Orestes A. Brownson: American Religious Weathervane (review)

Patrick W. Carey's new biography of Orestes Augustus Brownson is a shining example of how looking back at our past can illuminate our present. Brownson—characterized as a minor Transcendentalist in nineteenth-century literary anthologies—was one of the bright lights of mid-century Roman Catholicism.

Carey's work presents us with the first modern critical biography of Brownson, which supersedes Thomas Ryan's often unwieldy and uncritical tome (1976, reprinted 2000). What Carey brings to the reader is his decades-old fascination with Brownson, as well as his intimate knowledge of obscure corners of Brownsoniana.

Vermont-born of a Presbyterian family, Brownson converted amid widespread publicity after his tortuous journey through a variety of affiliations, both denominational and philosophical. His 1857 autobiography, The Convert, illustrated this movement toward conversion to Catholicism. Carey's monograph reminds the reader that Brownson came-of-age in the "burned-over district" of upstate New York. This places Brownson in the thick of the ferment of the religious revivalism and experimentation, as described in Whitney Cross's The Burned-Over District: The Social and Intellectual History of Enthusiastic Religion in Western New York 1800–1850. Not only was Brownson affected by the momentary waves of religious fervor, but this also had a major impact on his own long-term religious search.

Brownson was received into the Church at a time when Catholics such as fellow-convert Isaac Hecker, Roger Brooke Taney, Bishop John England of Charleston, and Archbishop John Hughes of New York—a sometime nemesis of Brownson—were advocating and promoting a more strapping and assertive form of Catholicism, at a time during which floods of Irish Catholic immigrants were coming to America. Once in the Church, he had found his home, and was sought out by religious and political thinkers alike, including Edward Sorin (founder of the University of Notre Dame) and Senator John C. Calhoun.

Carey presents us with the paradox of Brownson as a "religious weathervane." Brownson's life was caught up in the enthusiasm of the religious upheavals that produced the Second Great Awakening, giving impetus to such diverse American religious impulses as Mormonism, revivalism, and antebellum reformist movements, including abolitionism. Brownson's movement from one movement to another seemed faddish to his contemporaries. And, yet, this was necessary to lead him to his final spiritual home in Roman Catholicism.

Carey also illustrates at length how Brownson's theological ideas, including his concept of "life by communion"—appropriated from Pierre Leroux, but greatly transformed—provided Brownson with an answer to the rampant subjectivism, individualism, and materialism of the nineteenth century. Coming during Brownson's Unitarian period, the doctrine revealed Brownson's own movement toward community through the God-Man Jesus, as the visible means of communion with God. From there, Brownson could make the steps toward the institution which embodied and realized that "life by communion" most: the Roman Catholic Church. His conversion would occur in 1842, within three years of his first contact with Leroux's writings.

The author has written an essential biography of Brownson, one that rightfully points up Brownson's shortcomings, including his intellectual arrogance and his eristic personality—not to mention what were then acceptable but are now considered racist and misogynistic attitudes. Along the way, Carey indicates how Brownson's spirit was highly American in its essence: restless, visionary, and profoundly moving to the reader. Ultimately, Brownson is the archetypical American, in the vein of many of the literary and religious figures in American culture.

Carey's omission of endnotes is regrettable, but what he does give us, however, is an extensive bibliography which reflects the growing interest in Brownson from a variety of disciplines. Carey's lucid prose deserves to be read by those interested in the origins of modern American Catholicism, as well as in the unique American quest for God and community.