Essential to Methodist revivalism was the personal conversion experience, which constituted the basis of salvation and church membership. Revivalism, maintains Airhart, was a distinctive form of piety and socialization that was critical in helping Methodists define who they were, colouring their understanding of how religion was to be experienced, practised, articulated, and cultivated. This revivalist piety, even more than doctrine or policy, was the identifying mark of Methodism in the nineteenth century. But, during the late Victorian era, the Methodist presentation of the religious life underwent a transformation. By 1925, when the Methodist Church was incorporated into the United Church of Canada, its most prominent leaders were espousing an approach to piety that was essentially, and sometimes explicitly, non-revivalist. The Methodist approach to personal religion changed during this transition and, significantly, Methodists increasingly became identified with social Christianity -- although experience remained a key aspect of their theology. There was also a growing tendency to associate revivalism with fundamentalism, a new religious development that used the Methodist language of conversion but was unappealing to Canadian Methodists. Airhart portrays the tensions between tradition and innovation through stories of the men and women who struggled to revitalize religion in an age when conventional social assumptions and institutions were being challenged by the ideals of the progressive movement. Serving the Present Age is an account of Canadian Methodist participation in a realignment of North American Protestantism which supporters believed would better enable them, in the words of a well-known Wesley hymn, "to serve the present age."

Phyllis D. Airhart is Professor Emeritus of the History of Christianity at Emmanuel College and cross-appointed to the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto. She is the author of A Church with the Soul of a Nation: Making and Remaking the United Church of Canada (winner of the 2016 book prize from the Canadian Society for the Study of Religion and shortlisted for the 2015 Canada Prize in the Humanities from the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences) as well as a number of other books and articles on religion in Canada.

Phyllis D. Airhart's profile page

"This book will justifiably hold a seminal and pivotal position in the historiography of Canadian religious history. Tightly written, cogently and convincingly argued, this work develops its theme in a clear, logical exposition that is both enlightening and provocative." John S. Moir, Emeritus Professor of History, University of Toronto. "A beautifully written account of the first major transition in Canadian Methodist religious culture, Serving the Present Age merits close reading by every person interested in Canadian social and religious history ... apt and convincing." Timothy Smith, Department of History, Johns Hopkins University.