Bruce Douville has made an important contribution to our understanding of religious change in what researchers on Christianity in Canada are coming to recognize was a very significant decade: the 1960s. In The Uncomfortable Pew Douville tells two separate, but interconnected, stories. The first is the story of the influence that Christian activists, most of whom came through the Student Christian Movement (SCM), had on the New Left in Canada, specifically Toronto. The second story is how some in the larger denominations, notably the Anglican Church, the United Church of Canada, and the Roman Catholic Church, tried to connect to these activists. This attempt by some clergy to be (or be seen to be) relevant to the emerging issues ultimately failed as the larger denominations remained unmoved as the ground around them shifted. Throughout this well-organized and well-written book, these parallel stories are developed.

Douville begins with an overview of both the church and Canadian society at the beginning of the 1960s. The role played by many in the SCM in the emergence of the New Left is detailed. The focus is clearly on the SCM in Toronto and its activities on the campus of the University of Toronto. While Christian activists played a role in the origin of New Left activism, the book details how this influence declined over the decade. Douville even suggests that the very openness of the SCM and the willingness of the organization to move beyond its distinctly Christian identity may have watered down the religious element of that very identity.

While Christian activists were finding ways of working with others in the New Left, the challenge of connecting to the churches remained. The book details those who attempted to serve as translators between the young activists and these denominations. The discussion of Ray Hord and the debates in the United Church on the Vietnam War is particularly engaging. This division, not only between these activists and the United Church, but also with the Anglican and Roman Catholic traditions, only expanded as issues of aid to war resisters came to the fore. As issues of personal liberation in terms of sexuality and gender took center stage, these divisions only increased. In terms of responses both to the women's liberation movement and the later gay liberation movement that developed in the late 1960s and into the early 1970s, traditional attitudes to gender and sexuality persisted. The churches were at best (and this might be considered a generous characterization) “slow” to respond sympathetically in this period to any changes. Douville concludes the book by considering the legacy both within the church and within our historical memory.

These are two important stories historians need to consider as they study Canada, and indeed North America and beyond, in the postwar period. The contribution that Christian activists made to the youth movement, specifically the New Left, in the 1960s needs to be considered. It was not, as Douville points out, only children with socialist parents who became active in these movements. At the same time, this should not surprise us: the reality is that the church was pervasive in postwar Canada, far more than we may remember, and those who sat in the pews were not univocal in their political opinions. Of even great significance may be the picture of the major Canadian denominations Douville studied that emerged. They are at best stodgy and at worst reactionary. This includes the United Church. Where is this progressive United Church of which so many, both conservative and liberal Christians, speak? Where is this strong social gospel voice? It may not be absent. There are voices to which one can point, but they are at best single voices, rapidly and overwhelmingly drowned out by the conformity of the denomination as a whole, just as one voice is drowned out by a pipe organ on full blast. At other times their voices are far more timid and traditional than is remembered. What emerges from Douville's portrait (and my research would suggest this fits the Presbyterian Church in Canada in this period as well) is complacent, middle-class institutions, intent on preserving the cultural values of the 1950s. As Douville notes, “even the most vocal ecclesiastical critics of the Vietnam War were moderates, not radicals. Such moderates were far to the left of many lay United Church members” (166).

Scholars from a variety of disciplines will find this book worth reading and considering seriously. The political left in Canada was supported by individuals from multiple backgrounds, religious as well as secular. Has that changed? And if so, why? If the churches, especially the United Church of Canada, came only much later to any acceptance of the changing roles for women in society and for acceptance of different sexualities, who was it that was driving this change in the long 1960s? Were Canadian denominations more conservative, culturally and perhaps even theologically, than later narratives have suggested? These are among the questions raised by this important book.