A Highly Favored Nation: The Bible and Canadian Meaning, 1860-1900

A Highly Favored Nation focuses on the ways late nineteenth-century Canadians employed biblical texts to describe Canadian identity and the meanings of their nation. Recognizing that many "ordinary" Canadians who went about their day-to-day lives probably did not have much interest in existential questions, this book focuses on the words of Canada's nationalists, preachers, promoters, and enthusiasts. A Highly Favored Nation challenges the common nineteenth-century Protestant claim that Quebec was a Bible-free zone and it suggests that, by the end of the nineteenth century, Canadians' public use of Scripture had diminished the Bible's cultural authority.