In this brief review, I organize my comments around the subtitle of Hughes’s book and take up the themes of Institution, Study of Religion, and Canada. In doing so, I highlight the ways that Hughes’s history provides insight into: 1) the roles of institutions qua institutions (albeit with social actors now) in the establishment of religious studies; 2) the distinctly Canadian elements of religious studies as it emerged in the midst of particular political, social, and cultural contexts; and 3) where the book takes us when thinking about the elastic boundaries that make up Canadian identity.
AirhartPD (1992) Serving the Present Age: Revivalism, Progressivism, and the Methodist Tradition in Canada. Montreal-Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
2.
CookR (1985) The Regenerators: Social Criticism in Late Victorian English Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
3.
CowardH (2014) Fifty Years of Religious Studies in Canada: A Personal Retrospective. Waterloo: Wilfred Laurier University Press.
4.
FryeN (1971) The Bush Garden: Essays on the Canadian Imagination. Toronto: Anansi.
5.
GauvreauM (1991) The Evangelical Century: College and Creed in English Canada from the Great Revival to the Great Depression. Montreal-Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
6.
HughesA (2013) Theory and method in the study of religion: Twenty-five years on. In: AaronHughes (ed.) Theory and Method in the Study of Religion: Twenty-Five Years On. Leiden: Brill, pp. 1–17.
7.
MarshallDB (1992) Secularizing the Faith: Canadian Protestant Clergy and the Crisis of Belief, 1850–1940. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
8.
SissonsCB (1952) A History of Victoria University. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
