From the eighteenth century onward, the British Empire, in common with other European empires and their various settler offshoots in the Americas and elsewhere, was routinely justified by reference to its role in âupliftingâ colonized peoples from their savage primitivism through the introduction of European civilization. This justification of colonialism was informed by an ethnocentric view of human development in which Europeans perceived themselves to be at the vanguard of progress while non-Europeans were considered a throwback to an ancient past. Accordingly, Europe had a moral duty to impart its culture and practices to the rest of the world. The French referred to this curiously benevolent perspective on domination as la mission civilisatriceâthe civilizing mission.
The Anglican missionary enterprise was deeply implicated in the British civilizing mission. Indeed, it was largely through the work of Anglican missionaries and their Protestant brethren that the British government envisioned that colonized peoples would be civilized. Missionary practices reflected this undertaking. Even if the missionaries often stressed their independence from government, rarely did they see their mission to be merely the saving of souls; as the representatives of English/British civilization, they also sought the âsocial bettermentâ of the âsavage heathensâ of the world. The teaching of the Gospel was thus combined with an education in English/British practices and culture.
Since the dissolution of Empire, the Anglican civilizing impulse has been greatly criticized as a corollary to colonialism. This criticism has not only provoked deep reflection on what is appropriate missionary practice in a postcolonial world, but has also breathed new life into old debates about Anglican identity. Many Anglicans have sought to articulate an identity shorn of its mooring in British culture, so as to accommodate non-British expressions of Anglicanism. This, however, has raised questions about whether Anglicanism can be defined on a purely theological basis. As noted theologian Paul Avis puts it, âis Anglicanism merely the decadent legacy of unprincipled Anglo-Saxon imperialism, or is it able to take its stand on, and find its justification in, the essence of Christianity, the Christian gospel?â Interestingly, the effort to construct a âpostcolonialâ Anglicanism has been given added impetus by ongoing demographic changes in the worldwide Anglican Communion, in which the main source of growth in recent decades has been overwhelmingly non-British while the British element has undergone precipitous decline. In other words, now that most Anglicans are not British, what is the place of British culture in Anglicanism?
The confrontation with the possibility that the civilizing mission was an ethnocentric ideology aimed at legitimizing Empire has been particularly pronounced among the Anglican churches in the former âWhite Dominionsââcolonies that were characterized by mass settlement from Britain, where indigenous peoples found themselves dispossessed of their homelands and living as minorities. It is in the settler colonies where Anglicanism was perhaps most implicated in the civilizing mission, often working in partnership with fledging states that sought to establish the dominance of British culture over the cultures of the original inhabitants. As a consequence of these partnerships, the settler churches have been at the receiving end of much anger and bitterness since the great cultural and political resurgence of indigenous peoples began to gather force in the 1960s. The sense of anger has also originated from within the churches. While many indigenous Anglicans left the church, others stayed. But if they opted to remain as Anglicans, they have not been silent. Indeed, demands that the upper echelons of the settler churches confront their collusion in colonialism and acknowledge the value of indigenous cultures have been intense.
The history of Anglicanism in Canada is bound up with the civilizing mission. Anglican missionaries long sought to impart British culture alongside their religious beliefs among the indigenous peoples of the vast territory that now comprises Canada, and were only too happy to work with the colonial state in doing so. As the consolidation of Canada progressed in the nineteenth century, state elites became convinced of the merits of the civilizing mission as a way of resolving the so-called âNative Questionâ. A system of boarding schools, now referred to as the Indian residential schools, was created in the 1880s as a way of assimilating indigenous peoples into the working classes of Euro-Canada. The residential schools involved a church-state partnership, in which several Christian denominations, including Anglicanism, were responsible for its operation, while the government was responsible for funding and oversight. The residential school system had surprising endurance; it was not until the 1970s that the Canadian government began to distance itself from an assimilationist education policy, and the last residential school did not close until 1996. The role of the churches in the school system was terminated in 1969.
The Indian residential schools were an expression of the civilizing mission par excellence, drawing on hard power to impose a purportedly humanitarian project. They were framed by their architects as redoubtable mechanisms for the entry of indigenous peoples into Euro-Canadian civilization, yet for much of their history, attendance was mandatory. Indigenous parents were compelled to accept the ostensible beneficence of church and state, and send their children to institutions that were often located far from their communities, irrespective of their views on the matter. Moreover, if the school system was framed as a humanitarian enterpriseâalbeit a paternal and racist oneâin practice it was often something else entirely. Over the long period that the school system was in operation, the experiences of many of the students give the lie to its inherent contradictions. Many of them suffered a brutal regime of forced assimilation that included cruel and unusual punishment, as well as being subjected to the corrupted sexual desires of their carers. It is in the dark reality of the residential schools that the civilizing mission is revealed as the hard edge of colonialism, and where the lofty ideal blurs into a more prosaic desire to eliminate the potential problems that cultural difference poses for an emergent national state.
In recent decades, the Indian residential schools have become a major source of contention in Canadian politics. At the outset of the 1990s, thousands of former students came forward with allegations that they had been sexually and physically abused during their time at residential school, which in turn triggered a political movement demanding redress from church and state. The school system has since become the pre-eminent symbol of the maltreatment of the indigenous peoples of Canada, triggering, among other measures, numerous apologies from political and religious leaders, the largest financial compensation regime in Canadian history, and the creation of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).
Notably, although it was the allegations of abuse that provided the trigger for the residential schools coming to the fore, a key locus of dispute has always been their underlying rationale as a mechanism for assimilation. It is their assimilationist logic, for example, that distinguishes the Indian residential schools from other types of boarding schools throughout the West which have also lately become rocked by allegations of abuse. With the recent release of the final report of the TRC, which explicitly refers to the residential schools as a cultural genocide, and which makes recommendations affecting nearly every aspect of Canadian society, it seems certain that the school system will remain at the centre of debates over settler-indigenous relations in Canada for the foreseeable future.
