A Book Review of Sectarianism & Orestes Brownson in the American Religious Marketplace appears in Religion & Literature 51 (Summer 2019): 129-131.
My book project examines religious and ideological change in Orestes Brownson. It chronicles Brownson's life from his early years in the 'Burned-over District' through his later years in Boston and New York. Throughout, the reader gains an understanding of how Brownson's sectarian milieu drove him to experiment with a variety of religious and ideological movements. Even after Brownson converted to Catholicism in 1844, he remained deeply shaped by America's sectarian context. Although this work focuses on one individual, it raises questions about the way that the American religious marketplace shapes people, particularly young people like Brownson, who in his teens was surrounded by the populist fervor of evangelical revivals. There is considerable irony in Brownson's life: He starts out as the most strenuous opponent of sectarianism, but by his forties becomes an unabashed sectarian himself! And yet Brownson was not at the mercy of his environment; he was an agent, repeatedly making choices that would create new opportunities for him and his family. But these choices, as any historian can appreciate, took place within a context, one that remained remarkably contentious throughout the nineteenth century.
Chapter One examines Brownson's early years in Vermont, including the years he spent away from his family living with an elderly couple of a Congregationalist persuasion. It also explores Brownson's religious awakening, and his eventual departure to New York.
Chapter Two showcases Brownson as a Universalist writing for the Gospel Advocate, an organ that was caught-up in the rancorous religious marketplace of the 1820s. Toward the end of this decade, the sectarian forces are so strong that Brownson leaves Universalism behind.
Chapter Three begins with Brownson's brief socialist phase and connection to the Workingman's Party. It then proceeds to examine his Unitarian years, during which he advocated religious freedom but struggled to accept America's most popular religious groups.
Chapter Four discusses the contentious and violent atmosphere of the 1830s, Brownson's effort to find a solution to it in the form of the Society for Christian Union & Progress, and the challenge Transcendentalism posed to Christian thought.
Chapter Five examines Brownson's critique of Trinitarian, Unitarian, and Transcendentalist theology, as well as his appropriation of Pierre Leroux's 'Community System.' It also considers various factors that may have contributed to Brownson's 1844 conversion to Catholicism.
Chapter Six considers the emergence of Brownson as a 'Catholic sectarian': someone who is stridently defending Catholicism and its unique claims to truth in the pages of the Brownson Quarterly Review, even while he is going on the offensive and trying to weaken the plausibility of Protestantism.
Chapter Seven examines Brownson's moderation in the Brownson Quarterly Review beginning in the mid-1850s and then considers the 'Cross Pressures' that he experiences from his Catholic community.
Chapter Eight analyzes the concluding eight years of Brownson's life during which he turns increasingly in an ultra-montane direction. Although Brownson remains preoccupied with sectarianism to the end of his days, he does enjoy a stable identity and remains within the Catholic fold until his death, in 1876.
The Conclusion briefly re-states the major events in Brownson's life and then proceeds to consider alternative explanations for Brownson's religious mobility. These are eventually refuted by the evidence presented here, which is that Brownson's religious wanderlust was induced by the sectarianism prevalent in American culture.
