Pentecostalism, Nationalism, And Québec Culture

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Pentecostal Theology, Volume 28, No. 1, Spring 2006

Pentecostalism, Nationalism, and Québec Culture

Michael Di Giacomo

Introduction

It was the best of times and the worst of times for religion in 1970s Quebec. The social power of the Catholic Church was in free fall. Gone were the triumphant days of Catholic hegemony that had deﬁned French Canadian culture for two hundred years. The secularizing forces of the Quiet Revolution had weakened considerably the religious grip of the church hierarchy on the minds of Quebecers. Notwithstanding, the spiritual fervor of Quebecers continued undiminished, albeit taking nontraditional forms. Almost every ideology—religious, political, or otherwise—could get a hearing somewhere. Every non-Catholic group in this Canadian province was winning converts, it seemed, not the least of which were the French-speaking evangelicals.

The latter had been historically a very small community. Even at present, evangelicals of all linguistic groups comprise only about one per cent of the population. Indeed, the evangelicals were and still are a double minority in Quebec, linguistically and religiously: linguistically because they spoke French in a country in which the majority speaks English, and religiously because they were Protestant in an overwhelmingly Catholic province. But it was a new day in post-Quiet Revolution Quebec, certainly the golden years for evangelicals. Not since the days of Rev. Charles Chiniquy, a Catholic priest converted to Protestantism in the late nineteenth century, did they have so much to boast about. Almost all French-speaking Protestant churches grew in adherents in 1970s Quebec, especially the Pentecostals, who experienced astounding growth through conversion and church plant- ing. And yet, for all their optimism and enthusiasm, not all was glorious. In the midst of unprecedented growth and expansion, of spiritual renewal and revival, the largest of the Pentecostal groups, the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada (hereafter the PAOC) was racked by internal division and dis- sension, not on the basis of doctrine or theology, but of culture.

The conﬂict within the PAOC and its relation to Quebec culture is the subject of this essay. Using the history of Quebec as a backdrop, this paper investigates the origin and development of the controversies between the English and French groups within the PAOC. This research shows that the drama unfolding within the PAOC mirrored that of the wider socio-political culture and had already been played out in another theater

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with other actors. The plot, the characters, and even their lines, however, were quite similar. This paper brings into focus parallel histories, eccle- siastical and political, and demonstrates that the pressures of the historical and cultural-political framework of Federal and bilingual Canada make the names of the players in the political and ecclesiastical arenas almost interchangeable. For twenty years, the pressures within the PAOC elicited reactions and decisions similar to those observed in the political arena. Indeed, the participants replayed with eerie accuracy the wider social and political drama within their own ecclesiastical context. This essay, in addi- tion to underscoring the fact that groups with otherworldly concerns like the Pentecostals are not immune to historical, cultural, and political pres- sures, highlights the inability of a group claiming a spiritual solution to political and cultural tensions to break with a historical conﬂictual pattern.

The Beginning of Tribulations

Frustrations among some of the French Canadian pastors regarding the home missionary program had been building for quite some time. Concerns had been voiced about the “English fact.” The National Home Missions Department of the PAOC under the leadership of Rev. Robert Argue had implemented the FLITE (French Language Intensive Training for Evangelism) program in 1969 to recruit English Bible college graduates and give them one-year scholarships to learn French and to be sent sub- sequently as missionaries and church planters to French Canada. When Rev. Argue had been elected as Director of the National Home Missions Department in 1966, he became ex ofﬁcio a member of the French Conference Executive Committee, the French Conference being the admin- istrative and spiritual body whose mandate was to evangelize French Canada. He quickly discovered what the French Canadian clergy already knew; the movement in French Canada was stagnant. It was not making any kind of headway or any progress either in ﬁnances or in church planting. On the contrary, churches were being closed. For what had been a continuously growing revival movement the situation was simply intolerable.1

Determined to lift French Canadian Pentecostalism out of its spiritual slump, Rev. Argue implemented a strategy of church planting and evan- gelism. Nothing was going to stop him, not even culturally threatened

Rev. Lucien Chouinard (pastor and former member of the French Conference Executive), interview by author, audio-tape recording, Montreal, QC, November 20 and 27, 1996.

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French Canadian clergy! When the FLITE program was fully implemented, sending a new batch of English-speaking missionaries to the French Conference every year, a few among the twenty-ﬁve or so French Canadian clergy became increasingly anxious. Before long the English presence would be overwhelming. Then what would become of the French Conference of the PAOC, if the English-speaking clergy from outside Quebec outnumbered the indigenous French-speaking clergy? Concern for the distinctive character of the French Conference turned into alarm. Alarm turned into frustration as the French Conference now saw itself increasingly controlled and shaped by cultural forces alien to Québécois2 thinking. There were those among the French clergy who were just as determined to be the immovable object to Argue’s irresistible force.

Developments came to a boiling point in the annual business meeting of the French Conference of May 1974, when Resolution 9 was presented. Using the rising nationalist movement in Quebec as justiﬁcation, culture was being proposed as a basis for qualifying for leadership. Constitutional guarantees were demanded that the leadership would always be French Canadian.

IN VIEW of the nationalist movement in Quebec, and of the necessity of retaining our French-Canadian identity, and of the effort that we see in Overseas Missions to establish indigenous workers in all important posts, LET IT BE RESOLVED that the French Conference follow this example of Overseas Missions and always establish a French-Canadian as superin- tendent, as well as in all the other important posts such as Director of Berea Bible Institute, Chairman of the Christ’s Ambassadors, President of the WMC, etc.3

Opposition to the resolution was quick. Such a resolution, it was argued, was not consistent with the General Constitution of the PAOC, which did

Whereas historically the term French Canadian has denoted all Canadians whose roots can be traced to New France, Québécois, a relatively recent term, denotes those of French extraction but who reside in the province of Quebec, many of whom sympathize with Quebec independence from Canada. The differentiation in the terms is not based solely on geography, however. Different connotations are attached to both expressions. Whereas the most fundamental feature of French Canadian identity and culture was the Roman Catholic religion, or at least the one that was the most valued, the most distinctive feature of Québécois culture and indeed the Québécois identity is now the French language. (Raymond Lemieux, “Le dynamisme religieux des cultures francophones: ouverture ou repli?” in Religion, sécularisation, modernité: Les expériences francophones en Amérique du Nord, ed. Brigitte Caulier [Québec: PUL, 1996], 1).

The English wording of this resolution is taken from: Transcription/Translation of the Proceedings of Twenty-sixth Annual Business Conference of the French Conference of the PAOC, prepared by Donald R. Martin and Pierre Bergeron, Institut biblique Bérée, May 15–17, 1974; Mississauga: PAOC archives.

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not provide for leadership on the basis of ethnicity. Pandemonium broke out. This meeting of Pentecostal clergy erupted into the most stormy, emo- tional, tension-ﬁlled business meeting ever, probably not even worthy of the raucous sessions of the House of Commons.4 The debate that ensued focused on the French-Canadian character of the French Conference. Differences in mentality, outlook, and methodology between English and French Canadians were stressed to underscore the difﬁculty of the two linguistic and cultural groups working together in harmony in the same territory unless one was subservient to the other. The indigenous group naturally assumed that the English Canadians, as outsiders, must follow the lead of the French Canadians and not the reverse.

