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Intolerable tolerance: the Canadian bishops and the 1912 ‘Appeal on behalf of Christian Unity’
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
Extract
The convocation of Bishop’s College, Lennoxville, was gathered in the chapel. In 1910 an honourary doctorate was being conferred on the bishop of Fredericton. In his convocation sermon, Bishop Richardson confided that the most disquieting thing he saw about the religious life of his day was its attitude of sheer indifference. The foe was seen in impatience with doctrinal sermons and in undenominational religion, but most of all it stood ‘naked and unashamed in countless arguements for Christian union.’ It was not the indifference of the masses outside the Church but of the faithful within it that disturbed him. The Christian world was ‘coming to mistake looseness of belief for liberality of thought.’ He conceded a grudging acceptance of the modern view of’the duty of toleration as the characteristic temper of the religious life’, while warning against the ‘danger of being so wide awake to the value of every other man’s opinion as to fail to form any strong intellectual convictions for oneself.’ Although the Inquisition and the fires of Smithfield were hideous, ‘behind all the cruel intolerance of persecution there was something that is lamentably lacking in the Church to-day,—a magnificently stern sense of responsibility for the safekeeping of a sacred trust.’ The Canadian bishops would soon exhibit their stern sense of stewardship.
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References
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13 Quebec Diocesan Gazette January 1912.
14 General Synod Archives, Toronto, An Appeal on behalf of Christian Unity (1912).
15 George Whitaker, Sermons Preached in Toronto; for the Most Part in the Chapel of Trinity College (London and Toronto 1882) p 251.
16 [Percival] Jolliffe, [Andrew Hunter Dunn, Fifth Bishop of Quebec: A Memoir (London 1919)] p 42.
17 The original would have been printed c1892; a new, unchanged edition was published by the SPCK in 1907.
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19 Ibid p 133.
20 General Synod Archives, Toronto, W. J. Noble and A. H. Dunn, 26 February 1894. The archives contains a series of printed copies of correspondence between the rector and his bishop.
21 Ibid W. J. Noble to A. H. Dunn, 3 March 1894.
22 Canadian Churchman 12 June 1913.
23 The Gazette Montreal, 9 December 1912.
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26 Quoted ibid 30 January 1913.
27 The Gazette Montreal, 2, 3 December 1912.
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31 The Gazette Montreal, 31 January 1913.
32 In 1905, Dr Barclay of Saint Paul’s Presbyterian Church read the lessons and took communion in the cathedral on Christmas Day. In return Barclay invited Symonds to preach for him, but the rector of Saint George’s parish refused to grant him permission. Cody papers; Symonds to Cody, 30 December 1905, 14 September 1912.
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41 Canadian Churchman 1 May 1913.
42 1923 Niagara Synod Journal pp 32–3.
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50 1913 Edmonton Synod Journal p 35.
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52 Cody papers; 27 April 1913.
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