The big project : James M. Shaver at All Peoples' Mission, Winnipeg, 1921-1941
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Date
2000
Authors
Payment, Shirley Frances
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Abstract
This thesis is a case study of All Peoples; Mission and its work with non-Anglo-Saxon immigrants in Winnipeg during the inter-war years. It examines the progress and faith of the Social Gospel at a local level during a period in which most historians believed the Social Gospel movement had declined. However, as one examines the citizenship training programs at the Mission, it becomes evident that the liberal social service interpretation of the Social Gospel was practised and successful during James M. Shaver's superintendency. Shaver's goal was two-fold, Christianization and Canadianization, but to Shaver citizenship took priority over conversion. He was firmly committed to the goal of Canadianization through citizenship training into British democratic ideals. The United Church became more concerned with consolidating and organzing after church union and managing finances during the Depression than supporting programs to enhance the Christian Canadian nation it had earlier envisioned. The church became more concerned with the cost of Social Gospel programs like those at All Peoples' Mission and demanded that the Mission justify its work with non- Anglo-Saxon immigrants by increasing membership. This case study elucidates the uneasy tension between evangelism and social service that charactenzed Social Gospel thought which ultimately affected the success of Christian Canadianization of non-Anglo-Saxon immigrants at All Peoples' Mission.