Voices were even heard overtly threatening to breaking away from the PAOC and creating an independent organization.5 French-Canadian chair- man Rev. Roland Bergeron brought closure to the proceedings when he ruled the resolution out of order.6 It did not stop the debate, though. On the contrary, it fuelled discussion all the more in the hallways, spilling out into the churches and ministerials for almost the next twenty years. Ultimately, the meeting contributed to a dysfunctional relationship between the administrations of the French Conference and the National Home Missions Department that engulfed adjacent administrative Districts and all of the top leaders of the national headquarters of the denomination.

The Special Fall Conference of November 13–15, 1974

A specially convened business meeting of the French Conference was held in November 1974 as a follow-up to the May meeting and other intermediary committee meetings. In addition to continuing the debate begun in May on the distinctive character of the French Conference, the November meeting revolved around two other issues: ﬁnances, especially as pertaining to Home Missions Department subsidies for the French

Following is the French original from the Procès-verbal du 26e congrès annuel de la Conférence française des APDC (15–17 mai 1974); Mississauga: PAOC archives.

Vu le mouvement nationaliste au Québec et la nécessité de retenir notre identité cana-

dienne-française et l’effort que nous voyons dans les missions étrangères d’établir des

indigènes dans tous les postes-clefs qu’il soit résolu que la Conférence française suive

cet exemple des missions extérieures et établisse toujours un Canadien français comme

surintendant et dans tous les autres poste-clefs, tel que Directeur de l’Institut Biblique

de Bérée, Président des Ambassadeurs, Présidente des Cercles Missionnaires, etc….

The proceedings were recorded on audiotape, translated and transcribed to English. See n. 3 above.

Procès-verbal du 26e congrès annuel.

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Conference, and the question of authority over ministries operating in French Canada.

First, concerning ﬁnancing French ministries, there was disagreement in regard to the principle of receiving subsidies from the National Ofﬁce. The French Conference Executive had gone on record to refuse subsidies from the National Home Missions department.7 The new nationalistic French Conference Superintendent Rev. André Gagnon, who replaced Rev. Bergeron (deemed too accommodating to “foreign” English-dominated denominational leadership, he was voted out of ofﬁce), argued that accept- ing funds from the National Home Missions would actually weaken the Conference. They would be a “crutch” making the French Conference dependent on the National Ofﬁce. By not accepting funds, he maintained, the French-speaking workers would be forced to “stand on their own two feet,” thereby relying on themselves for success and not on any organization outside the French Conference. Subsequently, when Robert Argue was presented with the argument that giving money to the Conference was weakening it, he was forced to conclude that withdrawing subsidies would strengthen it, and so he gradually did this.8

Another source of tension between the French Conference leadership and the Home Missions Department was the absence of French Conference authority over all ministries operating in French Canada. Since the French Conference was the constitutionally designated PAOC body to work among French Canadians anywhere in Canada, it was argued, then all evange- listic PAOC-afﬁliated agencies or programs working among the French Canadians must come under the supervision and responsibility of the French Conference leadership. One member in the November meeting voiced this view when he said:

The point of contention is that they [various ministries] are going around the French Conference, setting up parallel programs and adding to certain departments which already exist, authorities with more liberty to do certain things that could just as well be done through the existing departments in the French Conference. Therefore, if Toronto [PAOC headquarters] respects

Procès-verbal de la rencontre du Comité exécutif de la Conférence française (15 février 1974); Mississauga: PAOC archives. The decision of the French Conference Executive would eventually be made public and was a subject of intense debate in the Special Fall Conference.

Robert Argue and André Gagnon expressed and explained their respective and diver- gent views on the matter of subsidies in the Special Conference of November 1974. Robert Argue, interview by author, audiotape recording, Cambridge, ON, August 8, 1996. See also Transcription/Translation of the Special Fall Conference.

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the French Conference as it is, why not pass through the French Conference, channel all its efforts through the French Conference, through us.9

Robert Argue would not agree to this. He maintained that agencies that did not originate with the French Conference should maintain their autonomy but nonetheless endeavor to work in cooperation with the French Conference.10 In effect, the mandate to evangelize French Canadians any- where in Canada was not being taken away from the French Conference. But henceforth they were being put on notice that they were going to get some “brotherly” competition from other PAOC ministries who also fought for the souls of French Canadians.

Compromise could not be achieved. The sharp divide between the French Conference and the National Home Missions Department even- tually was institutionalized as it led to the formation of another depart- ment of the PAOC called “French Ministries.” This department would be part of the District of Eastern Ontario and Quebec, the district responsible for all those churches in Quebec not operating in the French language. Therefore French Ministries was administratively separate from the French Conference but would operate in the same territory—Quebec—with the same mandate, namely, French evangelism. Two separate administrations working in the same territory allowed for the establishment and opera- tion of a second French-speaking Bible school, known initially as Formation Timothée and subsequently as Collège biblique Québec, afﬁliated with the District. The French Conference leadership was, of course, totally opposed to a school that would compete for students with its own school, the Institut biblique Bérée. It wasn’t until after years of ecclesiastical politi- cal wrangling that the PAOC ﬁnally restored harmony by a complete restructuring that resulted in the creation of the Quebec District in 2000.11

The PAOC and the Canadian Problem

In the context of Canadian Pentecostalism, the cultural conﬂict between the French Conference and the National Home Missions Department was certainly an anomaly to the extent that cultural conﬂict is not consistent

Transcription/Translation of the Special Fall Conference, 10, 15.

Ibid., 22.

Kevin Heinreichs, “Pentecostals Elect a Woman to Executive,” Christian Week Online, 14:11 (September 19, 2000) (http://christianweek.org/Stories/vol14/ no11/story4.html); Ron Rust and Michael Di Giacomo, Quebec: Mission Not Impossible (http://dq.paoc.org).

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with its theology of the Spirit. Accordingly, being ﬁlled with the Spirit should normally overcome cultural tension and conﬂict in the interest of peace and the propagation of the Gospel. In this case two administrative units in the same religious organization whose mandate seemed so per- fectly clear—the winning of souls, or, in another perspective, the con- version of Quebecers to Pentecostalism—should not, at least according to their theology and ofﬁcial discourse, have given such a high degree of their attention to presumably lesser things.

Pentecostal history has borne out that the winning of souls is the activ- ity of paramount importance to which all other considerations are secondary. And yet, culture and language seemed to be the prime preoccupation of these Pentecostal ministers. Was it simply an accident of history where individuals with conﬂicting personalities were brought together in the wrong place at the wrong time and where, with some minor strategic plan- ning, most if not all the tensions could easily have been avoided? Was this a tragic internal accident that can happen from time to time in any organization, or was it just a case of a personality conﬂict or power strug- gle as leaders in an organization endeavor to further their own interests?

I maintain that the reasons for conﬂict did not spring primarily from personality but from societal and cultural structures that formed over two hundred years. Personality considerations, although not totally absent, are secondary, for different people in different eras were given to similar reac- tions when dealing with similar issues. The drama that unfolded within the PAOC followed the pattern of historical French-English relationships in Canada. Consequently, the main players in the conﬂict between the Home Missions Department, a national body of the PAOC, and the French Conference, a regional unit of this same body, were subject to the same historical and cultural pressures that bear down on anyone dealing with cultural and political issues between the wider English and French com- munities in Canada. Actually, one is struck by the closeness of the par- allels between the drama that unfolded within the PAOC in the 1970s and events in the wider Canadian social and political scene, beginning scarcely some seventy years after the Treaty of Paris of 1763 that transferred vir- tually all of New France to the British.

