This fresh effort to chart the course of religion in modern Canada attempts what the authors call ‘a resolutely social history’ (p. ix). Thus, it includes no coverage of widely-recognised Christian thinkers like the Red Tory social philosopher George Grant or the Jesuit promoter of modernised Thomism, Bernard Lonergan. Nor are major ecclesiastical developments in focus, for example the formation of the United Church of Canada in 1925, which was one of the signal ecumenical reunions of western Protestant history. Instead, the authors concentrate on the Churches as, first, agents of community formation and then promoters of ‘the very process of modernity’ by which ‘liberal values were infused into both the public institutions and private lives of ordinary Canadians’ (p. 4). Throughout much of the nineteenth century they see the Churches reinforcing the authority of fathers and the cohesion of families, but for the twentieth century they view the Churches’ embrace of ‘social Christianity’ as integral to the acceptance of modern individualism and a large role for the national state in promoting individual well-being. Unlike other surveys of Canadian religious history, the book stresses the similarities in the historical development of Protestant and Catholic traditions, even where a major portion of the latter were separated linguistically and politically as Francophone Québécois. Their case includes the overwhelming loyalty of virtually all clergy during the abortive rebellions of 1837 and 1838, their convincing suggestion that nineteenth-century Quebec ultramontanism functioned similarly to revivalism and voluntary social organisation among Canadian Protestants, and the strong parallels that they find in the mid-twentieth century between the critique of social conformity made by leaders of Catholic Action in Quebec and the attack on Protestant cultural stagnation found in works like Pierre Berton's 1965 The comfortable pew. The authors’ strongest contentions, which summarise work in early monographs, especially their jointly authored A full-orbed Christianity: the Protestant Churches and social welfare in Canada, 1900–1940 (1996), attack various secularisation theses. Against the idea that Churches abandoned the working classes as they became more affluent in the late nineteenth century, Christie and Gauvreau argue that working people remained loyal to the Churches until much later. Against the suggestion that the turn to ‘social Christianity’ represented an abandonment of more personal, Evangelical faith, they contend that individual conversion and ‘social Christianity” long remained mutually supporting goals. And against the often-repeated conclusion that the decline of churchgoing from the early 1960s was proof of Canada-wide secularisation, they cite polling data that indicate the high degree of religiosity that prevails even among Canadians who never darken a church door. The textbook format prevents the full presentation of evidence necessary to make all of these claims completely convincing, but the work certainly offers a thoughtful alternative to more common accounts. Among its other strengths are welcome attention to the importance of fund-raising in church life, insightful attention to changing patterns of gender expectations, and a particularly even-handed chapter on missionary efforts along with the wide range of First Nation responses to those efforts.