EN :

Newfoundland’s post-Confederation cultural revival is a significant factor in how Newfoundlanders were able to maintain their distinct identity within Canada. Another considerably related factor is the role the provincial government played in the decades following Confederation. As F.L. Jackson wrote in 1984, “the conservation of Newfoundland’s cultural heritage is [...] only really possible if there is also a conservation of Newfoundland’s political integrity and autonomy.” During this period, there was an increase in cultural and heritage initiatives, particularly from the Progressive Conservative provincial governments from the mid-1970s onward. This government involvement reflects the earlier developments in the arts scene and within the academic community at Memorial University that came to be known as the cultural revival. The provincial government’s utilization of the cultural revival movement to leverage political support from their citizenry during inter-governmental negotiations with the federal government demonstrates an evolution in the province from a purely cultural nationalism, to a more developed economic and political nationalism by the 1980s.

EN :

Much confusion has occurred about the beginnings of the Newfoundland Bible Society, an evangelical Protestant organization in the early nineteenth century. In the 1980s, the alleged founding date of 1812 led to a public celebration of its supposed 175th anniversary. But archival research demonstrates that the founding of a local Bible Society Auxiliary in Newfoundland was a lengthy process that lasted more than 30 years until its establishment in 1846. As elsewhere, the organization united members of several Protestant churches — Anglican, Congregationalist, Methodist, and Moravian — in cooperating with each other. At the same time, this Protestant cohesion and focus on the Bible as sole religious and ethical norm evoked fear of Protestant aggression among Roman Catholics while Tractarian Anglican bishops opposed the Society’s liberal ecumenicity. Environmental factors such as the first of several fires in nineteenth-century St. John’s as well as religious conflict may have been among the factors responsible for the delayed establishment of the Bible Society Auxiliary in Newfoundland.