#fuzzy fidelity

Many Nanaimo spiritualists were miners or members of a mining family. Of the twenty-six spiritualist Nanaimo men who listed occupations on the census, twenty, or 77 percent, were miners. Perhaps the high number of fatal accidents in the mines led at least some colliers and their wives to spiritualism, which offered the hope of reconnecting with a loved one. An address of appreciation from George Campbell, chair of the Nanaimo Spiritualist Association, to visiting medium George P. Colby stressed the importance of this. Campbell thanked Colby for his work in the community as “Test Medium and Inspirational Lecturer,” noting that the association felt

grateful for the privilege we have had of communing with those of our loved ones who have joined the greatest throng of immortals in the summerland beyond – for the words of sympathy that have comforted bruised hearts bringing to them a realization of the presence of their supposed dead and a knowledge of the measureless possibilities of life.

Although spiritualism was popular among many people who sought connection with lost loved ones, it was far from popular with certain segments of BC society. Protestant church leaders attacked it as occultism and rank heresy. Such criticism was not new at the turn of the century. In 1870, Edward Cridge, dean of Victoria’s Christ Church Cathedral and soon to become the first bishop of the Carr family’s Reformed Episcopal Church, published a sermon titled “Spiritualism:” or Modern Necromancy, in which he denounced spiritualism as “divining or soothsaying by means of the dead.” He warned readers that it was

a very ancient wickedness. Its various forms are enumerated and condemned in the Book of Deuteronomy ... The Christian who meddles with spiritualism stands on the verge of an abyss.

Cridge clearly knew that at least some of his flock had experimented with spiritualism because he acknowledged that curiosity or a desire to commune with departed loved ones could tempt people to try it. However, he proclaimed firmly that

this practice is denounced in Holy Scripture under the severest penalties ... That which is hateful to God, and punishable by his law with death, cannot be a thing for a Christian to touch, but to shun with abhorrence.

Other Protestant ministers were also strongly opposed to spiritualism, and the Catholic Church declared that spiritualists were trafficking with demons and evil spirits.

Both church leaders and people of a more secular and scientific bent enjoyed unmasking visiting mediums as frauds. For example, in July 1900, a lengthy Vancouver Province article titled “Some Shady Shades” attacked a recent visiting medium as a charlatan and provided a more detailed critique of a “Professor Raymond” – a dubious traveller “in the path of easy money” – who was then in town. It described a Raymond seance, complete with several female “victims” of the deception and typical spiritualist manifestations, such as rapping and the playing of musical instruments by unseen hands in the dark. The reporter clearly believed that Raymond himself was the source of all these phenomena, and he commented snidely that

the guitar banging shade was careless, for not only did it drop the guitar, but it most reprehensibly jabbed an elbow into the eye of the little girl.

For their part, spiritualists recognized that some mediums were frauds, but they strongly defended the authenticity of most mediums and of spiritualism as a legitimate religious alternative. In late-nineteenth-century Ontario, the criminal courts did not always agree. In 1899, some Toronto mediums were charged under the witchcraft section of the Vagrancy Act for telling fortunes or conjuring spirits. The BC courts seemed less concerned with this issue, and at least some BC authorities were willing to grant legitimacy to spiritualist organizations. For example, spiritualists petitioned Nanaimo City Council in 1897, protesting a bylaw that forced local mediums and seers to pay a fifty-dollar licence fee every six months, lumping them in with fortune tellers and other occultists. They insisted that spiritualism be treated like any other church, and council complied with their wishes. The words “medium” and “seer” were removed from the bylaw, though fortune tellers still had to pay the fee. The fact that a year afterward, a leading Nanaimo spiritualist was elected mayor reinforces the acceptability of this alternative movement in the community.

