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A Solitary Pillar: Montreal's Anglican Church and the Quiet Revolution by Joan Marshall Review by: Peter Beyer Sociology of Religion, Vol. 57, No. 1, Special Issue: Sociology of Culture and Sociology of Religion (Spring, 1996), pp. 106-107 Published by: Oxford University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3712011 . Accessed: 28/06/2014 11:47 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . Oxford University Press and Association for the Sociology of Religion, Inc. are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Sociology of Religion. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 193.142.30.77 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 11:47:51 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Special Issue: Sociology of Culture and Sociology of Religion || A Solitary Pillar: Montreal's Anglican Church and the Quiet Revolutionby Joan Marshall

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Page 1: Special Issue: Sociology of Culture and Sociology of Religion || A Solitary Pillar: Montreal's Anglican Church and the Quiet Revolutionby Joan Marshall

A Solitary Pillar: Montreal's Anglican Church and the Quiet Revolution by Joan MarshallReview by: Peter BeyerSociology of Religion, Vol. 57, No. 1, Special Issue: Sociology of Culture and Sociology ofReligion (Spring, 1996), pp. 106-107Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3712011 .

Accessed: 28/06/2014 11:47

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Oxford University Press and Association for the Sociology of Religion, Inc. are collaborating with JSTOR todigitize, preserve and extend access to Sociology of Religion.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 193.142.30.77 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 11:47:51 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 2: Special Issue: Sociology of Culture and Sociology of Religion || A Solitary Pillar: Montreal's Anglican Church and the Quiet Revolutionby Joan Marshall

106 SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION

Ferre has written an important work of social theory, full of brilliant insights and provocative analysis. As a sociologist, I think his arguments would be stronger and more convincing if they were more thoroughly grounded in empirical research, but that is a minor quibble. A great deal of evidence could be marshaled to support his case. Where I have a more serious difficulty is in his explanation of modernism.

To Ferre, modernism is consciousness de- rived from science and the extenKsion of science into scientism and technolatry. What he says may be true as far as it goes, but is it enough? In other words, science may be necessary to an explanation of modemism, but is it sufficientw Notably absent from his account is any investi- gation of social structure and, in particular, of capitalism and industrialization. Is science re- sponsible for the destruction of the environ- ment, or is the destruction due to an economic system built upon the need for ever increasing consumption of resources? Is alienation in soci ety caused by scientistic reductionism or by the reification that occurs when every aspect of life becomes a commodity in the marketplace?Can liberation occur by developing a new conscious ness, or must we also address questions of power? These questions matter because Ferrd is, in the best tradition of Durkheim, issuing a call to action. But if you want to change the world, you should be very clear about what it is that needs changing.

William A. Stahl LxtheT College

University of Regina

A SolitaD Pillar: Montreal's Anglican Church and the Quiet Revolution, by JOAN MARSHALI . Montreal/Kingston: Mc(Sill-Queen's Uni versity Press, xlv + 220 pp. (CAN$ 34.95.

Many imlnigraIlt gre ups in Canada, the United States, and elsewhere use and have used

their ethnic religious institutions as pillars of continuity, community, and identity to help them cope with the discontinuities of the mi gratory experience. In this book, Joan Marshall makes a similar argument for prevailingly Anglo- Saxon and English speaking Anglicans in con- temporary Quebec, except that in this case the "migrants" have stayed put while the social context around them shifted dramatically. A summary of her core thesis might read like this: English-speaking Quebecers were a privileged and economically dominant minority before the 1960s and the so-called Quiet Revolution. As a result of the latter, however, they lost their privileged status, Frenchspeakersbecame domi- nant in al! areas, and a sizable portion of above all younger anglophones left the province, espe- cially after the election of a separatist govem- ment in 1976. Moreover, during those same decades society in Quebec underwent rapid secularization as reflected in steep declines in religious authority, attendance at religious ser- vices, and membership in religious organiza- tions. The overwhelmingly English-speaking Anglican Church of Canada in Quebec was hit doubly because so many of its members left the province and, of those that stayed, fewer re- mained active in the Church. In spite and because of these developments, argues Marshall, there is evidence that the Anglican Church in Quebec has become a pillar of continuity for many of its adherents, a guardian of tradition that recalls previous privilege and anchors threat- ened identities.

