CMU Professor Gets Grant to Study American Evangelicalism in Western Canada

Brian Froese, history professor at Canadian Mennonite University (CMU), has received a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) to study the influence of American evangelicalism in western Canada.

The title of Froese’s project is, American Evangelical Missions in the Twentieth-Century Canadian West.

Froese became interested in the topic while doing archival research about Mennonite Brethren ministry to Aboriginal people in B.C. in the 1950s and 1960s.

“I kept coming across material about American evangelical mission groups who were working in western Canada,” he says. “It was apparent from the material that they viewed western Canada as a mission field. One document described Saskatchewan in the 1950s as one of the most unchurched regions in North America.”

Froese will use the three-year grant, worth $54,000, to study the impact of American evangelical missionary work in western Canada, and also to see how American evangelicals influenced western Canadian church groups, including Mennonites.

Froese is a member of the Fort Garry Mennonite Brethren Church in Winnipeg.

The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada is the federal agency that promotes and supports university-based research and training in the humanities and social sciences.

Posted April 10, 2008.

For more information contact the CMU Communications Director, 500 Shaftesbury Blvd., Winnipeg, Manitoba R3P 2N2, telephone: 204-487-3300 ext. 630, fax: 204-889-1694,(www.cmu.ca)