The Early Works of Orestes A. Brownson. Volume I: The Universalist Years, 1826–29 (review)

The Early Works of Orestes A. Brownson. Volume I: The Universalist Years, 1826-29. Edited by Patrick W. Carey. [Marquette Studies in Theology, No. 23.] (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press. 2000. Pp. vi, 410. Paperback.)

Orestes A. Brownson is arguably the most formidable intellect in the history of American Catholic thought. Shortly after his death in 1876, his son Henry F. Brownson began the task of collecting and editing his father's works. He published The Works of Orestes A. Brownson between 1882 and 1887.

The end of a turbulent religious pilgrimage had brought Brownson into the Roman Catholic Church in 1844. During the next thirty-two years as a lay editor and public intellectual, he saw his share of controversy. Not wishing to leave his father vulnerable in death to hostile critics, Henry Brownson decided to include in The Works only the writings of his father's Catholic period. Orestes Brownson had been forty-one years old when he became a Catholic. His son's editorial decision meant that the first fifteen years of Brownson's intellectual life are not represented in The Works.

Patrick Carey of Marquette University has undertaken to remedy this lack. The present volume is the first in a projected seven-volume series of Brownson's Early Works to be published by Marquette University Press. One can only marvel at Orestes Brownson's sheer prolixity. Each of the twenty volumes of his already published Works runs to more than five hundred pages. Carey's first volume is more than four hundred pages in length with six more volumes projected.

This volume contains thirty-three selections from Brownson's years as a Universalist minister between 1826 and 1829. The selections are arranged chronologically with most coming from the last two years of the period. There are eleven selections from 1828 and twenty-one from 1829, Brownson's last and most tumultuous year in the Universalist fellowship. Carey has chosen a variety of selections that range from essays and editorial statements to eleven sermons and two personal creeds, and conclude with Brownson's parting messages to the Universalists. Brownson's Universalist writings open a window on to that shifting religious landscape that was home to what Nathan Hatch terms the "democratization" of American Christianity. Contemporary Universalists will find a glimpse of their own history in these pages. Carey's thirty-page introduction brings to life the place and time of rural New York in the early Republic.

In these selections, the young Brownson turns the no-popery rhetoric of priestcraft and inquisition against the Protestant clergy. He critiques both orthodox Calvinism and evangelical revivalism, opposes Sabbath schools and foreign missions as sectarian, and finally bids farewell to the Universalists so that he will not be bound by any sect. In the midst of all of this, Brownson can surprise the reader with a modest defense of religious images.

Carey has done his editorial work well. His notes are helpful but not intrusive. Readers will be grateful to Marquette University Press for making them footnotes rather than endnotes. There are an "Index of Biblical References" and a thorough "Index of Names and Subjects." This volume and the series it introduces belong in any library with a serious collection in the area of American religious history.

 

William L. Portier
Mount Saint Mary's College
Emmitsburg, Maryland

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