The Durham Report

One of the earlier attempts at investigating and analyzing Canadian society in the wake of political and social turbulence after the British Conquest was the Report on the Affairs of British North America from

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the Earl of Durham, Her Majesty’s High Commissioner12 commonly known as the Durham Report, submitted in 1839. Not a scientiﬁc analysis by any means, which it does not pretend to be, the report is very clearly written from the point of view of one whose assumptions of English superiority are quite evident. Notwithstanding these weaknesses, the report does offer insight into the dynamics of the two major cultural and linguistic groups in British North America of the early 1800s. Expecting to ﬁnd that the problems in Lower Canada (Quebec) were due to the structure of gov- ernment, which provoked power struggles between the elected Assembly and the Imperial government-appointed Governor, Lord Durham con- cludes rather that the main cause of the conﬂict was the existence of two distinct cultures representing two distinct perspectives.

I expected to ﬁnd a contest between a government and a people: I found two nations warring in the bosom of a single state: I found a struggle, not of principles, but of races; and I perceived that it would be idle to attempt any amelioration of laws or institutions, until we could ﬁrst succeed in ter- minating the deadly animosity that now separates the inhabitants of Lower Canada into the hostile divisions of French and English.13

Reading Durham’s report in the light of latter twentieth-century Pentecostal history in Quebec can almost make one believe that “history repeats itself.” For example, when Durham writes of the legislative ini- tiatives of the English population in Quebec to provide for the improve- ment of economic and demographic conditions that were being constantly blocked by the French majority, it is easy to believe that nothing much has changed as far as intercultural attitudes. Durham’s report might as well have been addressing Pentecostal history in Quebec of the 1970s. Notice how close the ecclesiastical realities and issues with which the PAOC was dealing parallel the cultural and political conﬂict of the 1830s by their insertion in brackets within the following quote:

Without going so far as to accuse the Assembly of a deliberate design to check the settlement and improvement of Lower Canada [the French Conference was not against the evangelization of French Canada], it can- not be denied that they looked with considerable jealousy and dislike on the increase and prosperity of what they regarded as a foreign and hostile race [the English-speaking ministers and the FLITE program]; they looked on the province [and the French Conference] as the patrimony of their own

John George Lambton Durham, Report on the Affairs of British North America from the Earl of Durham, Her Majesty’s High Commissioner, London, January 31, 1839, 107 pp.

Ibid., 6.

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race [French Canada was the constitutional heritage of the French Conference]; they viewed it not as a country to be settled, but as one already settled [French-Canadian evangelism was the exclusive jurisdiction of the French Conference]; and instead of legislating in the American spirit, and ﬁrst pro- viding for the future population of the province [i.e., the winning of souls], their primary care was, in the spirit of legislation which prevails in the old world, to guard the interests and feelings of the present race of inhabitants [preserving the French character of the French Conference], to whom they considered the new comers as subordinate [channel all evangelizing efforts through the French Conference].14

The similarities between the reactions of the French-Canadian ministers in the sphere of ecclesiastical politics and those of their cultural and polit- ical counterparts of more than a century earlier are not coincidental. Given the same conditions due to such constants as socio-political structure, geo- graphic and demographic realities, and cultural-linguistic dynamics, the stage is set for similar reactions among participants thrust into the same social structure.

This focus on the reaction of the Québécois pastors should not be inter- preted as if they, nor their forebears of a century and a half ago for that matter, were in error. Each ethnic group simply had its own perspective on the situation. If, as Durham reported, the English would accuse the French majority of impeding legislation favorable to the former, it should also be noted that the French majority in the wider Quebec society have since accused the English minority of systematically and constantly frus- trating their own ambitions.15 Durham made it clear in his report that the Canadiens were not totally to blame for the explosive situation in early nineteenth-century Lower Canada. Partial blame for the problems had to be placed on the English attitude of superiority toward the French. Here is an extract of his report in which he places blame on both linguistic groups:

It is not anywhere a virtue of the English race to look with complacency on any manners, customs or laws, which appear strange to them; accus- tomed to form a high estimate of their own superiority, they take no pains to conceal from others their contempt and intolerance of their usages. They

Durham, Report, 15.

Such are the conclusions in a study on voting patterns in Quebec by Pierre Drouilly, Indépendance et démocratie: sondages, élections et référendums au Québec, 1992–1997, Montréal: Harmattan, 1997, 355p. This was dramatically illustrated in the 1995 Referendum on Quebec independence. The “Sovereignists” (those dedicated to making Quebec a sep- arate country) won in all areas in Quebec except for Montreal where sizeable English and ethnic populations reside.

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found the French Canadians ﬁlled with an equal amount of national pride; a sensitive, but inactive pride, which disposes that people not to resent insult, but rather to keep aloof from those who would keep them under. The French could not but feel the superiority of the English enterprise; they could not shut their eyes to their success in every undertaking in which they came in contact, and to the constant superiority with which they were acquiring. They looked upon their rivals with alarm—with jealousy—and ﬁnally with hatred. The English repaid them with a scorn, which soon also assumed the same form of hatred. The French complained of the arrogance and the injustice of the English; the English accused the French of the vices of a weak and conquered people, and charged them with meanness and perﬁdy. The entire mistrust which the two races have thus learned to con- ceive of each other’s intentions, induces them to put the worst construction on the most innocent conduct—to judge every word, every act, and every intention unfairly—to attribute the most odious designs, and reject every overture of kindness or fairness, as covering secret designs of treachery and malignity.16

PAOC ministers who were in ministry in Quebec during the 1970s and 1980s could vouch that much of Durham’s above quote was just as applic- able to them as to the wider political arena of the 1830s. The French Conference was part of the overwhelmingly English-speaking PAOC whose top leaders, removed from the Québécois context, were often perplexed by, if not totally unaware of, the cultural sensitivities of the French Canadians. And if the French Conference, in 1970, was perceived as inefﬁcient in evangelism, as a poor organization needing the help—ﬁnancial or otherwise—of the English churches, it should not be surprising if the latter let an attitude of superiority show toward the French Canadians, perhaps not intentional or perceptible by the former, but nevertheless much too obvious to the latter.

Two Worldviews

The history of Canada has been characterized by the clashing world visions of its two dominant cultural populations, those of French origin and those of British origin. And any disagreement that might have been considered simply political within a homogeneous language group tended to take on cultural overtones, if not to degenerate completely into a cul- tural struggle when it involved the two major cultural groups: think of how western provinces who also experience alienation do not push for “distinct society” status, whereas Quebec alienation does.

Ibid., 12.