To make her case, Marshall relies on analy- ses at two levels. First, using primarily publicly available sources, she compares the Montreal diocese with the Anglican Church in the rest of Canada on various measures. Second, through publications, interviews, participant observa- tion, and her own survey, she takes a more detailed Icsok at the Montreal diocese and in particular at five indlvdual churches.

The results of Marshall's research are in- triguing, but far from unequivocal. On several indicators, the Montreal diocese shows anoma- lies consistent with the thesis. Montreal Angli- cans are on average more conservative on vari ous issues than one might expect from such a large metropolitan area in that part of CCanaela: They are, for instance, less receptive to women

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Page 3: Special Issue: Sociology of Culture and Sociology of Religion || A Solitary Pillar: Montreal's Anglican Church and the Quiet Revolutionby Joan Marshall

BOOK REVIEWS 107

clergy and the new and non traditional liturgi cal manual, the Book of Alternative Seavices. They axe more likely to want to keep things the way they were. As well, as membership declined drastically, donations per remaining member increased while contributions to church proS gwams outside the parish lagged. Montreal dioS cese also seems to have a higher percentage than elsewhere of peripheral members who contrib ute (nostalgaicallyt) but participate only aarely.

Marshall's study of the fave individual churches are valuable not only because they ably translate the aggregate data into real people and social interaction, but also because they show just how ambiguous the data are with relation to the central thesis of the book. Put very briefly, those churches that demonstrate the key symptoms most clearly are the two inner city ones (one rich, one poor) which have experienced the sharpest membership declines and now consist mostly of old people with long roots in the parish. lEe members of the other three churches (one suburban, one small town, one of recent Haitian immigrants) are younger, more mobile, and less conservative on all mea- sures. The author recognizes these ambiguities and even speaks oftwo types of community, one built on shared memory and the past, the oFer on shared activity and the present. Yet she maintains that, on the whole, the data support her thesis.

The book represents a good effort at tack lulg important questions in contemporary West- em Christianity. There are far too few works like this in the literature on Canadian religion especially. One of the problems in assessing Marshall's effort is ie fact that there are not enough Canadian studies to which one could compare it. Comparable studies of the very conservative Maritime provinces or of the An glican Church in metropolitan Toronto would, for instance, make it much easier to judge whether the Montreal pattern is really due to social and political changes in Quebec as such, or simply to the precipitous loss of membership, whatever the cause. In this regard, one metlwdS ological problem in this book is that Marshall does not make any effort to control for age and mobility. She admits that the Montreal dioc esan population is on average older and less mobile khan elsewhere, but the reader cannot

tell how much of ie observed conservatism these factors explain by themselves; or even how much age and low mobility correlate with conservatism throughout the Canadian AngliS can Church. These difficulties aside, A solitaty pillar makes intriguing reading in the contem poraryCanadiancontext, even if, inthe estima- tion ofthis reviewer, the data do not support the thesis in entirely convincing fashion.

Peter Beyer Unitoersity of Ottawa

CS

Hispanic Catholic Culture in the V.S.: Issues and Concems, edited by JAY P. DoLAn and AUAN F1GUEROA DECK, SJ. Notre Dame: UniversityofNotre Dame Press, 1994, 457 PP. $32.95.

This is the third volume in Jay Dolan's three volume edited historyof Hispanic Catho- lics in the United States. Unlike the first two volumes, wMhichfocusedonMexican American Catholics and Puerto Rican/Cuban Catholics respectively, the present volume is a collection of essays onWkey issues that cut across nationali ties, regions, and generations" (p. 1).

The first two essays, by Joan Moore and David A. Badillo, give overviews of the history and the current situation of the major Latino nationality groups residing in the U.S. today. While scholars familiar with the Hispanic comS munities will find little in these pages that is new, the essays should be quite useful to the Anglo reader encountering this material for the first time. They are clear and well-written sum- maries.

Five of the essays outline in greater detail the Catholic Church's dealings with Hispanics in this country. Moises Sandoval's paper is the most straightforward a thorough review of the major persons, organizatiotls, dates, and events in Uthe organization of a Hispanic Church." While I found the absence of an underlying theory to be a weakness, the essay's

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