Whereas orthodox Christian ministers condemned spiritualist beliefs, some spiritualists claimed that their movement could bolster Christian faith, as it proved the existence of life after death and therefore negated the arguments of atheists and other “infidels.” For example, George Colby, who gave a talk in Nanaimo titled “What Good Has Spiritualism Done,” argued that

with the advance of material science, the people became more materialistic in their opinions and boldly denied the immortality of the soul. What theology failed to prove, Spiritualism, with its phenomena practically and in a scientific manner demonstrated the truth that we continue to live after the dissolution of the body.

As Timothy Noddings notes, mainstream Christians, unbelievers, and adherents of metaphysical religions all employed the rhetorical weapons of science, rationality, and modernity in their debates with each other, with each side labelling the other as irrational and unscientific.

Although these groups often painted themselves as antithetical to the others, scholars have demonstrated that like Emily Carr, many spiritualists in the United States and Central Canada, particularly many middle-class spiritualists, saw nothing incompatible with practising spiritualism, especially in the privacy of their homes, while remaining members of Protestant churches. Some clergy dabbled in spiritualism themselves, but the Canadian Protestant churches had limited tolerance for such behaviour, as Stan McMullin reveals in chronicling the expulsion of Reverend B.F. Austin from the Methodist ministry for heresy in 1899. Robert Lowery, the infidel newspaperman of the Kootenays, certainly felt that Christianity and spiritualism had much in common, none of it good. As he explained in an article:

You are not expected to examine the Bible; neither are you permitted to investigate the seance. How like as two peas are twin sisters of superstition.

...

...prominent spiritualists also spurned the churches, despite the contrary opinions of family members. The death of a former mayor of Victoria, James Fell, revealed the complex relationship that could exist between secularism, spiritualism, and mainstream Christianity. In 1890, the Anglican bishop Hills noted in his diary that Fell had just passed away and had

left directions no other Service should be said over his body but the form used by the Odd Fellows. Poor man he held spiritualist opinions in which he persevered to the last. He used occasionally to come to the Cathedral where he had a pew. His family are much vexed at the directions left.

Fell’s son asked Hills for permission to have his father buried in the Church of England section of the cemetery, despite the lack of an Anglican burial service. Hills agreed, apparently because

Fell had many excellent qualities was benevolent and never minded what trouble he took for the poor and the sick. Under these circumstances I consented to the request and indeed felt it to be a relief that the service of the Church was not required.

...

As several scholars have noted, women were much more attracted to spiritualism than to irreligion. Owen speculates that many who turned to the alternative religions in Britain may have been alienated by the cold scientific rationalism of unbelief, as it left no room for a spiritual dimension. Women may have been drawn to spiritualism because their natures were assumed to be more spiritual than those of men. The gender ideology of the time, which defined women as sensitive and passive, made them especially suited as mediums, and many took on this role. As well, infant mortality rates in the nineteenth century were much higher than they are today. Although both fathers and mothers mourned dead children, and both sought reconnection through spiritualism, this option appears to have appealed chiefly to women, who had generally had close ties to their children. The fact that the census lists so few unmarried spiritualists may indicate that a number of wives brought their husband to spiritualism, as many did to the Christian churches. For example, the 1881 census records Mary Ann Hardy of Nanaimo as a spiritualist, whereas her miner husband, Thomas, is enumerated as a Unitarian. In the 1891 census, both Mary Ann and Thomas defined themselves as spiritualists, as they also did in 1901. A few husbands identified themselves as spiritualists, whereas their wives remained orthodox Christians (at least officially), but these cases were the exception, unlike those involving unbelieving husbands and Christian wives. Some married women differed from their husbands in defining themselves as spiritualists, as was true of well-known Victoria photographer Hannah Maynard. She and her husband were both Anglicans in 1881, but after her youngest daughter died of typhoid in 1883, she began to attend seances, incorporating ghostly figures into some of her photographic work. Her desire to reconnect with lost family members was intensified by the deaths of another daughter and a daughter-in-law within the next ten years. In 1891, the census identified her as a spiritualist, whereas her husband’s religion was “not given.”

