Religion

While most Estonians in Canada are Lutheran (78 percent), and quite a few are Orthodox (19 percent), there are also Baptist, Pentecostal, and Seventh Day Adventist congregations. All of these churches were founded by post-war immigrants. (The Lutheran congregation early in this century in Alberta was served by visiting pastors from the United States.) Interdenominational church ownership is common; in 1963, for example, in Vancouver, St Peter’s Estonian Evangelical Lutheran, together with Estonian Orthodox, erected a common building. St Peter’s Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church (founded in 1948) in Toronto is the largest Estonian-language congregation outside the homeland.

A number of factors made the churches as important as the Estonian Associations. The church had strongly opposed Communist rule during the Soviet takeover in 1940–41; wartime deprivations and sufferings and loss of family members and friends kindled and renewed spiritual and religious attitudes; Canadian churches helped Estonians immigrate; and the Estonian clergy formed a direct channel between the Canadian congregations and the immigrants.

Where Estonian churches have their own buildings they have little contact with indigenous congregations; sharing facilities with English-language churches encourages interrelationships, especially where the hosts have continued to make premises and facilities available for non-spiritual activities. As a result, many smaller Estonian congregations have assumed social and cultural functions unknown in Estonia. The church has evolved from the original Estonian-Nordic model of austere, spiritual leadership to a mixture of the spiritual and the sociocultural, along the North American model. Services are still conducted in Estonian.