This dissertation presents the story of the (Lutheran) Church of the Augsburg Confession in Quebec. Both from within and without, the Church has been influenced in its theology and practice by a unique configuration of factors, making it distinctive from Lutheran churches elsewhere. In addition to the expected differences from the dominant British Protestant and French Roman Catholic teaching, there was the added Quebec peculiarity of Canadian millennial nationalism. This politico-religious nationalism was at its height just at the time that the confessional Lutheranism being implanted in Quebec was at an acutely amillennialist point. Theology though, was not the only distinctive feature. The Church as a whole tended to be an immigrant church. This was especially true for the first century, but even when English-Canadian congregations were established later on, they were largely composed of Lutherans originally from outside of Quebec. As was the case for most nineteenth and twentieth-century immigrants to the province, the Lutheran immigrants tended to be integrated into anglophone society. The anglicization and resultant decimation through the English exodus of the late twentieth century played a major role in the development of what is perhaps the most distinctive feature of Lutheranism in Quebec, that of its francophone missions. The author concludes that the combination of theology, ethnic diversity and minority status of Lutherans in the province has determined that the Church of the Augsburg Confession in Quebec be a distinctive Church. This distinctiveness sets it apart from other denominations in the province as well as from the Lutheran churches in the rest of Canada, North America, or for that matter, the rest of the world.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uottawa.ca/oai:ruor.uottawa.ca:10393/10223 |
| Date | January 1996 |
| Creators | Somers, David H. |
| Contributors | Choquette, Robert, |
| Publisher | University of Ottawa (Canada) |
| Source Sets | Université d’Ottawa |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 167 p. |
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