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The struggle for responsible government, which led to the rebellions of 1837–183817 and later to the commissioning of Lord Durham to attempt to solve the problem, was being waged in the other provinces as well as in Quebec, whether by Joseph Howe in Nova Scotia, Lemuel Allan Wilmot in New Brunswick, or William Lyon Mackenzie in Upper Canada (Ontario). There was armed rebellion in Upper Canada also. But only in Quebec were the issues complicated by the cultural question between the English minority and the French majority. In this particular case, the threat of complete assimilation as the result of a proposed union of the Canadas in 1822 was the main issue that alarmed the French Canadians.18

Cultural and political conﬂict is not restricted to the nineteenth cen- tury. Other examples taken from the history pages of Quebec concerning Quebec-Canada relations, and particularly relations between the govern- ment of Quebec and the federal government, will serve to demonstrate that the ensuing tensions within the PAOC involving the French Conference and the Home Missions Department should be understood, indeed can only be understood, within the historical and cultural Canadian context.

Pre-Quiet Revolution Ideology

Pierre Elliott Trudeau has given what has been described as the best analysis of the French-Canadian society of the ﬁfty years preceding the famous Asbestos strike of 1949.19 He criticized the dominant social ide- ology of Quebec for not corresponding to the changing economic and

Paul-André Linteau, René Durocher, Jean-Claude Robert, and François Ricard, Histoire du Québec contemporain: De la Confédération à la crise (1867–1929) (Boréal: Montréal, 1989), 1:359.

Jean Hamelin, ed., Histoire du Québec(Montréal: Éditions France-Amérique, 1976), 317–18.

Professor Kenneth Kernaghan of Brock University highly recommends Trudeau’s analysis as “a brilliant critical interpretation of French-Canadian social thought in the twen- tieth century” (Freedom of Religion in the Province of Quebec with Particular Reference to the Jews, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Church-State Relations, 1930–1960, PhD diss., Duke University, 1966, 238). Trudeau’s analysis was described as “controversial” but “brilliantly written” and “with unusual clarity” (La grève de l’amiante: une étape de la révolution industrielle au Québec, en collaboration, sous la direction de Pierre Elliot Trudeau [Montréal: Les Éditions Cité Libre, 1956], reviewed by C.B. MacPherson in The Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science 23 [Feb.–Nov. 1957]: 268–69). Jean-Pierre Wallot of the University of Ottawa does not share Trudeau’s interpretation of Quebec history, how- ever. He qualiﬁes Trudeau’s contribution as “a literary synthesis of those historical clichés [. . .] which owes more to duplessism and the reading of Anglo-Saxon ‘classics’ than to a serious knowledge of the period 1760–1867 (une synthèse littéraire de ces clichés his- toriques [. . .] qui doit bien davantage au duplessisme et aux lectures des ‘classiques’ anglo-saxons qu’à une connaissance sérieuse de la période 1760–1867) (Jean-Pierre Wallot,

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social realities of the province and consequently of having a negative and retarding effect on the economic and social progress of French Canadians. When he speaks of the negative effects of Catholic social doctrine mis- applied in the Quebec context, he underscores that this same doctrine, while opening the door to democratization in other countries and offering correctives to abuses of capitalism, was often invoked in Quebec to produce authoritarianism and xenophobia.20

Trudeau also points out that dominant Quebec ideology resulted in the rejection of all ﬁnancial aid coming from outside the province. He men- tions, for example, the refusal of the Quebec government to take advan- tage of federal aid programs during the Great Depression in the name of refusing any constitutional amendments that would be an incursion into provincial jurisdiction. The result of such a refusal was that the unem- ployed of Quebec had less relief than the unemployed of the other provinces. Trudeau quotes Esdras Minville as saying that the province of Quebec “received less because it asked for less [. . .] The other provinces which do not have the same traditional attitude towards expenditures, seem on the contrary to have wanted to proﬁt as much as possible from federal handouts: public works, etc.”21 Of course, this does not mean that the other provinces were not concerned about protecting their constitutional jurisdictions, for Ontario, too, was opposed to the constitutional amend- ment that would give the Federal government the competency to estab- lish a national unemployment insurance program.22 The conﬂict between the French Conference and the Home Missions Department was partially due to a subsidy issue. Consistent to the historical pattern drawn by their

“Le régime britannique [1760–1867]: renseignements généraux,” in Guide d’histoire du Québec, du régime français à nos jours, bibliographie commentée, sous la direction de Jacques Rouillard [Laval: Éditions du Méridien, 1993], 54). As Michael Gauvreau writes, “most histories follow the lead of Pierre Trudeau’s celebrated La Grève de l’amiante(“From Rechristianization to Contestation: Catholic Values and Quebec Society, 1931–1970,” Church History 69, no. 4 [December 2000]: 803–33).” However, Professor Wallot is one of several scholars, including Gilles Paquet, Robert Linteau, and Fernande Roy, who have shown since the 1950s that Quebec’s evolution had been somewhat more complex than originally thought (Jean-François Carding, Claude Couture, and Gratien Allaire, Histoire du Canada: espaces et différences [Presses de l’Université Laval, 1996], 207, 219). The ongoing debate and continuing scholarship regarding Quebec’s history does not, however, undermine the thesis of this paper.

Pierre Elliott Trudeau, “The Province of Quebec at the Time of the Strike, ” in The Asbestos Strike, ed. Pierre Elliott Trudeau, trans. James Boake (Toronto: James Lewis and Samuel, 1974), 14.

Trudeau, The Asbestos Strike, 14 (emphasis in the original).

Linteau et al., Histoire du Québec contemporain, 2: 159–65.

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cultural forebears, the French Conference would not accept subsidies for fear of weakening the French Conference. This is not coincidental.

However, Quebec’s ﬁght for autonomy is not limited to federal-provincial political and constitutional relationships. Trudeau cites another example concerning family allowances:

[Quebec was] unable to introduce [family allowances] either through private enterprise or social legislation, and family allowances—desired by the Church and constitutionally within the jurisdiction of the provinces—were ultimately offered to French-Canadian families by the federal, “Protestant” government. Signiﬁcantly, François Albert Angers, the most competent and estimable of our nationalistic economists, tried to preach the rejection of these allowances by personal example, on the grounds that they were a threat to paternal authority.23

Similarly, though other territorial administrations of the PAOC received help from the National Home Missions without any qualms whatsoever, only the French Conference refused on the basis of protecting its autonomy.

The Case of the Churchill Falls Negotiations

In the 1960s the tough and complex negotiations between Quebec and Newfoundland surrounding the Hamilton Falls (later renamed Churchill Falls) hydroelectric power project, as described in Dale Thomson’s Jean Lesage and the Quiet Revolution, almost seem like a page out of the his- tory of PAOC national ofﬁce and French Conference relations. At one point in time, negotiations between Hydro-Quebec and BRINCO, the com- pany hired by Newfoundland to develop Churchill Falls, bogged down.

French-Canadian ofﬁcials reacted sensitively to what they perceived as the airs of British superiority of BRINCO ofﬁcials; and the latter were inclined to dismiss them, in turn, as small-minded and parochial. Innuendo and veiled insults peppered their meetings. Quebec ofﬁcials resented [chairman of the board at BRINCO and CEO Robert] Winter’s refusal to get involved in the day-to-day negotiations and his tendency to “play the statesman” and go over their heads to [Quebec Premier Jean] Lesage. René Lévesque reﬂected the view of many of them when he described [Newfoundland Premier Joey] Smallwood as “just a concessionaire” and BRINCO as “a sort of medieval Hudson’s Bay.” His match on that sort of diatribe, Smallwood described the typical French Canadian as, individually, “one of the most lovable human beings in Canada,” but added that, “collectively, he deserves a swift kick.”24

Trudeau, The Asbestos Strike, 14–15.