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An 1894 petition to the Legislative Assembly allows us to look more deeply at potential interest in and support for spiritualists on Vancouver Island. The petition, a first effort to eliminate the licence fee for clairvoyants, who were lumped in with astrologers, seers, and fortune tellers under the Municipal Act, was signed by 186 people, 58 from Victoria and the rest from Nanaimo. This is significantly more than the 123 Victorians and Nanaimoites who were listed on the 1901 census as spiritualists (a large minority of whom were children, who do not sign petitions). The petitioners stated that they were “Spiritualists, and profess that form of religious belief commonly known as Spiritualism, and others are their friends.” Many could not be linked to either the 1891 or the 1901 census, but of the Victoria petitioners who could be traced, five were spiritualists and five were infidels or freethinkers, pointing once again to the connection between the two. Ten belonged to mainstream denominations. The latter pattern was even clearer among the Nanaimo petitioners, most of whom identified with orthodox denominations, primarily as Methodists, Anglicans, or Presbyterians. Seven Nanaimo petitioners were listed as spiritualists in the census, one was an atheist, and over thirty were officially Christian (including a Quaker and a Unitarian). Perhaps the Methodist, Anglican, and Presbyterian signatories were simply friends of spiritualists, but it seems much more likely that most would have had at least some level of interest in the alternative religion, perhaps attending an occasional seance or other spiritualist event, and revealing once again that the census omitted many people who had a significant interest in this form of spirituality.

The Sivertz family, which emigrated from Iceland to British Columbia in 1888, is a case in point. Bent Sivertz wrote a detailed account of his parents’ working-class lives in Victoria and Vancouver before the First World War, and his parents, Elinborg and Christian, can also be found on the Victoria census of 1911, which lists them as Lutherans. Bent, however, tells a different and more complex story. Although his mother was raised a Lutheran, she had left the church well before 1911, disenchanted by its hellfire-and-damnation preaching. She spent some years with a Baptist church but had become much more interested in spiritualism by 1910, perhaps influenced by a female friend who had joined the faith. She “gradually over half a dozen years, left off attendance at the Baptist Church in favour of séances.” This did not deter her from praying for her children as they grew up or from attending at least one revival meeting at the Metropolitan Methodist Church. Like many other people, Elinborg created a lived religion that worked for her but did not necessarily correspond to the clear divisions preferred by theologians. Although she had a close relationship with her husband, she did not have his support in her spiritual explorations, as he “preferred not to go to church” and practised what his son termed a “kindly agnosticism.” Whereas the majority of Victoria’s married spiritualists shared their belief in the supernatural with their spouse, the Sivertzes reflect a not uncommon BC pattern of fluidity between alternative and mainstream religions, and a familiar gendered pattern of an agnostic husband and a believing wife. But this configuration was invisible to the census-taker, as either he or the Sivertzes themselves conflated their ethnic and religious identities – in Iceland, where they grew up, the Lutheran Church was the official denomination. Or perhaps, even in the religiously open climate of British Columbia, these working-class immigrants simply felt safer in naming a relatively mainstream denomination than in telling the enumerator that they were an unbeliever and a spiritualist.

The Sivertzes also reflect links between unbelief, alternative religions, and political activism that were not uncommon in British Columbia and Canada more generally. A labour leader, Christian Sivertz was president of the B.C. Federation of Labour by 1912. He was no socialist, though, and he opposed radicalism in the labour revolt of 1919. Unbelief was typically linked to the more radical BC socialists, but Christian demonstrates that it had a broader reach among at least some less radical BC labour leaders. Elinborg was involved in the major suffrage organization in Victoria, the Political Equality League, and in other social reform endeavours. Although BC suffragists tended to be Christians, some were not. Scholars have noted the link between alternative religions, such as spiritualism, and social activism, including the struggle for women’s rights, a connection that certainly applied in Elinborg’s case."

