Spiritual Borderlands at the Edge of Empire

Building on the work of William Carpenter Bompas (1834-1906), this book explores the "spiritual borderlands" of the British-Canadian North.As the bishop of Athabasca, Mackenzie River, and Selkirk—presiding over some of the largest (by area) bishoprics in the world—Bompas was central to the physical and spiritual development of Christianity in Northern Canada. Christopher Ross Petrakos foregrounds issues of conversion (assimilation, accommodation, and resistance), the theologies that underpinned missionary behavior, and the transformation of northern societies as the result of national and imperial expansion, natural resource extraction, and environmental change.