Dale C. Thomson, Jean Lesage and the Quiet Revolution (Toronto: Macmillan, 1984), 259.

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New France under British Rule: On the Defensive

This structure of the English-French relationship in Canada that imposed a speciﬁc dynamic in the relationships of those working within that struc- ture took time to develop. Following the transfer to British rule by the Treaty of Paris in 1763, French-Canadian society found itself deprived of its political and military leadership and subjugated to a foreign power that brought a foreign administration, a foreign language, and a foreign reli- gion, and that had the upper hand because of its capital and ﬁrepower and had an explicit policy of assimilation (even though this would later prove to be inapplicable). Henceforth French-Canadian society was on the defen- sive. And in spite of certain positive developments for French Canadians, the overall general historical trend is that after the introduction of British rule French Canada would take up a defensive posture, at least until the Quiet Revolution. Consequently, la Survivancebecame the ethos of French Canada, its two main characteristics being the constant appeal to the glory of the past (Je me souviens) and a constant struggle to preserve its dis- tinct identity.25

Not all was negative for the Canadians following the introduction of British rule. Many French Canadians genuinely preferred British rule to the old French Regime. The urbanized French Canadians and the elite who stayed behind—that is, the merchants, the landlords, and the clergy— may have had to live through the initial shock of being governed by the British, but a change of masters did not have much of an effect on the majority of French Canadians who lived in the country and in general did not have much contact, if any, with the occupying power. Whether it was London or Versailles ruling them, it made no difference in their everyday lives. In fact, it was actually better under English rule.26

The British policy after the Conquest was to assimilate les Canadiens. The French-Canadian clergy, the only familiar authority structure that the French Canadians could turn to following the departure of the French governing elite, did try to persuade the British to allow them a measure of cultural and religious autonomy in exchange for their loyalty. Governor James Murray (1763–1766) was given orders to anglicize and protes- tantize the French Canadians. But he disregarded those orders, as did Governor Sir Guy Carleton after him.27 It soon became apparent that the

Fernand Dumont, Genèse de la société québécoise (Montréal: Éditions du Boréal, 1996), 103–4. Thomson, Jean Lesage, 1–4.

Hamelin, Histoire du Québec, 277.

Kernaghan makes reference to “Instructions to Governor Murray, 7 December 1763,”

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hoped-for massive British immigration to Quebec to rapidly assimilate les Canadiens would not occur. Governors Murray and Carleton and British Prime Minister Pitt, allowing themselves to be persuaded, argued that if the French Canadians could be given privileges not enjoyed by Catholics in Britain, they would be won to British rule and even accept being assim- ilated, having been convinced of the superiority of British institutions.28

This type of thinking, combined with the fact that there was trouble brewing in the thirteen colonies to the south, which made the French lan- guage in British North America appear to be a bulwark against American expansionism, led to the Quebec Act of 1774, which provided, among other things, for the right of French Canadians to the use of their lan- guage and French civil laws, to practice the Roman Catholic religion, and to hold public ofﬁce.29 This turn of events allowed the Roman Catholic clergy to be in a stronger position than they had been under French rule. Indeed the French-Canadian elite would laud British rule almost, it seems, to the point of saying that British rule was much better than the French despotic one.30

Following the Treaty of Paris, the Canadiens were actually quite con- tent and discovered British rule to be a blessing in disguise. Certainly there were power struggles when the Catholic hierarchy perceived the Governor to be interfering with church business. However, from these power struggles emerged what later developed into ultramontane ideol- ogy that regarded Rome as the only other world power able to be a coun- terbalance to Britain. Furthermore, the power struggles honed the skills of the clergy in their effors to protect their culture and religion.31 But apart from these struggles among the elites, in general the Canadians were free to live as they saw ﬁt, establishing their own institutions and becoming, in effect, “masters in their own home.”32

The hearts of French Canadians, then, had been won, and they became loyal British subjects,33 which, paradoxically, did not preclude their struggle

in W.P.M. Kennedy, Documents of the Canadian Constitution, 1759–1915 (Toronto, 1918), 5–6 (Kernaghan, Freedom, 6); Hamelin, Histoire du Québec, 253.

Dumont, Genèse, 128–33.

George Brown, Building the Canadian Nation, (Toronto/Vancouver: J.M. Dent and Sons, 1951), 118–20. Dumont, Genèse, 130; Durham, Report, 21–22.

Dumont, Genèse, 150–51.

Ibid., 91–94.

Esdras Minville, “Conditions de notre avenir,” in Essais sur le Québec contemporain (Essays on Contemporary Quebec), ed. Jean-Charles Falardeau (Québec: Presses de l’Université Laval, 1953), 235–36.

Dumont, Genèse, 134–35.

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to protect their own institutions of French origin.34 The constant appeal to the British to preserve French-Canadian language, culture, religion, and laws was also providing arguments that would eventually form a basis for the right and legitimacy of the French Canadians to exist as a people and that would be repeatedly used in the future.35 From the British per- spective, the interest of the government in social peace, especially in the light of the American threat and the lobbying efforts of the Roman Catholic hierarchy, caused it therefore to grant the Canadians the right to exist as a distinct people by allowing for the existence of their own language, customs, religion, and institutions.36 Not only did the Canadians want to continue to be themselves and therefore different in relationship to their new British masters, but this difference, following the Quebec Act, was legitimized.

Roman Catholicism and French-Canadian Identity

Subsequent to the British Conquest, a special relationship was forged between les Canadiens and the Catholic Church that extended beyond religious afﬁliation. The church was considered as the bulwark against assimilation and as the protector of “la race” against the foreigner, the propagator of the la Survivance ideology, and the preservation of the French-Canadian people and their way of life. Roman Catholic religion became a fundamental ingredient of the French-Canadian identity. Dumont quotes from the literature of the period, from Les Mélanges religieux of November 26, 1842:

It is not borders, nor even laws and political or civil administrations which make a nationality, it is a religion, a language, a national character, in a word; and if we have some value in the eyes of English politics, be assured it is because we are Catholic and because we speak French.37

In the June 27, 1843 issue we read:

Ibid., 150–51.

Ibid., 133–38.

Lucien Lemieux, “Les années difﬁciles (1760–1839),” in Histoire du Catholicismee

québécois: Les XVIII et XIXe siècles, ed. Nive Voisine (Montréal: Boréal, 1989), 1:11.

Ce ne sont pas des frontières ni même des lois et des administrations politiques et civiles qui font une nationalité, c’est une religion, une langue, un caractère national, en un mot; et si nous sommes de quelque valeur aux yeux de la politique anglaise, soyez assurés que c’est parce que nous sommes catholiques et que nous parlons français. (My translation.)

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Our religion is our primary national distinction, as well as being the foun- dation of our institutions. It is because we are Catholic that we are a nation in this part of America.38

Prominent French-Canadian historian and churchman Lionel Groulx continued the tradition of linking Roman Catholicism with “the most French of French countries”: in other words, to be truly French a society is to be Catholic and beyond the reach of Huguenot inﬂuence.39 The Roman Catholic Church’s very powerful role in preserving French-Canadian cul- ture in effect branded Roman Catholicism into the French-Canadian iden- tity. The exclusion of French-Canadian Protestants from French-Canadian culture was a basic social given until the 1970s in the wake of the Quiet Revolution.

