Furrows of the Field: Methodology in Writing the Religious History of the Canadian Prairies

Furrows of the Field: Methodology in Writing the Religious History of the Canadian Prairies A thesis submitted to The Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Religious Studies University of Regina By Connor John Thompson Regina, SK April, 2019 Copyright 2019: Connor John Thompson UNIVERSITY OF REGINA FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES AND RESEARCH SUPERVISORY AND EXAMINING COMMITTEE Connor John Thompson, candidate for the degree of Master of Arts in Religious Studies, has presented a thesis titled, Furrows of the Field: Methodology in Writing The Religious History of the Canadian Prairies, in an oral examination held on April 23, 2019. The following committee members have found the thesis acceptable in form and content, and that the candidate demonstrated satisfactory knowledge of the subject material. External Examiner: Dr. Murray Knuttila, Brock Univesity Co-Supervisor: Dr. William Arnal, Department of Religious Studies Co-Supervisor: Dr. Bryan Hillis, Department of Religious Studies Committee Member: Dr. Andre Magnan, Department of Sociology & Social Studies Chair of Defense: Dr. Susan Johnston, Department of English Abstract The primary concern of this thesis is explanation of the drastic decline in church attendance that has characterized Prairie religious history, and Canadian history more broadly, over the course of the twentieth and early twenty first centuries. In the case of the Canadian Prairies as a region, this transformation has also been tied up with the change from a heavily social gospel influenced society based on the highly valued ethic of co-operation to a society that is increasingly non-church going and which more highly values the ethic of individualism. While more recent Prairie history has seen the region incorporated into North American consumer culture, I argue for the continued utility of regional analysis based on the mythology, symbols, and rituals that reinforce the sense of a distinct Prairie identity, and argue that analysis of these things is deeply tied into the transformation of Prairie religious history. Perhaps the most important element of Prairie social mythology is the farmer-as-symbol, which was once imagined as living by Christian ethics, but is increasingly imagined today as an entrepreneurial lone figure, whose values are concomitant with the individualist ethic promoted by emerging forms of religiosity. I demonstrate this by looking at how consumer culture molds the Prairie social mythology, and particularly, through a case study of the region’s most prominent annual celebration – the Calgary Stampede – show the ways in which this mythology has been understood in recent years. The thesis concludes with consideration of new forms of religiosity that have emerged with this change in Prairie culture, and in particular, Spiritual But Not Religious behaviors. By paying special attention to how the term religion is used to categorize elements of life by both historians and historical actors, I treat religion primarily as an emic category, arguing that understanding contemporary Prairie religious history involves an understanding of how “religion” is treated within the popular consciousness of the region. Acknowledgments Written with gratitude, always, for the love and support of my family and friends. D. E. G. Appreciation to my supervisors, Bill Arnal and Bryan Hillis. It has been an honor to work under you both, and the discussions, support, opportunities and insights are certainly remembered. I also want to thank my third committee member, André Magnan, and my External Examiner, Murray Knuttila. Thanks, more generally, to the wonderful people in the Religious Studies department at the University of Regina, whose encouragement, conversation, and alimentary generosity made graduate life at this institution a true pleasure. I would like to extend the same sentiments to the people at Luther College, who I was very happy to get to know. Nothing without the guidance of my various mentors, who have helped and inspired me. Thanks to my good friends and fellow students in the Master’s program at the University of Regina – most especially, Esther Guillen and Maysa Haque. “Ideas are important.” Thanks also to my confidants from the University of Alberta Honor’s History program, with whom some of the ideas contained in this thesis took root. “Love completes the work the intellect cannot.” I would also like to acknowledge the financial support of the University of Regina as well as the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, both of which made the research for this thesis possible. I am beyond grateful for the direct support of this research, as well as for employment through the University of Regina and Luther College. Contents Introduction………………………………………………………………………………1 -Literature Review…………………………………………………..……………3 -Structure and Argument of Thesis……..….……………….…..……………….16 Furrows of the Field: Methodology in Writing the Religious History of the Canadian Prairies Chapter One: The Secularization Thesis and Writing Canadian Religious History……………………………………………………………………………21 Chapter Two: Deeming Things Religious: Politics, Religion, and Prairie History……………………………………………………………………………47 Chapter Three: The Weight of Years: Symbol, Ritual, and Place in Cultivating the Prairie Myth………………………………………………………………...……71 Chapter Four: Reimagining the Rural Idyll: Prairie Culture and Social Trans- formations……….………………..……………………………………………...88 Chapter Five: Spiritual But Not Religious People and Prairie Religious History….…………………………………………………………………….....114 Final Considerations……………………………………………………………………140 Bibliography…………………………………………..….…………………………….147 Introduction Some years ago, Bruce Guenther wrote the following in the paper “Populism, Politics, and Christianity in Western Canada”: The scholarly work exploring the social and cultural history of western Canada has generally (there are some notable exceptions) isolated economic and political factors and neglected to include religious faith as a motivating force in the analysis of developments on the prairies. If religion is included at all, it has generally been treated as somehow strange and bizarre if not entirely irrelevant.1 While the brutality required of any generalization should be kept in mind, Guenther raises an important observation on western Canadian historiography, the more general field of which my more modest analysis of Prairie historical writing is a part. How is it that, despite the immense influence of traditions deemed religious on developments in Prairie life, religion is generally neglected in analysis of developments in Prairie society and culture? How can religion be neglected as a point of analysis in Prairie society and culture? More generally, how have the ideological transformations in Prairie society been influenced by traditions deemed religious, and shaped, or responded to, the shifts in economic and political life on the region? I will address two primary issues in this thesis. The first is some of the primary methodological and theoretical assumptions that have preoccupied the historiography of religion on the Canadian Prairies. The second is contributing to explanation of an important aspect of the history of the Canadian Prairies: namely, the precipitous decline in attendance 1 Bruce L. Guenther, “Populism, Politics, and Christianity in Western Canada” Historical Papers 2000: Canadian Society of Church History, (May, 2000), 106. Published in the same year, David Marshall makes a remarkably similar observation: “There is a paucity of historical scholarship on religion on the prairies” “Out of the Cloister But Still on the Margins?: Recent Publications in Canadian Religious History” Journal of Canadian Studies/Revue d’études canadiennes 35:3 (Fall 2000), 304. 1 and adherence to churches, and how the character of the Prairies has transformed as this has occurred. Over the course of the twentieth century, a well-known change in the region’s culture has occurred as it shifted from a pre-WWII society characterized by agriculture and Christian co-operative values to a post-WWII society characterized by resource extraction and increasing individualism. While this change is often explained in terms of economic and political factors, there remains a need to explain the system of ethics and values that have been contributed to this transformation. In this thesis, I draw attention to some of the assumptions that may underpin the historiography’s neglect of Prairie religious history post-WWII. I do this by using theoretical and methodological strategies developed by scholars of religion, thereby reading Prairie history in light of a Religious Studies perspective. As I explain in my literature review, this will involve addressing the “normative” view of Prairie history that historians have developed up to the present – a normative view which, itself, has generally neglected Prairie history after 1945. Keeping this in mind, I select several prominent examples that demonstrate what I suggest are theoretical and methodological assumptions Prairie historians tend to make that may inhibit effectively writing Prairie religious history. Prairie historians have tended to assume a Christian-normative character as to what religion is, and as a result, have tended to assume that the importance of traditions, beliefs, and behaviors deemed religious are a declining factor in Prairie history. By taking a different approach to thinking about religion, and particularly,

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