British Columbia is at the forefront of a secularizing movement in the English-speaking world. Nearly half its residents claim no religious affiliation, and the province has the highest rate of unbelief or religious indifference in Canada. Infidels and the Damn Churches explores the historical roots of this phenomenon from the 1880s to the First World War. Lynne Marks reveals that class and racial tensions fuelled irreligion in a world populated by embattled ministers, militant atheists, turn-of-the-century New Agers, rough-living miners, Asian immigrants, and church-going settler women. White, working-class men often arrived in the province alone and identified the church with their exploitative employers. At the same time, BC's anti-Asian and anti-Indigenous racism meant that their "whiteness" alone could define them as respectable, without the need for church affiliation. Consequently, although Christianity retained major social power elsewhere, many people in BC found the freedom to forgo church attendance or espouse atheist views. This nuanced study of mobility, gender, masculinity, and family in settler BC offers new insights into BC's distinctive culture and into the beginnings of what has become an increasingly dominant secular worldview across Canada.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: Leaving God Behind? 1 A Godless Province? Counting the Infidels and the Indifferent 2 Pie in the Sky When You Die: Political and Cultural Challenges to Religion 3 Manly White Men, Fuzzy Fidelity, and Practical Christians: Blurred Boundaries of Belief and Chasms of Racialized Difference 4 Sundays Are So Different Here: Communities in British Columbia, Ontario, and Nova Scotia 5 Could Sodom Be Worse? Christianity, Moral Reform, and the Godless of Vancouver and Victoria 6 Under Siege: Non-Christians, Racialized Groups, and White Women's Rights 7 Subtler and More Dangerous Forms of Error: Metaphysical Religions Conclusion: Godless Past and Present Appendix: Tables Notes; Bibliography; Index