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St-Jean-Baptiste celebrations. Popular annual celebrations in French Canada on 24 June (the feast day of St John the Baptist) or on the days before or after this date.

Evangelism is an English word derived from the combination of the 2 Greek words euangelion and euangelizomai, meaning "good news," or "gospel"] and "to announce, proclaim, or bring good news.

Congregational churches comprised Protestant groups arising from Puritanism, and organized on the principle that each congregation should be autonomous. Congregations were established among New England settlers in NS from 1751, and later in NB.

Christian Science, a religion founded upon the applied principles of "primitive Christianity and its lost element of healing," and practised by members of The First Church of Christ, Scientist.

Religions and Music. The many religions of Canada are touched upon in numerous articles in the Encyclopedia of Music in Canada (EMC).

Canadian Bible Society, was founded in 1904 to publish and distribute biblical scriptures and to make the bible available to all who could read it.

An atheist believes there is no God. An agnostic believes we are unable to know whether or not there is a God. Although the word "agnosticism" was invented by T.H. Huxley (1825-95), the position is very old, going back to the Greek Sceptics.

Jesuit Relations (Relations des jésuites), the voluminous annual documents sent from the Canadian mission of the Society of Jesus to its Paris office, 1632-72, compiled by missionaries in the field, edited by their Québec superior, and printed in France by Sébastien Cramoisy.

Jansenism, a theological doctrine which urged greater personal holiness, espoused predestination and was linked to some extent with GALLICANISM.

Calumet, from the Norman-French term for pipe or pipestem in early North American historical records, was a potent item of ritual magic in a Plains medicine bundle and an object of religious symbolism. The calumet was also the focus of tribal solidarity and power.

During the French regime Jesuits were granted considerable property and seigneuries, which they used for educational purposes and for their missions among Indigenous people.

Judaism is the religion of the JEWS. Its origins were in ancient Israel, where the sacred text of the Hebrew Bible was understood to be God's revelation. The Bible's core is the Torah-the 5 books delivered by God to the Jewish people at Mount Sinai through their liberator, teacher and prophet Moses.

First Nation, Métis and Inuit religions in Canada vary widely and consist of complex social and cultural customs for addressing the sacred and the supernatural. The influence of Christianity — through settlers, missionaries and government policy — significantly altered life for Indigenous peoples. In some communities, this resulted in hybridized religious practices; while in others, European religion replaced traditional spiritual practices entirely. Though historically suppressed by colonial administrators and missionaries, especially from the late 19th- to mid-20th centuries, many contemporary Indigenous communities have revived, or continue to practice, traditional spirituality.

An Algonquian word meaning "mysterious being," or simply "mystery," that represents the unknown power of life and the universe.

Historically, expectation of millennial deliverance has become particularly intense at times of great social stress, such as the Crusades or Black Death in medieval Europe or the Protestant Reformation.

In New France as elsewhere the christianization of the Indigenous population was an ostensible motive for European occupation, and trading companies and governors were under official pressure to provide it. The actual work was left largely to religious orders and societies.

When a carefully engineered Catholic majority voted down certain reforms at the Diet of Speyer in Germany in 1529, the defeated minority earned the name "Protestant," derived from the Latin phrase meaning "to testify in favour of something.

Orthodox Church, also commonly known as the Eastern, Greek or Byzantine Church, a family of Christian churches historically found in eastern Europe, the Near East, Africa and Asia (see CHRISTIANITY).

A Protestant Christian theological system constructed by religious reformer John Calvin (Jean Cauvin, 1509-64) and made more stringent and narrower in focus by his successors. It is considered to have been widely influential in Canadian life.