From Assimilation to Reconciliation: Canadian Protestants and the Indian Residential Schools with Dr. Carling Beninger

This week’s episode looks at how the Protestant Churches in Canada moved from an assimilationist policy toward Indigenous peoples to a posture of reconciliation. Dr. Beninger introduces some of the people and movements that helped effect this change.

Dr. Carling Beninger currently teaches History at Douglas College in British Columbia.

Further Reading

Bradford, Tolly, and Chelsea Horton, eds. Mixed blessings: Indigenous encounters with Christianity in Canada. Vancouver, UBC Press, 2016. 

 Stanley McKay and Janet Silman, “A First Nations Movement in a Canadian Church,” in The Reconciliation of Peoples: Challenge to the Churches, edited by Gregory Baum and Harold Wells (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 1997), 172.   

 Bush, Peter. “The Presbyterian Church in Canada’s Mission to Canada’s Native Peoples, 1900-2000.” International Bulletin of Missionary Research 36:3 (2012): 115-120. 

 Trott, Christopher G. “‘I Suggest that you Pursue Conversion’: Aboriginal Peoples and the Anglican Church of Canada after the Second World War.” In Seeds Scattered and Sown: Studies in the History of Canadian Anglicanism. Edited by Norman Knowles. Canada: Anglican Book Centre Publishing, 2008. 

 Beninger, Carling. “Anglican Church of Canada: Indigenous Policies, 1946-2011.” MA Thesis, Trent University, 2011.  

  Beninger, Carling. “The Primacy of Justice: Ted Scott, Social Justice, and the Anglican Church of Canada.” The Ecumenist 53.2 (Spring 2016): 8-13. 

Woods, Eric Taylor. A cultural sociology of Anglican mission and the Indian residential schools in Canada: The long road to apology. Springer, 2016.