Book description
American religious histories have often focused on the poisoned
relations between Catholics and Protestants during the colonial period
or on the virulent anti-Catholicism and nativism of the mid- to late
nineteenth century. Between these periods, however, lies an important
era of close, peaceable, and significant interaction between these
discordant factions. Frontiers of Faith: Bringing Catholicism to the
West in the Early Republic examines how Catholics in the early
nineteenth-century Ohio Valley expanded their church and strengthened
their connections to Rome alongside the rapid development of the
Protestant Second Great Awakening. In competition with clergy of
evangelical Protestant denominations, priests and bishops aggressively
established congregations, constructed church buildings, ministered to
the faithful, and sought converts. Catholic clergy also displayed the
distinctive features of Catholicism that would inspire Catholics and,
hopefully, impress others. The clerics' optimism grew from the
opportunities presented by the western frontier and the presence of
non-Catholic neighbors. The fruit of these efforts was a European church
translated to the American West. In spite of the relative harmony with
Protestants and pressures to Americanize, Catholics relied on standard
techniques of establishing the authority, institutions, and activities
of their faith. By the time Protestant denominations began to resent the
Catholic presence in the 1830s, they also had reason to resent Catholic
successes-and the many manifestations of that success-in conveying the
faith to others. Using extensive correspondence, reports, diaries, court
documents, apologetical works, and other records of the Catholic clergy,
John R. Dichtl shows how Catholic leadership successfully pursued
strategies of growth in frontier regions while continually weighing
major decisions against what it perceived to be Protestant opinion.
Frontiers of Faith helps restore Catholicism to the story of religious
development in the early republic and emphasizes the importance of
clerical and lay efforts to make sacred the landscape of the New West.
John R. Dichtl is executive director of the National Council on Public
History and former deputy executive director of the Organization of
American Historians.
