The Cause of Righteousness and Freedom

Abstract

Canadian Protestants interpreted the Second World War as a religious conflict in defence of Christian civilization. This dissertation argues that the churches’s view of the war was rooted in a web of interwoven assumptions that shaped their worldview. These assumptions included a presupposition of Christendom, the Canadian churches’s responsibility for nation-building, the doctrine of divine providence, British imperial sentiment, and the principles of Christian internationalism. The Protestant churches also viewed themselves as the custodians of Christian civilization, and they believed Nazism threatened the survival of that civilization.