Orestes Augustus Brownson was born on this day in 1803 in Stockbridge, Vermont.
He came from an impoverished background and educated himself.
A restless and questing spirit, Orestes Brownson was a precursor, to my mind, of our contemporary spirituality; kaleidoscopic, experimental, and rarely, if ever, settled.
He was variously a Presbyterian, a Universalist minister, a Unitarian clergyman, a leader in the Transcendentalist movement, and eventually, a Roman Catholic.
He was a significant figure first as a Transcendentalist thinker and then as a lay Roman Catholic. It appears his later life was as conservative as his earlier was progressive.
Although how this should be achieved shifted over the years, a constant thread for him was his devotion to the concerns of the working classes and a relentless call for social justice in our nation.
While I prefer his earlier incarnations, I think his later concerns with eclecticism and relativism are worthy questions. Not his answers, mind you, but his questions…
A worthy figure to remember…
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