3. FROM ENVIRONMENTAL CASE STUDY TO ENVIRONMENTAL KIN STUDY

This article explores the relationships among place, knowing, and being in environmental histories. Grounding ourselves in the work of Indigenous scholars from North America and the Pacific, we propose a method of listening and attuning that can attend to the dislocation and abstraction often found in work addressing ecocide and environmental violence. Against the ubiquity of the case-study approach, we propose a method we call “kin study,” which invites more embedded, expansive, material, and respectful relations to people and lands. This article frames the issues and then proposes, though a dialogue, how kin studies may be constituted and applied in studying environmental histories of the Pacific and Western Canada.     

The Evangelical Alliance, Religious Liberty, and the Evangelical Conscience in Nineteenth-Century Britain

This article explores the difficulties nineteenth-century British evangelical ecumenists faced as they attempted to develop distinctive practical initiatives that could commend widespread support across the denominational spectrum. In particular, it focuses on the nascent Evangelical Alliance's growing concern to promote religious liberty overseas. By following the debates within the Alliance about the need to pursue religious liberty and attending to the obstacles preventing such a course of action this article suggests the need to distinguish between a qualified agenda committed to securing religious rights (religious liberty) and a broader agenda committed to securing political rights (religious equality). By favouring the former, the Evangelical Alliance succeeded in developing a distinctively pan-evangelical initiative that commended relatively widespread support. Thus evangelical concern for religious liberty must be distinguished from the distinctively Nonconformist promotion of religious equality.     

Binding or Loosing in Australasia: Some Trans‐Tasman Protestant Connections

In the context of recent moves to develop a shared history of Australia and New Zealand (Australasia), this paper identifies a religious dimension in the re‐emerging shared history that is connected with other dimensions of the relationship. Building on this recent work, it uncovers the interconnectedness of Presbyterians, Methodists, Congregationalists and Baptists on opposite sides of the Tasman and finds some strength and consistency in the connections over the last 150 years. Starting with an examination of the denominations' attempts at institutional connection and cooperation, the paper moves onto an analysis of the exchange of personnel and ideas between them. It will also argue that these “religious” links strongly imply the existence of substantial “secular” links at both institutional and grass‐roots levels. Finally, other areas for future research into trans‐Tasman Christian linkages are briefly proposed and introduced.