Made-in-Canada Faith

On June 11, 1925, the day after the United Church of Canada came into existence, Lucy Maud Montgomery, wife of a continuing Presbyterian minister, wrote in her diary, “in Nature the births of living things do not take place in this fashion … No, ’tis no ‘birth.’ It is rather the wedding of two old churches, both of whom are too old to have offspring.”

From the beginning the United Church has wrestled with its identity. What makes it unique? What are its core beliefs? Are they fixed and unmoveable, or have they changed and evolved over time? In A Church with the Soul of a Nation: Making and Remaking the United Church of Canada, Phyllis D. Airhart suggests that, from its founding, the church has had to make significant adjustments to its raison d’être. I am not an objective witness to this history: since the late 1950s I have been intensely involved with numerous issues that the...