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rfmcdonaldPassing by on King Street, I entered the Cathedral Church of St. James with the boyfriend this afternoon. The church building itself is rather attractive, with its stained-glass windows and well-mortared floors and attractive construction of Toronto brick and Ohio sandstone. Leaving, I couldn't help but reflect how St. James' existence demonstrates one element of Ontario's difference.
Scale is the most obvious factor. The territory of the Anglican Diocese of Toronto is home to nearly five million people, while roughly a tenth of this population are Anglicans. The church website claims that 90 thousand people are on the parish rolls. I can't help but be reminded of Charlottetown's St. Peter's Cathedral, a church that, while handsome, is significantly smaller than St. James. And for good reason: Quite apart from the fact that the number of people on St. James' parish rolls is equivalent to roughly two-thirds of the total population of Prince Edward Island, Anglicanism has only a small foothold on the Island. According to Statistics Canada's 2001 statistics on religious affiliation, Catholics retain a slight lead over Protestants. The most prominent of the Protestant denominations is the United Church of Canada, at 20%; the Anglicans are far behind, at 5%.
The prominence of St. James, and much of Ontario's current religious diversity, reflects what is by Island standards a highly contested and divergent evolution. Relatively early in the province's history, Anglicanism was intimately tied to matters of state and government, most famously in Upper Canada's famous Family Compact. Religion was politicized at an early date in Upper Canada, linked to ethnicity and access to political power. Things were somewhat different on Prince Edward Island, where English immigrants amounted to only one-fifth of the total, where even among the ethnically English segments of the population Anglicans were outnumbered by Nonconformists of various shades, and where Roman Catholicism (of most of the Irish, of many Scots, of all of the Acadiens) was the single largest denomination. For these and other reasons--the lack of a substantial exploitable hinterland, the common hostility to the absentee landlords who owned almost all of the province, the mobility of the population--the Island's long-standing tradition of not talking about problems actually worked in the province's favour, for once. Why risk what little there is for something that's in the background? Relations of and with power never had much to do with religion on the Island; I'd argue that religion on the Island was much the better for this, at least until it began to succumb to apathy.
Scale is the most obvious factor. The territory of the Anglican Diocese of Toronto is home to nearly five million people, while roughly a tenth of this population are Anglicans. The church website claims that 90 thousand people are on the parish rolls. I can't help but be reminded of Charlottetown's St. Peter's Cathedral, a church that, while handsome, is significantly smaller than St. James. And for good reason: Quite apart from the fact that the number of people on St. James' parish rolls is equivalent to roughly two-thirds of the total population of Prince Edward Island, Anglicanism has only a small foothold on the Island. According to Statistics Canada's 2001 statistics on religious affiliation, Catholics retain a slight lead over Protestants. The most prominent of the Protestant denominations is the United Church of Canada, at 20%; the Anglicans are far behind, at 5%.
The prominence of St. James, and much of Ontario's current religious diversity, reflects what is by Island standards a highly contested and divergent evolution. Relatively early in the province's history, Anglicanism was intimately tied to matters of state and government, most famously in Upper Canada's famous Family Compact. Religion was politicized at an early date in Upper Canada, linked to ethnicity and access to political power. Things were somewhat different on Prince Edward Island, where English immigrants amounted to only one-fifth of the total, where even among the ethnically English segments of the population Anglicans were outnumbered by Nonconformists of various shades, and where Roman Catholicism (of most of the Irish, of many Scots, of all of the Acadiens) was the single largest denomination. For these and other reasons--the lack of a substantial exploitable hinterland, the common hostility to the absentee landlords who owned almost all of the province, the mobility of the population--the Island's long-standing tradition of not talking about problems actually worked in the province's favour, for once. Why risk what little there is for something that's in the background? Relations of and with power never had much to do with religion on the Island; I'd argue that religion on the Island was much the better for this, at least until it began to succumb to apathy.
