Frontiers of Faith: Bringing Catholicism to the West in the Early Republic (review)

John R. Dichtl's thoughtful and perceptive examination of Catholic community on the midwestern frontier adds a valuable dimension to the history of religion in the early republic. Dichtl works from inside the Church—largely from the viewpoint of the Catholic clergy—to assess the growth of Catholicism in the Ohio Valley. He contends that the trans-Appalachian frontier functioned as a middle ground on which Catholics and non-Catholic communities interacted and coexisted on more equal terms than were possible in eastern cities. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, scattered frontier settlements, the small Catholic population, and the scarcity of churches and clergy (who were overworked and underpaid—if paid at all) shaped good feelings between Protestants and Catholics. Along with the challenge of ministering to the far-flung and often penurious frontier faithful, the Catholic clergy saw an opportunity in the West to capitalize on this religious toleration to establish a Catholic identity that seemed problematic if not impossible in the East.

The frontier experience, however, did not lead to a democratized Catholic church. Catholic clerics increasingly turned to eastern bishops and Rome for guidance on challenges and difficulties that issued from the frontier. A shortage of supplies of ritual and devotional materials, lapsed church members discouraged by the absence of churches and infrequent contact with clergy, mixed marriages, the challenge of converting Protestants to the faith, and establishing schools and nunneries forced the Catholic bishops "to invoke standard techniques of establishing authority. … [T]raditional responses eventually worked better in maintaining authority, preserving the faithful, winning converts, and elaborating the institutional presence of the church" (180–81).

Ultimately, the frontier had an ironic and contradictory effect on Catholicism. In the 1780s and 1790s, Catholic leaders in the Ohio Valley worried about "appearing too foreign in the American context"; yet the West seemed fertile ground on which the Church might take root and grow through proselytizing and conversion (145). It was precisely the amicable relationship between Catholics and Protestants and their proximity to one another on the frontier that presented an opportunity to church leaders to engage, educate, impress, and convert non-Catholics. In the early nineteenth century, church leaders became more emboldened and aggressive in their efforts to define a distinct Roman Catholicism. Enhanced Catholic uniqueness in the Ohio Valley, however, alarmed Protestants who were increasingly alienated from and posed a doctrinal challenge to the Church in the 1830s and beyond. The Ohio Valley middle ground became a battle ground between Catholicism and Protestant denominations that paralleled sectarian tensions in the East.

The strength of Dichtl's work—its clergy-oriented perspective—also constitutes a weakness. Non-Catholics and Protestants who occupied this cultural and religious middle ground hover in the background of his narrative. He contends that the frontier offered a variety of "contact points" on which "kinetic interactions" between Catholics and non-Catholics, laity and clergy took place. Yet the problems faced by the Church clergy overshadow and at times eclipse any sustained analysis of Catholic-Protestant relations and negotiations in backcountry settlements. Nevertheless, Frontiers of Faith enriches our understanding of the Catholic community on the frontier and is a fresh and much welcomed addition to U.S. religious history.