Maudits Anglais!40

Given their history, then, and the ideology of la Survivance, French Canadians were at best wary, at worst closed, to anything coming from outside of Quebec, especially anything English and Protestant. The ini- tial positive attitudes toward things English had begun to change as British and American immigration increased, especially between 1823 and 1837. The French Canadians’ loyalty to Britain notwithstanding, tensions mounted between the two. The increasing foreign presence with the accompanying competition in markets, jobs (most of which went to the English), and land were perceived as a threat to the French Canadians. English capital assured English dominance of commerce and the economy, in addition to the constant English demand that the government suppress French civil laws. Even politically the English had the upper hand in spite of the French-Canadian majority in Parliament because the patronage-ridden political culture of the day assured that French-Canadian members dis- tributed the lion’s share of the jobs to the English. As a result of the inse- curity that accompanied the invasive foreign presence, the French Canadians

Notre religion, c’est notre première distinction nationale, en même temps qu’elle est la base de nos institutions. C’est parce que nous sommes catholiques que nous sommes une nation en ce coin de l’Amérique (Dumont, Genèse, 227). (My translation.)

André J. Bélanger, “La modernité acquise au prix de l’identité,” paper read at the colloquium “Identité et modernité au Québec” on the 55th anniversary of the Social Sciences Faculty of Laval University, Québec, video recording no. 5485C, (produced by) Services des ressources pédagogiques, 1993.

Damned English! (my translation), a common expression of anger among French Canadians toward English Canadians. The translation, however, does not do justice to the historical and emotional impact of the term in the French-Canadian mind.

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developed protective attitudes and reactions.41 In speaking of the trans- formation of Quebec from a rural to a more urban and industrial society, Jean-Charles Falardeau, former head of the Sociology department of Laval University, underscores the development of these automatic protective reactions:

What makes French-speaking Quebec particularly interesting is that indus- trialization took place in a homogeneous society whose entire structure was permeated with religious norms and institutions, whose politics had been oriented towards self-defense, the struggle for survival and the recognition of its rights as the ﬁrst occupant of a hostile continent, and whose tradi- tional ideal was that of faithfulness to its lost paradise.42

Trudeau basically echoes Falardeau’s analysis and blames nationalistic ideology for the development of French-Canadian cultural and political security reactions when confronted with changes from outside Quebec, especially when the source of the change was English and Protestant. His words sum up pre-Quiet Revolution Quebec’s relationship with the outside world:

[Up until the Asbestos strike] nationalism was the main focus of almost all French-Canadian social thought. [. . .] A people which had been defeated, occupied, decapitated, pushed out of commerce, driven from the cities, reduced little by little to a minority, and diminished in inﬂuence in a coun- try which it had nonetheless discovered, explored, and colonized, could adopt few attitudes that would enable it to preserve its identity. This peo- ple devised a system of security, which became overdeveloped; as a result, they sometimes overvalued all those things that set them apart from others, and showed hostility to all change (even progress) coming from without. That is why our nationalism, to oppose a surrounding world that was English- speaking, Protestant, democratic, materialistic, commercial, and later indus- trial, created a system of defense which put a premium on all contrary forces: the French language, Catholicism, authoritarianism, idealism, rural life, and later the return to the land.43

Dumont, Genèse, 104–10; Falardeau, Essais, 15.

Ce qui rend d’un intérêt spécial le cas du Québec de langue française est que l’in- dustrialisation s’y est inscrite dans une société homogène dont toute la structure était solidement intégrée par des institutions et des normes religieuses, dont l’histoire politique avait été orientée vers l’auto-défense, la lutte pour la survivance et la reconnaissance de ses droits de premier occupant d’un continent hostile, et dont l’idéal traditionnel en était un de ﬁdélité à son paradis perdu (Falardeau, Essais, 15). (My translation.)

Trudeau, The Asbestos Strike, 7. Trudeau’s remarks should have been more nuanced here. For example, the very fact of the demand for responsible government, the cause of the 1837–38 rebellion in Lower Canada, presupposes French Canadian desire for repre- sentative government and democracy. Regarding their relation to commerce: although, until the Quiet Revolution, French Canadians were not able to be involved in “Big Business,”

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As the French Canadians increasingly blamed the English for their problems, they also began to highlight their Frenchness, thus widening the ethnic gap. In the nineteenth century the French Canadians began also to reconcile themselves to their French past. Whereas previously the French Canadians would speak of how glad they were not to be attached to France, now poets and historians were leading the way in the development of an historical consciousness among the French-Canadian people.44 In the period of the 1830s leading to their struggle for responsible government, not a uniquely French-Canadian struggle, the idea of “nation” makes its appear- ance in literature.45

Economic Inferiority

In the post-World War I period widespread criticism was directed against capitalism—not a uniquely Canadian phenomenon—especially in the wake of the Great Depression, as reﬂected by the rise of parties such as the CCF (Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, predecessor of the socialist New Democratic Party) and Social Credit. This reaction against liberal capitalistic ideology was, however, usually accompanied by a search for some scapegoat for the economic ills—also not a uniquely Canadian problem. In Quebec there had already developed an animosity toward the English that reached a high point during World War I due to the conscription issue. With French Canadians being so dependent on “English” (that is, British, American, or English-Canadian) capital, nationalistic rhetoric exploited the situation by giving the perception that industrialization had been forced upon them. On the contrary, as Falardeau reminds us, Quebecers quite willingly cooperated with the industrialization of their province by foreign Anglophone capital, for they were the ones who supported suc- cessive governments that proved to be very generous—perhaps too gen- erous—in welcoming American industry. In their search for a scapegoat, however, they conveniently forgot this fact in designating the most obvi- ous one for them—les Anglais.46

their creation of small and mid-size businesses disproves their absence from commerce. See n. 19.

Dumont, Genèse, 156–61.

Ibid., 172.

Falardeau, “Perspectives,” in Falardeau, Essais, 245–46.

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Minority Status

The French Canadians throughout Canadian history have often found themselves in situations in which, having to deal with a majority that does not share their view of the world, they have been painfully aware of being in a minority position, with the unfortunate result that they have repeatedly found themselves on the losing end when dealing with the whole of Canada. The political structure of the country almost guarantees that the French-Canadian minority will not have its way in issues in which there is input from the English-speaking majority. In the political arena there have been many examples throughout Canadian history where French Canadians have lost against the English majority: the Louis Riel uprising, the disputes over French language rights, the Boer War, and the two World Wars, when French Canadians were, in general, against Canadian involve- ment in what they saw as a British imperialist war47 and vehemently opposed to conscription.48

In the judicial sphere the division in cultural perspectives has been underscored historically in that the Supreme Court of Canada, whose structure allows for a maximum of three judges out of nine from Quebec, has brought down many decisions divided along French-English lines with the majority decision going, unsurprisingly, to the justices from outside Quebec.49 So through much of their history, Quebecers have had to live with decisions imposed upon them by an English majority with a different point of view.

