The Lord's Dominion describes the development of mainstream Canadian Methodism, from its earliest days to its incorporation into the United Church of Canada in 1925. Neil Semple looks at the ways in which the church evolved to take its part in the crusade to Christianize the world and meet the complex needs of Canadian Protestants, especially in the face of the challenges of the twentieth century.
Semple covers virtually every aspect of Canadian Methodism. He examines early nineteenth-century efforts to evangelize pioneer British North America and the revivalistic activities so important to the mid-nineteenth-century years. He documents Methodists' missionary work both overseas and in Canada among aboriginal peoples and immigrants. He analyses the Methodist contribution to Canadian education and the leadership the church provided for the expansion of the role of women in society. He also assesses the spiritual and social dimensions of evangelical religion in the personal lives of Methodists, addressing such social issues as prohibition, prostitution, the importance of the family, and changing attitudes toward children in Methodist doctrine and Canada in general. Semple argues that Methodism evolved into the most Canadian of all the churches, helping to break down the geographic, political, economic, ethnic, and social divisions that confounded national unity. Although the Methodist Church did not achieve the universality it aspired to, he concludes that it succeeded in defining the religious, political, and social agenda for the Protestant component of Canada, providing a powerful legacy of service to humanity and to God.
And God blessed them and God said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth (Gen. 1:28). The Lord said to me, Harrison, I have given you dominion. I did not say I will give you dominion, but I said I have given you dominion. Dominion! What is dominion? The Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary defines it as authority to rule; control (the right of directing or of giving orders; power or authority) over something. So dominion is the same word as authority, power to reign on this earth over every situation. I therefore announce it to the whole world, God has given me authority, power to reign on this earth over every situations. I do not doubt it because God said it to me verbatim. No man can reign on earth without dominion or authority. Just like no king can rule without authority or power; where the word of a king is, there is power. A king that has no dominion over his kingdom is no more a king, the same way a believer that has no dominion on earth cannot reign as a king.