Canadian Anglicanism was involved in the residential schools from the outsetâreadily agreeing to the prospect of stable funding for carrying out work in which it was already engaged. This enthusiasm translated into a relatively high number of Anglican-run residential schools; after the Roman Catholic Church, the Anglican Church was responsible for the second highest number. Indeed, until the government terminated its partnership with the churches in 1969, the residential school system was the main expression of Anglican mission to the indigenous peoples of Canada. In other words, from the perspective of the representatives of Anglicanism in Canada, the residential schools had become synonymous with mission.
In 1967, shortly before the churchesâ role in the residential schools was terminated, Anglican leaders disavowed the paternalism of their predecessors and committed their church to work on behalf of indigenous peoples (to âlistenâ) rather than the Canadian state. However, this modified approach to mission was not to be enough. The rising chorus of abuse allegations in the 1980s and 1990s intensified questions over the meaning of the churchâs historic work among indigenous peoples. Several church leaders became convinced that the church needed to confront head-on the deleterious impact of their long involvement in the residential schools and strive to make amends. In 1993, former Primate Michael Peers performed an apology to indigenous Anglicans for the churchâs role in the residential schools and its attempt to âremake [indigenous peoples] in our imageâ. Following Peersâ apology, church leaders set out to convince the Canadian government to do the same, while seeking to make amends among former students and their communities. Later, the church threw its support behind the TRC.
For their part, many indigenous Anglican leaders have increasingly pursued a form of syncretism that seeks to connect long suppressed cultural practices and beliefs with Anglicanism, while also moving towards self-determination. A key part of this process was the appointment in 2007 of Mark MacDonald as the first National Indigenous Bishop, an office with oversight over indigenous members of the church. Although the deep hurt and anger over the churchâs practices will surely forever remain a daily facet of life for many, there are nevertheless some indications that the efforts by the church to make amends have not gone unnoticed, at least among elites. For example, in 2001, Anglican Canadaâs first indigenous diocesan Bishop Gordon Beardy unexpectedly extended forgiveness to the church for its role in the residential schools.
The churchâs ongoing disassociation from the civilizing mission has met internal criticism. From several Bishops in whose dioceses the residential schools were located, to the former school staff, and to the numerous lay members who once provided donations to the schools, among many others, there were, and are, church members convinced that there was some merit in the residential schools and, indeed, the civilizing mission. Even at the time of Peersâ apology, when the emerging wave of abuse allegations threatened to bankrupt the church, a rumble of dismay was discernible. Yet, despite this internal discontent, since the apology, church leaders have been generally publicly united in their determination to forge a path away from the ideals of the civilizing mission, while seeking to make amends for the deleterious impact of its long association with that mission.
The Anglican Churchâs long involvement in the Indian residential schools raises several linked questions. Why was a concerted effort to make amends for the churchâs practices not forthcoming until it was made nigh unavoidable by the coming to light of the tragic history of abuse? And why, even in the face of widespread condemnation, did some Anglicans decry these efforts and continue to defend the churchâs past? Indeed, why did the churchâs support for the residential schools and their underlying civilizing mission persist for so long? This last question becomes all the more puzzling in light of the fact that many of the failings of the residential schools were already widely known by the church leadership in the first decades of the twentieth century. For example, as we shall see in the coming chapters, even when faced with clear evidence that the lack of proper sanitation in many of the schools was contributing to high rates of death from tuberculosis, many within the church continued to support and defend the residential school system.
Aims of the Book
In this book, I undertake to address these questions. To do so, I go inside the church to uncover internal debates relating to the meaning of the civilizing mission and the residential schools during the protracted road to apology. I trace how the church leadership initially perceived the residential schools in the context of the civilizing mission, and how this perception evolved over time, as the residential schools and the broader civilizing mission increasingly became the object of criticism both inside the church and in the wider society. In doing so, my principal concern is the perspective of the white church leaders, although certainly the role played by indigenous peoples is present throughout, given their centrality in overturning the civilizing mission and ensuring that the residential schools became a matter of public debate in Canada. To uncover the churchâs evolving relationship with the residential schools, I turn to the sphere of representation, drawing on a wide variety of texts, including memoirs, pamphlets, editorials, speeches, minutes of meetings, and documentariesâmany of which are housed in the Anglican Church of Canada General Synod Archives in Toronto.
This book is a study in history and sociology. It seeks to increase understanding of the history of Anglicanism and its relationship to the residential schools, while also drawing on and contributing to a meaning-centred approach in sociology known as the âstrong program in cultural sociologyâ. With respect to the former, this book is indebted to a rich body of literature on the historical encounter between Anglicanism and indigenous peoples in Canada (see Abel 1991; Barker 1998; Boon 1962; Coates 1991; Coutts 1991; Craig 1997; Edwards 2001; Ellis 1964; Grant 1984; Henderson 1974; Higham 2001; Johns 2011; van der Goes Ladd 1991; Lewis 1966; Long 1991; Mishler 1990; Moore 2007; Neylan 1994; Peikoff 2000; Rutherdale 1994; Usher 1971). Notably, a subset of this research focuses specifically on Anglican-run residential schools (see Coates 1984; Porter 1981, 1993; Scott-Brown 1987).
I hope that this book can contribute to this impressive body of literature by providing the first history of the Anglican Churchâs protracted relationship with the residential schools, from the churchâs initial period of support for the school system in the nineteenth century until its disavowal in the 1990s. What is missing from existing literature is a study that proper...