Conclusion

Durham believed that the political struggles waged by the French Canadians were culturally motivated. In other words, it was more an issue of culture than of power, although the one did not go without the other.50 Can it be said of the conﬂict within the PAOC that it was fundamentally a question of cultural differences? That culture certainly played a part is quite clear from the various transcripts and minutes. Or was it a question of power? One member of the French Conference believed control was

H. Mason Wade, “Political Trends,” in Falardeau, Essais, 145–46.

Linteau et al., Histoire du Québec, 1: 689–93; idem, Histoire du Québec contem- porain: Le Québec depuis 1930 (Boréal: Montréal, 1989), 2: 146–49.

Kernaghan, Freedom, 201–10, 313.

Durham, Report, 7, 26.

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the fundamental issue in the latter’s clash with the Home Missions depart- ment, which therefore made the preservation of ethnic and cultural char- acter of the French Conference a subsidiary issue at best, a leverage tool at worst.

What we want is that Home Missions and all other Districts channel their efforts through the French Conference, that control remain in the hands of the French Conference. The problem is not one of language, or race; it is not one of ﬁnance either. It’s not language, neither is it men. The problem, as I see it, is one of control!51

It seems, then, that French Conference resistance to Rev. Argue’s home missionary strategy might have been motivated by a quest for power, or at the very least by a wish to insure access to positions of authority, as much as by a desire to preserve the distinct character of the French Conference. Is it possible that the quest for power might have been the primary motive? It might have been the case historically in the macro social- political arena. Historically, just how important was the preservation of “la race” for les Canadiens? At the time of the British Conquest, the vast majority, estimated at 65 percent in 176052 and at 81 percent in 1790,53 lived in rural areas, away from the English presence, continuing to live their own way of life. To what lengths would the peasantry have resisted assimilation? Would they have even wanted to do so? Surely it would not have been comfortable for that ﬁrst generation of Canadians to begin to live the British way of life. The children and their descendants would have been assimilated in time, however, as were the French in Louisiana. But this is all hypothetical, since concerns about the specter of American secession forced London to revise its policies and to legitimize French- Canadian language, religion, and laws.

Furthermore, in the light of the great exodus (between 1840 and 1930 up to 900,000 French Canadians emigrated to the United States54 in search of better lives; this in spite of exhortations from the clergy to stay in Quebec and colonize for the sake of la patrie et la race),55 one wonders to what extent the peasantry was interested in la Survivance. Economic

Addendum to Transcription/Translation, Special Fall Conference, The French Conference of the PAOC, prepared by Donald R. Martin and Pierre R. Bergeron (March 5, 1975), Mississauga, PAOC archives.

Hamelin, Histoire du Québec, 277.

Fernand Ouellet, Le bas-Canada, 1791–1840: changements structuraux et crise (Ottawa: Éditions de l’Université d’Ottawa, 1980), 16.

Linteau, Histoire du Québec, 1:35.

Trudeau, The Asbestos Strike, 45.

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realities evidently made it less of a priority. The fact of the matter is that, if there was resistance to assimilation, it was promoted by those who had the most to lose, that is, the elites, especially the landlords and the clergy. They initiated the ideology of la Survivance, ﬁrst and foremost to promote their own class interests. For the protection of their power and prestige and their lands they offered in exchange the loyalty of les Canadiens. Monière points this out when he writes:

[The landlords and the clergy] after the Conquest formed therefore the dom- inant class, a position granted them in the social structure of the colony, and showed a desire to collaborate in order to maintain the base of their economic power [. . .] After the disintegration of the former ruling class of New France, now returned to France or ruined, this coalition of landlords and clergy proposed itself to the conquerors as intermediaries and presented its class interests as those of Canadians as a whole.56

The foregoing should not be interpreted as meaning that the popula- tion would not have had an interest in supporting resistance to assimila- tion. On the contrary, it would not be realistic to believe that la Survivance could have had any kind of protracted success without the people’s sup- port. Economic and class politics certainly did have their part to play, but in addition, religious interests, which were shared by the population at large, would have to be considered a very important, if not the most impor- tant, factor in winning the people’s support for resistance to assimilation. Understandably, even more loathsome to the French-Canadian mind than anglicization would have been protestantization, especially given that his- torically French Canadians did not identify Protestantism with true French nationality. Nevertheless, this does not take away from the fact that the initial intention of la Survivance was to protect the class interests of the elite more than the cultural interests and traditions of the general popu- lation. Similarly, the conﬂict within the PAOC was one limited generally and especially to the administrative level. Most Quebec Pentecostals were unconcerned and unaware of what was going on at the denominational level. Even most pastors were generally unaffected in their day-to-day

[Les Seigneurs et le clergé] formeront donc après la Conquête la classe dominante adjugée dans la structure sociale de la collectivité colonisée et manifesteront une volonté de collaboration aﬁn d’assurer leurs assises économiques [. . .] Après la désintégration de l’ancienne classe dirigeante de la Nouvelle-France retournée en France ou ruinée, cette coalition clergé-seigneurs se proposera aux conquérants comme interlocuteur et fera passer ses intérêts de classe pour les intérêts de l’ensemble des Canadiens (Denis Monière, Le développement des idéologies au Québec des origines à nos jours [Montréal: Québec/ Amérique, 1977,] 85). [My translation.]

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ministry and in their relationships with colleagues, regardless of on what side of the issue they stood.

It is possible, then, that the tensions between the French Conference and the National Home Missions Department were simply a power struggle among the PAOC elite with cultural overtones added for leverage. But in the light of the long history of la Survivance which has been so indelibly ingrained in the psyche of Quebecers, it might just well be that the ﬁrst concern of the French Conference leaders was the preservation of the cul- turally and linguistically distinctive character of the French Conference. The attempt to exercise control was in reality only the means to that end. In that case, we are not observing a simple administrative or political turf war. If the interests of the “nation” become paramount in all our consid- erations, then we are observing, as Dumont points out, the working of nationalism or nationalistic ideology in its purest form.57

In the midst of unprecedented Pentecostal expansion and enthusiasm, a conﬂict of a political nature broke out between PAOC administrations, more precisely, the French Conference and the National Home Missions Department, with the Eastern Ontario and Quebec District joining the fray later. Faced with increasing numbers of English-speaking ministers join- ing the French Conference, some concerned Québécois members sup- ported a move to take steps to preserve the distinct character of their Conference, even if it meant putting a stop to the FLITE program. The mounting resistance to the methods used by Robert Argue, which included jurisdiction over and the ﬁnancing of the FLITE graduates, made for tense relationships.

The dynamics of the conﬂict follow an historic pattern in the rela- tionship between the two dominant cultural and linguistic communities in Canada. Throughout Canadian history French Canada has repeatedly found itself in the position of having to protect, especially through its elites, its language, culture, and way of life against the much stronger English presence, which much too often has been perceived as a threat to French-Canadian existence. The Canadian reality has brought together two cultural and linguistic communities whose differences in their his- tory and in their sensitivities and adherence to different symbols have contributed to a history of misunderstandings and conﬂict. Evidence of this pattern abounds in the political and business realms, in which the two cultures meet in a power-based relationship. The dynamic is different in personal relationships between representatives of the two cultures, as the

Dumont, Genèse, 276.

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tension between political adversaries is not necessarily present in their personal relationships.