"Although many Catholics were willing to leave the church for the sake of fraternal bonds, their efforts to combine the two pointed to the importance of their faith and a very real fear of dying without priestly absolution. In the mines and other workplaces, sudden death was an ever-present danger. Even nominally Protestant men who absented themselves from church except for an occasional fraternal parade sought its rituals when they died. Most wanted a minister to officiate at their funerals. Bishop Hills of Victoria grumbled in his diary about the frequency with which he was asked to officiate at the burials of people of “doubtful morals” who had never attended church. In February 1890, he recorded that

today was the funeral at the Cathedral of a Mr. Roller, a German keeper of a Theatre of not good reputation. It is difficult to refuse these applications for Burial Rites over those who not only have never belonged to us but are of a disreputable character. There was a large attendance of a class of persons who are never seen in a place of worship.

Reverend Grice-Hutchinson was also asked to bury men who had never attended his services. The Slavic Catholic layman who asked Bishop Dontenwill to send a Slavic priest to Fernie remarked that less than a third of his compatriots normally attended church but that at funerals you may “see church crowded with Slavonians up to door.” In 1895, the Anglican bishop of New Westminster was asked to bury a miner near New Denver and recorded that his workmates

seemed grateful out of all proportion to the service I had done, but I understood it. However reckless their lives, they hate the idea of being buried ‘like a dog.’

A small minority, generally the most committed atheists, left directions that no “sky pilots,” a slang term for ministers, were to officiate at their funerals. Other non-Christians were equally clear, such as the ex-mayor of Victoria, a spiritualist, who instructed that “no other Service should be said over his body but the form used by the Odd Fellows.” Most people who barred ministers from their funerals had no desire to be buried “like a dog.” Some were interred with due ceremony by the local fraternal order to which they belonged, and some received the “obsequies” delivered by a miners’ union, which was involved in many Kootenay funerals. However, even these funerals often had one or more local clergymen officiating. An examination of three Kootenay newspapers reveals that a minister presided at most funerals in these communities. In some cases, this may have reflected the wishes of the more pious spouses, mothers, or other relatives of the deceased, but given the large number of BC men whose families lived elsewhere, it seems likely that, except for committed atheists, they tacitly accepted the value and legitimacy of having a minister preside at their funeral. Particularly in the Kootenays, most of these men would not have been church members, and many probably never went to church. John Houston is a quintessential example: though he spent his career criticizing Christianity and meddling moralistic churchmen, he was buried by a Presbyterian minister. Clearly, churchgoing was not part of their sense of manhood. Churchgoers could be everything that manly men were not: feminine; craven hypocrites who supported oppressive employers; effete easterners who attacked working men’s right to their few enjoyments and who worried more about saving the souls of Asian immigrants than about preventing them from stealing the jobs of white workers. However, it seems that for most, some basic elements of Christianity itself were not antithetical to their sense of masculinity. Christian hymns could provide an emotional link to faraway families, and practical Christianity could serve as the moral basis for relationships in homosocial culture. And for the majority, receiving a proper Christian burial was integral to a sense of decent manhood, or indeed of their very humanity. The fact that the funeral could end with a “drunken orgy,” as more than one appalled minister testified, made perfect sense among working-class men in British Columbia."

- Lynne Marks, Infidels and the Damn Churches: Irreligion and Religion in Settler British Columbia. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2017. p. 96-98.

