Henry Whitney Bellows and “A New Catholic Church”

Abstract

Abstract This article examines the evolution of Bellow’s proposal for a newly reformed Unitarian “catholic” church during the 1850s and 1860s. For Bellows in particular, political, cultural, and ecclesiastical matters collided in his efforts to transform a diffuse set of liberal Christian churches in fellowship into a denomination of national, even global, caliber. The creation of this “new catholic church” would, in turn, help to heal an ailing nation. There are two questions driving this narrative. First, how did Bellows arrive at the conclusion that Unitarianism was the future of Christendom, the more “Protestant-Protestantism,” or even more boldly, the “more Catholic-Catholicism?” Secondly, how did Bellows arrive at the conclusion that uniting Christendom under a “catholic” Unitarian banner could unite a fractured country? During the early 1860s, the language of nationalism and catholicity merged in Bellows’ organization of the National Convention.