The Regenerators: Social Criticism in Late Victorian English Canada

"A crisis of faith confronted many Canadian Protestants in the late nineteenth century. With their religious beliefs challenged by the new biological sciences and historical criticism of the Bible, they turned from personal salvation to the dire social problems of the industrial age. The Regenerators explores the nature of social criticism in this era and its complex ties to the religious thinking of the day, showing how the path blazed by nineteenth-century religious liberals led not to the Kingdom of God on earth, but, ironically, to the secular city."--

Introduction -- The roots of modernism: Darwinism and the higher critics -- The anxieties of a moral interregnum -- Positivism, secular thought, and the religion of humanity -- Spiritualism, science of the earthly paradise -- Richard Maurice Bucke: religious heresiarch and utopian -- Toward a Christian political economy -- 'A republic of God, a Christian republic' -- 'The new city of friends': evolution, theosophy, and socialism -- 'Was Christ, after all, a social reformer?' -- The modernist pilgrim's progress -- The sacred becomes the secular

Introduction -- The roots of modernism: Darwinism and the higher critics -- The anxieties of a moral interregnum -- Positivism, secular thought, and the religion of humanity -- Spiritualism, science of the earthly paradise -- Richard Maurice Bucke: religious heresiarch and utopian -- Toward a Christian political economy -- 'A republic of God, a Christian republic' -- 'The new city of friends': evolution, theosophy, and socialism -- 'Was Christ, after all, a social reformer?' -- The modernist pilgrim's progress -- The sacred becomes the secular.