Thomas K. Beecher, Minister to a Changing America, 1824-1900 by Myra C. Glenn (review)

584BOOK REVIEWS Although French-Americans—south of Canada—are not organized to agitate and push their ethnic agendas, this book is also a reminder of that substantial, rarely discussed contribution. Lamy was one of a considerable army of French missionaries to work in the United States. Bridgers' title refers to Machebeuf's ability to survive. He swam ashore from a midwinter shipwreck in the freezing waters of Lake Ontario, outmaneuvered an Arizona murderer, looked down the rifle barrels of irate New Mexico rancheros, confronted a pistol-packing priest, and lived to tell about a terrible fall off a mountain road in Colorado (where Mt. Machebeufwas recently named for him). A small, frail, sickly man, he survived attacks oftyphoid, cholera, dysentery , and malaria. He harshly disciplined errant Hispanic and Irish-American priests: Machebeuf called it "fighting the cats"; yet he emerged almost unscathed . On more than one occasion, newspapers reported he had been killed. Father Lamy and his other friends often thought they would have to bury Machebeuf, before dubbing him "trompe la mort." This spirited, positive, fresh biography should keep Machebeuf alive longer still. ThomasJ. Noel University ofColorado at Denver Thomas K. Beecher, Minister to a ChangingAmerica, 1824-1900. By Myra C. Glenn. [Contributions to the Study of Religion, Number 47.] (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. 1996. Pp. xiv, 236. $59.95.) Historians have generally accorded the Beecher family attention commensurate with their celebrity in nineteenth-century America, but such scrutiny stopped short of a thorough consideration of patriarch Lyman's next-toyoungest son until now. That Thomas never garnered a fraction of the national spotlight that illuminated the careers of siblings Catharine, Henry, and Harriet may explain the slight, but Myra Glenn's richly layered biography serves notice on what scholars have missed. Glenn seeks to demonstrate that Thomas, if not the most prominent member of the clan, "was certainly one of the most interesting" (p. xi), and her sources are an embarrassment of riches. The pulpit, a newspaper column, the political platform, and a thoroughly social nature supplied Thomas the means to become a regular source of anxiety for the elder Beechers, as well as his parishioners. Despite youthful doubts and an abiding interest in the physical side of life, Thomas's ordination in 1851 answered his father's prayers and began a lifelong career in the ministry. He would minister, however, on his own terms. His hierarchical , patriarchal understanding of the good society afforded Beecher little personal peace in democratic America, but even in advanced age he never cow- BOOK REVIEWS585 ered. His Christocentric gospel, tilted sharply toward order and stability, led him to defend Southern slavery and to excoriate abolitionists, women's rights activists , and temperance leaders as the vanguards of chaos. Beecher's Congregational theology notwithstanding, he applauded the stability sustained by Catholic ritual and hierarchy and in the 1850's even took the Church's point that public schools should purge the curriculum of Protestant bias. Beecher was anything but predictable, and Glenn does some ofher best work in iUuminating the irony and contradictions that punctuated his life. Disgruntled with temperance agitators early in his ministry, he later ran for local political office under the Prohibition Party banner. A frank apologist for Southern slavery, Beecher established a long-term relationship with his solidly abolitionist Independent Congregational Church (renamed Park Church in 1871) in Elmira, NewYork. A firm opponent of the women's rights movement, Beecher maintained close relationships with his wife, sisters, and lifelong friend EllaWoIcott , all fiercely independent women with activist credentials. More remarkably, he supported the ordination of Annis Eastman, his female successor at Park Church. Finally, while holding to a conservative line on several fronts, Beecher made late nineteenth-century Park Church a model of socially conscious outreach, sponsoring poor relief, day care, and a variety of educational and cultural programs . Such innovations are the basis of Glenn's claims that institutional churches nationally, as well as the Social Gospel Movement, "owed much to Beecher's pioneering efforts" (p. 160). If so, her claim for direct influence needs more substantial support in the text. While the progress of Beecher's ministry controls Glenn's narrative, she commendably integrates his undulating professional path...