Anti-British in Every Sense of the Word? Methodist Preachers, School Libraries, and the Problem of American Books in Upper Canada, 1820-1860

Abstract

In the spring of 1827, the Methodist preacher Anson Green sent a letter from his post in Ancaster, Upper Canada, to New York. In it, he asked Nathan Bangs, Senior Agent of the Methodist Book Concern, to send a bulk order of Sunday school books to supply enthusiastic young readers along his preaching circuit. Green explained that he was eager to follow the example of preachers working south of the border whose trumpeted successes in establishing Sunday schools and Sunday school libraries had “given a zest to the cause of Sabbath Schools on this circuit, which it never possessed before.” Bangs, who had himself laboured as a Methodist preacher in the Upper Canadian backwoods some twenty years earlier, was so delighted to receive Green’s letter that he published it in the Christian Advocate to demonstrate to his readers that the Methodist Sunday school movement was advancing not only in the United States, but north of the border as well. Indeed, the demand for Sunday school books in Upper Canada must have been considerable. By the end of the summer, the Methodist Sunday School Union had twenty-five book depositories operating in North America, including one in Stoney Creek, Upper Canada. The cause of Methodist Sunday schools in North America was boosted considerably just about the time Green was putting pen to paper with the establishment of a separate Methodist Sunday School Union designed to counter what was perceived to be the creeping Calvinism of