Church History for Wider Publics

Abstract

Like many academics, I’ve shaped the contours of my career according to the expectations and values of the university world. I’ve taught courses for registered students, published articles and book reviews for scholarly journals, written books for university presses, and included in my CV my service to my college and to scholarly guilds. And because I’ve taught at a church-related institution, I’ve also written for church publications and church presses, and added denominational participation to my CV as well. But it was only late in my career that I began to think about how my field of Christian history might usefully engage wider publics. In particular, my own area of interest, the historical engagement of settler and Indigenous Christianities in Canada, is in principle of quite considerable importance to wider publics in Canada in 2020. Our country is generally committed to following up recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of 2014, which raised questions about the churches and Indigenous peoples that are far more complex than they may at first appear. And it is not so easy for the public to find credible and useful information about this broad topic. In seeking to engage wider publics on this issue, I believe that, like most church historians, I have some significant previous experience doing history outside my academic guilds and schools. Many of us, maybe most of us, who participate in the Canadian Society of Church History understand ourselves to be loyal, not in an institutional or hierarchical way but in a moral way, to our churches. For instance, many of us have spoken to non-expert layfolk about our subject, helped with an exhibition in a