Paul R Wilson

This study of Baptist businessmen from Jarvis Street Baptist Church in Toronto breaks new ground. The challenges to faith exerted by the arrival of a new materialistic social ethic and a business-dominated culture in the last half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries has received little attention from Canadian historians. Instead, historians have primarily focused on religious leaders and intellectual challenges to faith. This study examines the sociocultural challenges that confronted one group of central Canadian Baptist businessmen from 1848 to 1921. Essentially, the findings offered here are used to sustain the argument that the rise of business and consumerism helped to secularize the beliefs, values, and practices of Baptist businessmen. Furthermore, the effects of secularization were profound on both the personal and church community levels.