The Secular Northwest

An excellent book will lead you through doors of thought and will open new pathways once the reading is done. Block does not disappoint.

Chelsea Horton:

...a thoughtful and thought-provoking work that offers a relatively uncommon analysis of secularism in postwar B.C.

Brian Fraser:

I am especially impressed by the ways in which Block uses the oral histories she has gathered to challenge the theoretical frameworks often imposed on lived reality. Secularity, she argues throughout the book, is a much more complicated and shifting phenomenon than many assume ... people interested in Pacific Northwest life are indebted to Tina Block for an admirable scholarly endeavor. It deserves wide circulation and consideration.

James Opp, author of The Lord for the Body: Religion, Medicine, and Protestant Faith Healing in Canada, 1880–1930:
Tina Block offers a rich, multilayered analysis of the practices of irreligion in the Pacific Northwest ... The book opens up new ways of thinking about secularism and regional identity.

David B. Marshall, author of Secularizing the Faith: Canadian Protestant Clergy and the Crisis of Belief, 1850–1940:
The Secular Northwest is a tour de force. Tina Block integrates oral history with a vast and careful reading of the historiography of the Pacific Northwest – and not just that of religion and secularity but also that of gender, class, race, and place – to animate the unique characteristics of everyday non-religious life in British Columbia and Washington State.