"In the scholarly literature on secularization and on popular or working-class religion, there has been much debate about people like these miners – the great mass of individuals who occupy a continuum somewhere between unreserved atheism and ardent belief in the religious teachings of a denomination. Historian S.C. Williams has studied the working class of Southwark, in turn-of-the-century London, and suggests that those who professed some type of Christian belief and had a nostalgic fondness for the hymns and prayers of their childhood, but who rarely attended church other than for major life cycle events, nonetheless followed a legitimate form of popular religion. Hugh McLeod, who has studied secularization among the working classes of London and other major cities during the same period, sees such practices as reflecting the “half-secular” approach of many working-class individuals. For McLeod, these practices were a phase in a gradual progression toward complete secularization. Discussing the way in which Americans take up and transform various elements of official religion, making them their own, Robert Orsi argues that this equates to “lived religion” and is not necessarily an indication of secularization. Sociologists of religion have also explored this complex phenomenon. They label individuals who lack strong religious belief and practice but who also lack a clearly secular identity as having “fuzzy fidelity.” This may entail belonging to a church without accepting its teachings, believing in God without joining a church, and a host of other options. Most of these scholars see fuzzy fidelity as a way station on the path toward greater secularity.

Turn-of-the-century British Columbia certainly exhibited a range of practices and beliefs that can be identified with fuzzy fidelity, if we see it as occupying the middle ground on the continuum between steadfast atheism and wholehearted espousal of Christianity. Of course, the key question here, one that is much debated, is where to draw the line – where does fuzziness shade into secularity, and where does it become pious religious practice? Orsi would see variations of lived religion as encompassing all but the most avowed atheist, whereas the sociological scholars of fuzzy fidelity are more interested in variations on the continuum, allowing for shades of grey among the more secular.

The term “practical Christian,” which had considerable resonance in British Columbia during this period, and also considerable elasticity, illustrates the complexities of this continuum. Practical Christians could be socialist atheists who believed that their concern for their fellow workers made them better, more moral people than churchgoers, whom they saw as hypocrites. Practical Christians could also reject Christianity and the churches but respect Christ for his moral teachings and example. Or they may have had some level of Christian faith but may also have believed that leading a moral life did not necessitate church attendance.

Robert Lowery identified practical Christians simply as those who cared for their fellows, regardless of any religious belief. In response to an easterner’s comments on the supposed immorality of the Slocan, Lowery stated that many Slocan men were “practical Christians. They do not spend much time in church howling their complaints to Jesus, but if you are hungry, sick or broke touch some of the boys and see how quick they will respond to your appeal.” Lowery attacked a minister for speaking negatively at the death of a “practical Christian” named Allan, who had been very much part of local rough culture. Lowery admiringly declared that “Allan’s heart was white with the memory of many a kind deed ... Allan practiced the religion of self-forgetfulness. His toil, his money his grub and cabin were ever ready to assist the needy.” The use of “white” here is very much a race-based compliment, reminding us that in this world, a true white man did not need to be a churchgoer. For Lowery and other Euro-Canadian participants in rough culture, whiteness was not necessarily linked to Christianity, as it was for members of the dominant classes who condemned the morals of “bad whites.”

The use of “practical Christian” merits further unpacking. What Lowery meant was unselfishness and concern for one’s fellow men. Today, we might speak approvingly of following the Golden Rule, though most would not link it to Christianity. Lowery respected the moral teachings of Jesus, and though he had little time for the churches, or even Christianity as a religion, he nonetheless used “Christian” as a term of approbation in describing care for one’s fellows. Clearly, “Christian” retained some positive connotations, which demonstrates at least a residual power of Christian culture even among BC unbelievers. “God-fearing” seems to have been used similarly as a positive term, regardless of whether it had anything to do with belief. During an interview, Nanaimo miner Herschel Biggs stated that “as to the hereafter, I’m doubtful whether there is any.” Even so, in describing his fellow miners, he said, “They didn’t go much on religion, but I think most of the miners were God-fearing. They worked hard and they drank beer and they swore and they did things any miner would do, but they were basically a good, hardworking, clean-minded people.

