The Blaikie Report: An Insider's Look at Faith and Politics
by Bill Blaikie. United Church Publishing House. 264 pp. $21.95.
Pulpit and Politics: Competing Religious Ideologies in Canadian Political Life
by Dennis Gruending. Kingsley Publishing Services. 256 pp. $22.00.
reviewed by Jonathan Malloy, Associate Professor of Political Science, Carleton University
On the same day, November 2, 2011, Bill Blaikie and Dennis Gruending, both former New Democratic Party MPs, launched books looking at the intersection between faith and public life in Canada. Political scientist Jonathan Malloy reviews both books giving particular emphasis to how the authors understand Canadian Evangelicalism’s place in and contribution to public life.
Congregational Vitality among Evangelical Churches in Canada
by Sam Reimer, Professor of Sociology, Crandall University
The church growth movement got its start in 1965 at Fuller Theological Seminary. Since then the movement has taken different forms and embraced different models and programs. While many church growth strategies focus on internal congregational factors, sociologist Sam Reimer argues that external and inspirational ones are just as important. This paper, written from a sociologist’s perspective, draws on the Canadian Evangelical Churches Study data to identify the factors, internal, external and inspirational, that make for vital congregations.
A Statistical Profile of Canadian Wesleyan Movement Congregations, 2000–2011
by Rick Hiemstra, Director of Research and Media Relations, The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada
The Wesleyan or Methodist movement has been “spread[ing] scriptural holiness” in Canada since 1791. How is the movement faring more than 200 years later? This article, first presented at the Fourth Annual Wesley Studies Symposium at Tyndale Seminary in Toronto, looks at charitable information return data for Wesleyan movement congregations assessing growth in areas such as revenue, staffing and occupancy costs from 2000 to 2011.