by which the old discipline of 'Canadian Church History' travels to become the 'history of Christianity in Canada'" (p. 29). In this book "we have the careful and critical account, integrated from an enormous mass of primary and secondary material, that we have come to expect from John Webster Grant. .... The goal he sets himself is to trace the formation and transformation of distinctive patterns of religious life. Deeper analysis must await the development of the field, and he suggests some useful avenues for that research" (p. 29). "The work cannot be faulted where the literature is simply absent, but a clear case is made by default for studies of women in Ontario religion" (p. 31). This book "is an essential work for students of the social and religious history of Ontario, marking an important transition in perspective and methodology, and providing helpful indications of the directions in which the field of the history of Christianity needs now to move" (p. 31).

Subjects: Ontario - Religion - 19th century - Book reviews; Ontario - Church history - 19th century - Book reviews