Dave McDonald of Nanaimo was explicit about his lack of belief, but he seems to have fit Lowery’s definition of a practical Christian. As he recalled, “I was supposed to go to church when I was young, but when I got old enough I said, ‘To Hell with it.’ I got fed up with it. I believed in enjoying myself. Mind you, nobody will say anything against me because if I could help someone I always helped ’em. That’s my religion.” Again, caring for others is defined positively as a religion, even though the practice of Christianity is rejected. The Synod of the Diocese of Kootenay seemed to recognize this stance, suggesting that though many workers rejected the churches as being allied with employers, most remained “Christian in sentiment and ethics.” Similar patterns occurred among Catholic working-class men. Priests in Kootenay mining towns frequently complained to their bishop about the lack of church involvement among men. In one instance, a woman came to the local priest because she had been married by a Protestant minister and wanted to make things right with the Catholic Church. But her Catholic husband considered it all nonsense and stated that his only religion was to be an honest man.

Others who called themselves practical Christians felt that caring for one’s fellows was important, but they also retained a faith in God and possibly other basic Christian tenets, such as a belief in the afterlife. Even so, they felt no need to attend church. For example, Thomas Greene, an Anglican minister in the mining town of Fairview, wrote that though many of its miners had “no particular religious leanings,” their creed was that “if I live a pretty straight, honest life and don’t cheat my mates, I shall have a pretty good show at the last.” This seems to indicate that the miners believed they would go to heaven if they lived a moral life, defined to include honesty and straight dealing, but definitely not entailing avoidance of strong drink, gambling, and other activities that an orthodox evangelical Christian would see as paving the path to hell.

...the socialist MLA James Hawthornthwaite may have been concerned about alienating at least some working-class Nanaimo voters with hardline anti-religious rhetoric, but oral history sources suggest that the majority of male Nanaimo workers were not regular churchgoers, although many may have believed in the basic doctrines of Christianity. Albert Tickle of Nanaimo remembered that many of his fellow miners were believers though not churchgoers:

It usually is most common in most miners, most of them were you know Christian believers, but they weren’t what you would call someone that went to church every Sunday. I mean they believed and that was good enough for them.

Tom Johnston, who was raised in a devout Nanaimo household, said that though “a fair percentage” of Nanaimo residents went to church, “the great majority of the population ... were not regular attendants, but they at least supported what the church taught and stood for.” This pattern was very similar to that which S.C. Williams identified in working-class Southwark during the same period. As she argues, people generally felt that if they believed in God, went to church for certain key events, and followed basic Christian precepts, particularly kindness and care for their neighbours, they could define themselves as good Christians. Hugh McLeod also notes that good neighbourliness was identified with practical Christianity in working-class London during this period, regardless of whether those who exhibited it were churchgoers.

Williams suggests that these neighbourly working-class Londoners saw themselves as better Christians than churchgoers who oppressed their employees, displayed unneighbourliness, or were guilty of other faults, and who were branded as hypocrites because they failed to live up to Christian teachings. Similar sentiments were frequently expressed in British Columbia. Alice Barrett Parke of Vernon, a committed churchgoer, noted in her diary that

I have learned since I came west, that religion and church going are sometimes two widely different things. I think many men do not enter the churches, not because they disbelieve in God, or despise His worship, but because they find so little of him in the churches and His professed followers. The Christlike lives are not always lived by those who know most of modern theology. I often think of those words “to do justice, & to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God” and they seem a deep reproach to many of us Christians, where the spirit of intolerance, of harshness and spiritual pride reigns.

This theme of churchgoer hypocrisy was very common. Lowery enjoyed skewering the pretense of wealthy churchgoers who oppressed their employees. Thomas Green wrote about debating religion with a miner who held Christian people “up to ridicule for unfaithfulness and inconsistency.” Workers who told the Fernie Free Press why they did not attend church voiced similar comments. One man stayed away “not because I am not in sympathy with the work that the church purports to do, but because I cannot attend a service without feeling that I have been witness of or participated in a lot of sham and hypocrisy.” Another stated that he would attend services “when the parsons and church members can show me that they are living any better than many of us who do not go to church. When I satisfy myself that I would be a better man for attending church services I’ll be there.” Another declined to attend simply because “I won’t associate myself with a bunch of hypocrites.”