The Three-Headed Calf: Triple Vision and the Canadian Society of Church History

Abstract

I would like, at this, the fortieth annual meeting of the Canadian Society of Church History, to explore with you some aspects of the history of our Society. Because I am a student of the history of evangelical Christianity, I will begin with a personal testimony. And because I have been nurtured in the bosom of liberal theology, I would like to focus our thoughts around a story by the prairie author Sandra Birdsell, for whom I frequently have the honour of being mistaken.First, then, the testimony. It happened in the cafeteria at the University of Ottawa a rather unlikely setting for anything momentous, but that is part of the genre, isn't it? The Canadian Society of Church History was on lunch break, and a large number of us had gathered around one long table to engage in a number of conversations. There we were, women and men, at different stages of life and scholarship, historians, religionists, and theologians, all sharing mediocre food and great insights, crosspollinating our disciplines, and enjoying ourselves. It was for me one of those expansive, blissful moments, one in which I experienced what is best described by Marguerite Van Die, in her 1992 presidential address on nineteenth-century religious experience: I sensed "not only the bonds of a community set apart in sacred time and space . . . but also . . . the continuity of the faith and the generations." 1 I was filled with gratitude for

For Whom the Bard Tells: The Role of the Canadian Society of Church History in Shaping Religious Historiography

“…6 Sandra Beardsall's 1999 presidential address, "The Three-Headed Calf," employs a powerful image in her examination of the CSCH (and reveals a certain gravitas that supersedes the pun-heavy title you are currently reading). 7 The reason for highlighting these few examples is to point out that such a desire for titillating titles was not always the concern of our colleagues and that is something that should be noted.…”