The Anglican design in Loyalist Nova Scotia, 1783-1816
"This is a history of the formative years of the Church of England's first colonial diocese. It owed its existence to lessons learned in the former American colonies. To the government of the day the Church of England overseas had an important political function. An episcopate in Nova Scotia would strengthen the colony's ties with the mother country and provide an element of stability that had been lacking in the lost colonies, where the clergy of the Church of England has been unsupervised and dissenting sects had flourished without the challenge of effective Anglican competition.Charles Inglis, the first bishop of Nova Scotia, emerges from these pages as a man whose outlook and ideas had become permanently influenced by his experience as a clergyman in the American colonies during the years 1758-83. He believed strongly in the virtues of the British constitution, an ecclesiastical establishment, and the hierarchical organization of society; above all, he dreaded "fanaticism" in religion. His failure to adapt Anglican attitudes and services to a colonial and religiously pluralistic environment contributed to the emergence during his episcopate of a church that was "a minority denomination... fearful for its privileges, jealous of its rivals' success, exclusive, conservative, and unimaginative".The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, which in those days pursued a cautious policy of expansion based on the pattern of English settlement overseas, played an important part in the life of the new diocese. Judith Fingard's book is based upon research in the archives of this Society (now the U.S.P.G.) and a wealth of other unpublished material. It is a thoroughly readable work of scholarship." - Publisher
Print Book, English, 1972
Published for the Church Historical Society [by] S.P.C.K., London, 1972