Transatlantic Anti‐Catholic Networks, Bibles and School Disputes in the Nineteenth Century

In the later nineteenth century, British, Canadian and American Evangelicals set up transatlantic religious networks to fight the Catholic Church and to affirm their Protestant Anglophone identities. Accordingly, Evangelical militants perceived their struggle as being transnational despite the diametrically different State–Church relationship contexts—which went from full separation in the United States to British church establishment, along with the intermediary Canadian situation ( de facto disestablishment). When nineteenth‐century Anglophone States took over from the Churches the responsibility of educating the youth, militant Evangelicals seized the prospect to ensure that public schools would preserve the essence of a broad Protestant spirit. Furthermore, Evangelical activists relentlessly fought against any form of public subsidies for Catholic schools. This article focuses on the issue of education and reconsiders the wars on religion in the schools, bringing into light the similarities and parallels of said quarrels set in different national contexts.