FRENCH ADVENTISM in QUEBEC Denis Fortin Introduction the Work
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CHAPTER TEN FRENCH ADVENTISM IN QUEBEC Denis Fortin Introduction The work of Seventh-day Adventists among Canada’s French-speaking population was one of their first attempts to reach a non-English popu- lation group. In the 1850s, as Adventists pondered the purpose and meaning of their mission, a few among them began to realize that the French population to the north of the states of New England and New York, in what was then known as Canada East, now Quebec, also needed to hear the Adventist doctrine. The history of the work of Seventh-day Adventists in Quebec illustrates both how difficult it was to win converts among the French population and that years and even decades of hard work were necessary to see permanent results. It is only since the 1970s that Adventism has been well established in Quebec. Millerite Movement Although Seventh-day Adventists view themselves as a continuation of the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century and consider their doctrinal roots to go all the way back to the early Christian Church, their denomination began as such in the mid-nineteenth century in the eastern part of the United States and as a result of the fervent religious revivals of the Second Great Awakening. The movement started in the early 1800s, when a Baptist preacher in upstate New York, William Miller, came to the conclusion that the end of the world would occur within his lifetime. In 1831, Miller began to travel from town to town to preach his apocalyptic message and within a few years it had spread to most towns and villages in the northeast. The prophecies of the books of Daniel and Revelation were particu- larly intriguing to Miller as they seemed to predict the future of human history and the interplay of religious and political powers. Like many 208 denis fortin other contemporary interpreters, he adhered to a literal interpretation of the Bible.1 Tying together various Bible passages and prophecies, he concluded that the end of the world would come around 1843.2 Although many people scoffed at Miller’s intricate chronologies, they were, in fact, very similar to some of his contemporaries, and many of these calculations appeared in the margins of their Bibles. What set Miller’s computations apart from those of others, according to Whitney Cross, was that his were more accurate, which rendered them more dramatic and the predicted event more surprising: ‘On two points only was he dogmatically insistent: that Christ would come, and that He would come about 1843.’3 But Miller’s premillennial teaching clashed with the postmillennial- ism taught in most Protestant churches. These churches were expecting the dawning of a new millennium of peace brought about through social reforms and education. Charles Finney, an American revivalist, summarized the state of expectancy the churches were in when he pro- claimed in 1835, ‘if the church will do her duty, the millennium may come in this country in three years.’4 In contrast, however, Miller pre- dicted that the event would instead be the cataclysmic destruction of all the kingdoms of this earth and of all the unrepentant and wicked sinners. In other words, Miller implied that all the churches’ good works were not good enough to establish God’s kingdom on earth. Only the second advent of Christ and the end-time conflagration that would accompany his return would enable the establishment of God’s eternal kingdom. Miller’s radical teachings operated a major shift in the religious consciousness of his listeners by awakening a fear, or a 1 William Miller, Wm Miller’s Apology and Defence (Boston: J. V. Himes, 1845), 6. A recently published biography of Miller is David L. Rowe, God’s Strange Work: William Miller and the End of the World (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008). 2 Miller’s Apology and Defence gives the details of his calculations. Other useful books on Millerism are George R. Knight, Millennial Fever and the End of the World: A Study of Millerite Adventism (Boise, Id.: Pacific Press, 1993) and P. Gerard Damsteegt, Foundations of the Seventh-day Adventist Message and Mission (Berrien Springs, Mi.: Andrews University Press, 1977). 3 Whitney R. Cross, The Burned-over District: the Social and Intellectual History of Enthusiastic Religion in Western New York, 1800–1850 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1950), 291. 4 Quoted in Edwin S. Gaustad, A Religious History of America (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), 151. Ernest R. Sandeen seized the mood of that time when he wrote, ‘America in the early nineteenth century was drunk on the millennium’ (The Roots of Fundamentalism: British and American Millenarianism, 1800–1930 [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970], 42)..