Theology, ‘nation-building’, ‘empire’ and missiology intersect in this study of Protestant Canadian responses to the South African (Boer) war. Gordon Heath, a professor of Christian history at McMaster Divinity College in Hamilton, Canada, has constructed a concise and well-written account of the war's ramifications for the Protestant Churches of the young nation. Taking his title from a Methodist college student essay of 1899, and using primarily denominational records and periodical publications, Heath demonstrates the depth of support that Protestant leaders expressed for Canadian engagement in the war, despite loud international opposition. After situating the research historiographically and outlining the context and events of the war, the book highlights four interwoven concepts that cemented Canadian Protestant opinion: justice, nation, empire and missions. Relying on largely British-biased evidence, church leaders asserted that this conflict was ‘just’ because it was instigated by the Boers, who mistreated both non-Boer settlers and indigenous Africans. Canada's participation befitted a nation coming of age, and reinforced the Protestant church leaders' growing sense of their vocation as the builders of a ‘Christian Canada’. They situated their nationalism within firm confidence in the British Empire as a force for order, peaceable governance and temperate living – over against not only anarchy and republicanism, but also greed and the plunder of foreign lands. They bolstered their arguments by describing the threat that the Boers posed to Christian missions. Characterising the Boers as godless and uncultivated (notwithstanding their Reformed Christian northern European heritage), reporters treated Canadian Christians to ‘first hand’ accounts of Boers re-enslaving indigenous Africans and denying them Christian practices. British missionaries, by contrast, appeared as enablers of indigenous African ministry. The church press rationalised the razing of Boer farms and the shocking death rates of Boer children in British internment camps; church leaders ignored the coincidence of the rise of hostilities with the discovery of gold in the Transvaal. Rather, they remained entrenched in – and entranced by – their belief in the rightness of the war's design. Some Protestant Canadian Christians did protest against the South African war; the nature and vilification of their resistance warrants further study. Meanwhile, Heath's work adds flesh to the portrait of Protestant identity in late Victorian Canada, while subtly reminding readers of the consequences of viewing the defence of empire as a godly enterprise.