In conclusion, given the long history of the relationships between the French minority and the English majority in Canada and in the light of the numerous parallels with the experience of the PAOC in the 1970s, it is not possible to be satisﬁed that the conﬂict and tensions between the French Conference and National Home Missions were due solely to conﬂicting personalities or to “turf wars” between competing administrations. The reasons for the tensions were in a signiﬁcant measure historically and culturally determined. The players involved were conditioned by a his- torical, cultural, and socio-political matrix, a signiﬁcant factor in determining decisions, actions, and reactions. If not entirely predictable—nothing is predictable when one is dealing with human reactions—it was highly likely. Had the tensions not occurred, that would have been exceptional.

Herein lies a major problem for Pentecostal theology. For Pentecostals, the salvation of souls should override other considerations, cultural or other. It seems, however, that their theological culture was overridden by a more powerful and older cultural structure, two of the fundamental com- ponents of which were the ideologies of la Survivance and nationalism. The Pentecostal claim of being “ﬁlled with the Spirit,” even in the midst of revival, was not sufﬁcient to break the historic and cultural patterns that led to conﬂict between the English majority and the French minor- ity. In his book Fire from Heaven, Harvey Cox suggests that the strength of Pentecostalism is precisely its ability to inculturate, that is, to adapt itself to the various cultures in which it ﬁnds itself. However, the process of inculturation58 in a setting so clearly characterized by acculturation,59

Father Pedro Arrupe, S.J., originator of the notion, in a letter to the Society of Jesus in 1978, deﬁned it thus:

Inculturation is the incarnation of Christian life and of the Christian message in a

particular cultural context, in such a way that this experience not only ﬁnds expres-

sion through elements proper to the culture in question, but becomes a principle that

animates, directs and uniﬁes the culture, transforming and remaking it so as to bring

about “a new creation.” Quoted by Peter Schineller, S.J., in “Inculturation: A Difﬁcult

and Delicate Task,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research 20, no. 3 (July

1996), 109.

Achiel Peelman, professor at St-Paul University in Ottawa, Canada, writes:

Acculturation is the dynamic process that a culture evolving under the inﬂuence of

another culture embarks in, with varying consequences for the two of them: mutual

borrowing, imitations, symbolic transfers, new developments, syncretism. The Gospel

is never proclaimed in a vacuum. The mission inevitably unleashes a process of

acculturation involving the Gospel (which is itself a cultural reality), the culture of

the missionary Church, and the culture of the evangelised.

L’acculturation est le processus dynamique dans lequel s’engage une culture évolu-

ant sous l’inﬂuence d’une autre culture avec des conséquences variées pour l’une

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as is the case in Canada, certainly deserves attention. If Pentecostals or evangelicals (or any Christian group, for that matter) are not able to break through cultural power patterns that promote or sustain the dominance of one group over another to the point where the weaker group is or per- ceives itself to be threatened or humiliated or oppressed in some form, then they must reﬂect on whether their behavior patterns truly reﬂect their theology and indeed the reality of the Gospel message.

Examples in American Pentecostal history can give us food for thought as to the true nature and impact of Pentecostal revival. How are we to understand the relationship between “being ﬁlled with the Spirit” and the power of culture, as demonstrated when William Seymour, a black student in Charles Parham’s Bible school in Houston during Jim Crow America, was not permitted to sit in the classroom with the white students?60 There was a break in usual social and cultural patterns in the Azusa Street Revival, whose leader was this same William Seymour. Not only was racial integration permitted and encouraged, but women also found them- selves not only with more freedom in ministry, but with more power in leadership roles. Indeed, the credential-granting committee of the Azusa Street Mission was comprised of twelve people, of whom seven were women and three were black.61 Was this deviation from the cultural norm due to the Pentecostal revival, or was it due to the character and personality or personal beliefs of William Seymour? Unfortunately, such a state of affairs did not last. Culture was too strong, and in time Pentecostals, as the rest of the religious world, bowed before its power. Blacks and whites went their separate ways and formed their own institutions and ministries. Not until the 1994 “Memphis Miracle,” when the essentially white Pentecostal Fellowship of North America dissolved itself to form an integrated Pentecostal/Charismatic Churches of North America, was there any attempt ofﬁcially to acknowledge racism as inconsistent with Pentecostal theology.62

et l’autre: emprunts réciproques, imitations, transferts symboliques, nouveaux

développements, syncrétismes. L’Évangile n’est jamais proclamé dans un vide cul-

turel. La mission déclenche inévitablement un processus d’acculturation impliquant

l’Évangile (lui-même déjà une réalité culturelle), la culture de l’Église missionnaire

et la culture des évangélisés. Achiel Peelman, L’inculturation: L’Église et les cul-

tures, “L’horizon du croyant” series (Paris: Desclée/Ottawa: Novalis, 1988), 114.

(My translation.)

C.M. Robeck Jr., “Seymour, William Joseph,” in The New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, ed. Stanley M. Burgess and Eduard M. van der Maas (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002), 1054.

Picture of the Credential Committee at the Azusa Street Mission in Like As of Fire (A Reprint of the Old Azusa Street Papers), collected by Fred T. Corum, 1981.

E.L. Blumhofer and C.R. Armstrong, “Assemblies of God,” in The New International Dictionary, 339–40.

Pneuma 28,1_f5_33-58I 3/16/06 4:35 PM Page 58

Pentecostal Theology, Volume 28, No. 1, Spring 2006

It can be argued however, that whether Pentecostalism accepted segregation or denounced it, in both cases it was bowing to culture. When in 1994 Pentecostals declared regret for their racism, were they able to do so only because the wider American culture allowed them?

As for the “Canadian problem” up until now, the Pentecostal community has not been able either to offer or to suggest a credible solution. The idea of “ﬁxing up the individual in order to ﬁx up the world” has to be rethought and reworked. Being “Spirit-ﬁlled” can certainly go a long way in solving personal problems and relationships, but what is the meaning of being “Spirit-ﬁlled” for a participant who operates within the framework of power politics, opposing worldviews, customs, traditions, and clashing cultural groups? This research underlines the power of history, ideology, and culture that can be brought to bear on people. In the case of Quebec Pentecostalism in the 1970s, leaders were called upon to deal with issues that had been faced in previous generations at the political level, namely, the perceived threat to and preservation of cultural and linguistic charac- teristics and the issue of authority over ﬁnances and manpower in Quebec’s jurisdiction. They reacted in ways similar to their historical counterparts, consistent with historical patterns in French-English, federal-provincial relations.

The historical pattern of conﬂict points to an overriding societal and cultural structure whose components include Survivance and nationalistic ideology, a federal/provincial or colonial political structure, and a majority- minority relationship between the protagonists. This structure has proven to be a powerful force bearing down and exerting pressure on participants that has led to similar reactions throughout the years, whether in the con- text of churches, businesses, or politics. If the French Conference lead- ers were part of a religious minority in Quebec whose attachment to the French-Canadian nation might possibly have been questioned by the Catholic majority in the past, culturally they acted and reacted in a man- ner consistent with historical nationalistic and cultural aspirations of the French Canadians. In other words, they could not have been more French Canadian. And within a politico-ecclesiastical framework, this set the stage for a clash that not even Pentecostal theology and practice could prevent. And yet, in spite of the conﬂict, the Pentecostals achieved their greatest growth in number of churches and members in the 1970s and 1980s. For them also, then, as for the rest of the province, it was the worst of times and the best of times.

Pentecostalism, Nationalism, And Québec Culture

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